One of the founders of NEED, Kelly Kinnunen, is working on a video documentary project in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is travelling with Dina Fesler of the nonprofit Children’s Culture Connection. Among other places, they have been visiting Charahee Qambar, an IDP camp where people are living in desperate conditions with very little aid. Dina emailed an update about what they are doing and we wanted to share it with you.

The people living here are from Helmand Province, where the US has been aggressively hunting the Taliban, and causing quite a bit of collateral damage in the process. With their homes bombed and burned, they packed what they had left and came to the camp in Kabul for safety while they figure out what to do next. Their makeshift neighborhood of mud homes can best be described as barely fit for human existence. The worst was when they showed me a baby lying under a filthy blanket, sick and covered in sores. They explained that the baby was dying but there was nothing they could do about it. One of the elders asked me if I would take him. They thought I might be able to save him.

These people are so desperate that they are giving away their children because they don’t know how else to help them? It was all so unbelievable. Stunned, I told them I had no idea what I could do, but Wusim, my guide and translator who used to work for the International Red Cross, said he had a friend who worked at an area hospital.

Now, between continuing to run all over Kabul getting film footage for our project, we have been running in and out of hospitals trying to get help for baby Rahim.

Read the rest of this entry »

A water purifier installed at Nenyunga Clinic courtesy of JourneyPartners. Photo | Jim Wilson

Students from Carson-Newman College push wheelbarrows filled with stones along the dry dirt in Nenyunga, Zimbabwe. Sweat splashes their faces but smiles can’t be contained. The students know that the well they are constructing, the only one within 20 miles, will help this village.

Carson-Newman is a Christian college in Jefferson City, Tennessee. JourneyPartners, an organization that connects with other church organizations to help those in the US and around the world, sent a group of Carson-Newman students to Zimbabwe for five weeks during the 2009 summer. It was a learning experience for all the students, who worked in JourneyPartners’ three areas of focus: water, education and health. Some built a well and water purifier system; others helped in an orphanage, House of Hope; and those who were medical students worked in the Nenyunga clinic.

To immerse themselves in local culture, students stayed with Zimbabwean families. The families cooked sazda, a corn meal loaf with a stiff mashed potato texture, for meals with the students. Greens and meat were valued additions at some meals. “[The students] learned from their customs, culture and faith,” said Jim Wilson, director of Carson-Newman’s campus ministries. Read the rest of this entry »

This blog was submitted by Kevin Selders

A 27-year-old Nashville resident recently returned from his 2,200-mile journey toward saving lives. Chris Hennig completed the grueling Appalachian Trail, which crawls through 14 states, in an effort to inspire child sponsorships through World Vision. The hike comes at a time when nearly 10,000 children have lost their sponsorship this year due to the economic crisis.

“It’s such a tangible way to know you’re making a difference in the life of somebody who, because of where they were born, doesn’t have the same opportunities that we do here in the United States,” says Hennig, who has worked as a World Vision tour representative for four years. “It puts you in contact with the Third World or a developing country and that changes your perspective. We’ve been blessed with a lot being born in this country, so now we need to bless others with what we’ve been given.”

In hiking up to 20 miles a day, Hennig originally had the goal of inspiring a sponsor per mile. “A fellow co-worker said, ‘The goal is one,’” Hennig says. “‘If you get one kid sponsored, you’ve made a difference.’” At the conclusion of his trek a total of 16 children had been sponsored.

Hennig got the idea to hike the trail after reading Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.” Read the rest of this entry »

In 1999, Courtney Spence was a sophomore in Duke University. After doing research and getting involved in a documentary media program at Duke, Courtney was particularly struck by social activism and implementing change through documentary media. In combining the two ideas, she founded Students of the World. The organization, based in Austin, Texas, sends university students around the world to document the work of nonprofit groups and global initiatives making change in developing countries.

Through the online media outlet See Change, students immerse themselves in a community for one month and produce documentary-style media for partnering organizations. This past summer, students from Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, New York University, the University of Michigan and Brown University kept blogs, shot photos and edited video from countries in Asia, South America and Africa.

Ten years into this endeavor, Courtney and Students of the World are working to make their projects more collaborative between the university students and the communities they document. The organization mostly works in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, and Courtney would like to expand to the Middle East.

Courtney shared with me a little about how Students of the World has progressed.

Q: What is your mission at Students of the World?

A: The idea came out of wanting to find a new way for young people to engage in the world in meaningful ways, particularly with a focus on developing countries. The goal of Students of the World is to do what students do already and that’s to go out and to learn and to transcribe that learning into something with more impact, more meaning. The way we translate what we learn in the field is through multimedia, which consequently nonprofit organizations are in great need of. We empower young people to partner with innovative problem-solvers around the world to produce and leverage documentary-style media — films, photography, audio documentary pieces, and magazine and journal articles. Then they return to campus and do advocacy events in the community for that organization as well.

Young student in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo | Verneva Ziga, Columbia University Read the rest of this entry »

“Trick or treat for UNICEF!” Does that sound familiar to you? I was one of those children who went door to door with my younger sister to collect change from neighbors in our orange boxes. It was probably my first experience being a global citizen in an attempt to help children around the world. I remember that the children we were raising money for didn’t have enough food and that made an impact on me.

TeachUNICEF is a new program designed to make an impact on children. That’s what UNICEF does best: it has helped more children, in over 150 countries, than any other humanitarian organization. TeachUNICEF is a program designed to engage students to become aware of the needs of children and their families worldwide. It was launched in 2005 as a free resource for US educators of students in grades three to 12. The content is derived from the UNICEF annual report “State of the World’s Children” and the curriculum is written with the national standards of social studies, mathematics and other key subjects at the forefront.

Some of the units are arranged into themes such as poverty, safe water, armed conflict, gender equality and child labor and child rights. There are plenty of visual aids such as maps and photos to spark discussion; I even watched an educational YouTube video that was filmed in Niger. Ways to take individual action are also included.

24,000 children still die daily from preventable causes. Through TeachUNICEF, students can get involved in UNICEF’s work to “bring that number to zero.”

UNICEF
TeachUNICEF

After 15 years serving as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and 18 years owning and operating a McDonald’s franchise with his wife in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Bob Davisson decided it was time to retire and help build a better future for an impoverished country and its children.

In November 2005 Davisson accepted an invitation to visit Haiti from some missionaries who were in the process of building a school, but were struggling to get it up and running. Meeting children of this poverty-stricken country filled Davisson with compassion and he felt called to help. “This is something that had been on my heart for many years,” he says. “The trip to Haiti and the connections made at the time confirmed this was where I was to serve God.” Less than two months later, Davisson and his missionary friends completed their first school in Chabin, a small town in the southern part of Haiti.

The children’s joy in response to the school’s opening provided the inspiration for Lifeline Haiti, the nonprofit organization that Davisson started with his wife, Linda. Since that time, Lifeline Haiti has completed 14 elementary schools, three bible schools and two high schools for 4,300 children. In the areas where they have set up schools, students receive instruction along with clean drinking water, one hot meal a day, and whatever medicine they need.

The statistics paint a grim picture of the obstacles children face growing up in the poorest country in the western hemisphere: 54 percent of the population goes without clean drinking water, 49 percent are malnourished and 45 percent are illiterate. Each day 400 children die from starvation in Haiti, where the median age of the nine million citizens is only 18 years old.

Progress in such an uphill battle is measured incrementally, but Davisson feels that Lifeline Haiti has made significant changes in the areas it has touched. “There have been no deaths due to starvation in any of the areas,” he says. “Along with the microloan businesses we have set up so far, all 63 of them are doing well and helping to stimulate the economy.”

Much of the success thus far can be attributed to the organization’s partnership with Reverend Wilbert Placide, Bishop of the Christian Evangelical Church of Haiti. “When I first met him it was like we had known each other all our lives,” Davisson says of Rev. Placide. “Without someone like this, we would still be at our first school.” As part of their partnership, Lifeline Haiti opens schools at Placide’s churches. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a cross-post from St. Olaf College News by Kari VanDerVeen

A ceremony put on by local villagers to welcome Ghimire’s staff and students included songs and dances performed by local children.

St. Olaf student Subhash Ghimire ’10 set out this summer to establish a camp in rural Nepal for children impacted by the country’s decade-long civil war, but he didn’t stop there. In addition to managing a 16-member team and 42 children during a successful six-week camp, he created a scholarship fund, established a library, and launched a foundation to support youth movements.

It was the experience of a lifetime, he says, that was topped off by a letter he received shortly after returning to the United States informing him that he had received a scholarship from the Vincent L. Hawkinson Foundation for Peace and Justice. He’ll use part of the $3,000 award to attend law school, but is putting a portion of it toward the scholarship fund he established for Nepalese schoolchildren.

“To be able to help the people who needed it the most was the best part of the camp,” Ghimire says. “I could see in people’s eyes how thankful they were.”

Ghimire will deliver two presentations on campus about his efforts to foster peace and social change in Nepal. The first will be held Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 4 p.m. in Holland Hall 317. The second will be part of the World Issues Dialogue held Thursday, Oct. 15, at 5:30 p.m. in Buntrock Commons, Trollhaugen Room. He will also be presenting at the European Summit for Global Transformation in Rotterdam, Netherlands at the end of November.

A summer success
Ghimire established a summer camp in Arupokhari — the remote village in western Nepal where he was born — using a $10,000 grant he received from Davis Projects for Peace, an initiative that funds student plans for grassroots projects that promote peace. Half of the camp’s 42 children were under age 10, all were under age 14, and most had lost one or both parents during the war.

Using traditional song, dance, theatre, and other teaching aids, the Fulbari Summer Camp worked to help children overcome the scars of war and the country’s caste system. The children, many of whom had witnessed their parents’ murders or lost siblings as well during the war, began to open up throughout the camp and play with new friends, Ghimire says. “The children no longer sketch guns, and instead draw books and birds. To me, that was the biggest achievement of the summer camp,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »

I set out this summer to look at refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. What I found were Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers from Turkey, Syria and Iran, and internally displaced Kurds from Mosul. I saw everything from a youth group practicing traditional dance to a six-year-old boy that has been addicted to smoking for two years. But most of all, I experienced a wide range of people, living in hard situations, but with attitudes towards life that have left me deeply invested in the future of the people in these camps.

Makhmoor Refugee Camp

Makhmoor, home to around 11,000 Turkish refugees, was actually nicer than most villages that I have visited in the region. After a short drive through the dust-filled town of Makhmoor, about 45 minutes from Erbil, my translator, Leo, and I came upon the large security barriers that formed a maze before coming to the first guard. I promptly got yelled at for taking a photo of the UNHCR flag at the gate, which led to a traditional Kurdish yelling match in which I can never quite tell who is winning. Until, invariably, someone will turn to me and say “OK. Everything is OK.”

After talking with the director, I met a camp representative in a large, mostly empty room — a few couches, a hole in the wall for the air conditioner, and only two things on lined the wall: a UNHCR flag and a picture of the former PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. It is clear where the inhabitants’ allegiances lie.

The representative took us to visit the home of Siso Saleem, a 55-year-old father of eight. Sensing my surprise about the number of kids, he responded with, “We must have many children. Some to end up in Turkish prisons, some to join the PKK, some to be educated, and some to take care of the home.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo Courtesy | Lisa Swayne Proud

“I believe everyone is generous and wants to help those that are less fortunate, but life often gets in the way and we don’t end up volunteering,” says the founder of Volunteer Club, Lisa Swayne Proud. This is the reason why Swayne Proud started the first Volunteer Club.

It works much like a book club in that each month, a different person organizes where the group will volunteer, and then emails the group with the details. “The beauty is that when you are not coordinating, all you have to do is show up for a few hours once a month. Plus, it’s an opportunity to hang out with your friends and have some fun,” says Swayne Proud.

Yet showing up for just a few hours can really add up. Swayne Proud estimates that her Club has volunteered almost 300 hours as a group. Three hundred hours may sound like a lot, but to break that down that number, a group of seven friends can easily accomplish it by working less than two hours a month for two years. Now just think about how many hours there would be if there were a couple hundred Volunteer Clubs; soup kitchens wouldn’t know what to do with themselves!

Start you own Volunteer Club today, and join the effect!
Volunteer Club

Women in arid area fetches water from boreholeWhen Charlie Hartwell visited Kenya as the last stop on a trip around the world, he was saddened by the poor conditions he saw there but also encouraged by the warm-hearted people. “I couldn’t stand the poverty, but I love the people,” he says. That motivated him to want to help. He tried social work, and while he didn’t make the impact he wanted through his job, he did meet Jonah Kitheka, a Kenyan social worker. Hartwell, Kitheka and Hartwell’s friend Jimmy Jacobs started the organization Provide International in 1986.

For the first couple years they worked to partner US sponsors with Kenyan children living in the slums of Nairobi. They provided children ages five to ten with a nutritious lunch every day. In return the sponsors received information about the children whom their donations helped feed.

To the left, women in the dry lands break stones to produce the product, ballast, on the right.The efforts were helping, but they weren’t achieving their ultimate goal of self-sufficiency for the people of Kenya. Provide International was supporting Kenyans instead of allowing them to make their own success.Noticing the need for medical care, they added a healthcare program. Hartwell found progress on that project to be slow and at times frustrating. The locals often had different ideas about how to do business. But they succeeded at creating a clinic.

In 1995 Hartwell turned the program over to the Kenyans. He had intended from the beginning for Kitheka to take control of the Kenyan branch of the program, and in 1995 he decided to transfer all of Provide International into Kitheka’s hands. The goal had always been self-sufficiency, and the locals seemed to have an idea of how they wanted to proceed. Read the rest of this entry »