The MasterCard Foundation has announced two new programs to expand savings initiatives in Tajikistan and Rwanda with Aga Khan Foundation Canada and CARE Canada. With a total investment of $9 million, these programs will strengthen and create innovations within the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model, benefiting approximately 900,000 people in remote communities, many of whom live on less than $2 a day.
Alison L. Des Forges, a human rights activist and historian who tried to call the world’s attention to the looming genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and who later wrote what is considered the definitive account of the eventual slaughter of more than 500,000 Rwandans, was among the passengers killed Thursday when Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo. She was 66 and lived in Buffalo.
Organizers of the 24-hour global fund-raising effort known as Twestival are still counting the cash they raised Thursday for charity: water, which works to provide clean drinking water to developing countries.
When violence erupted in Kenya in late December 2007 following disputed national election results, relief organization Medical Assistance Programs International quickly launched a multipronged response. The MAP relief team rushed emergency blankets, food, lifesaving medicines and basic health care to meet the immediate survival needs of up to 10,000 people in the Kibera slums outside of Nairobi, one of the hardest-hit areas.
Many groups with upcoming fundraisers are wondering how to proceed when the need after Hurricane Katrina is so great. Many wonder if they can ask for money for a theater or for children overseas when tens of thousands of people in this country have lost their homes and livelihood.
The answer is yes, they can.
Debra Neuman is on intimate terms with the tsunami that devastated southern Asia in December 2004. Just as you would never refer to a friend as “the Bill” or “the Mary,” she calls the killer storm simply “tsunami” — no preceding article — as though the word should be spelled with a capital T.
It’s not something you see every day, especially in the wake of a natural disaster: a nonprofit organization turning away donations.
“If we’re going to eradicate substandard housing from the face of the earth, we need to be focused and organized.”
So says John Cerniglia from Habitat for Humanity International, which has been providing affordable housing to low-income families since 1976.
And he means it. His word choices sometimes make a face-to-face visit to a major donor sound more like a covert operation for Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt than a friendly chat between board member and prospect.
“You need a streak of outrage. You need a sense of injustice. Without outrage, I don’t know how the hell you can do this work.” — Roger Craver, of Craver, Mathews, Smith & Co.to Denny Hatch, 1993 Since its founding in 1961, Amnesty International has saved more than 50,000 lives — potential victims of murder, torture and execution by some of the nastiest regimes on earth. Considering what’s happening in the Middle East, Africa and even here in the United States, this organization’s work will never be done. If I had to pick one organization for which Roger Craver’s words are apropos, it
Once considered haphazard and uncoordinated, international relief and rescue efforts have come into their own as vital fundraising campaigns. Whether responding to the grave effects of a natural disaster or to the plight of malnourished children in third-world countries, organizations such as American Red Cross, CARE, UNICEF, Food for the Hungry, International Rescue Committee and a host of others have heeded the global call.
