A young man lives at the Center for Children’s Happiness in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and leads his fellow students in many activities throughout the day. He is only 17 years old and unlike most teenagers, he has overcome incredible obstacles and willed himself to gain an education, impact his community, and live a happy, productive life. When Give2Asia Program Officer Gillian Yeoh visited CCH in June 2009, Ravuth showed her around the center and told her his life story in fluent English.
This impressive young man, Huot Ravuth, was born on March 8, 1992 in the Kandal province of Cambodia. As a small child, Ravuth lived in the rural countryside with his family, caring for the home, cows and chickens with his siblings. Though the youngest and smallest, he also worked in the rice field, side by side with family members and other workers, carrying heavy bunches of rice.
Continue reading "The Story of Huot Ravuth: A Mother’s Smile, A Son’s Dream" »
One of the many satisfying parts of working in international philanthropy is coming across young, innovative organizations that are doing new kinds of work for impoverished and rural communities.
On March 12, Give2Asia was able to feature two such organizations during a spring wine reception for our donors, friends and trustees in San Francisco. The two groups, Wokai and Photovoices International, working respectively in microfinance and the environment, beneift from energetic, well-spoken leaders and interesting, well-executed programs.
WOKAI
Wokai's co-founder and CEO Casey Wilson explained how her organization's programs nurture microfinance in rural China by connecting donors to small entrepreneurs to receive small loans to start their own businesses. Through online community-building, it connects individual lenders in the US to borrowers in China, who are taking their first steps toward starting or expanding a busienss. Wokai, meaning "I start," allows impoverished people in China to start their own small businesses.
This organization benefits people like Zhang Rong who borrowed a loan of $900 to open up a hot pot
stand to support her son's high school education and increase her household income. Rong is receiving more than just money, she will gain confidence, economical independence, and the ability to support her family.
PHOTOVOICES
Ann McBride-Norton of Photovoices International offered an overview of how Photovoices was conceived. She then embarked on a narrative presentation of Photovoices' project sites with an accompanying slideshow. Sites include Lamalera Village in Eastern Indonesia, Yunnan Province of China and Boti Village of Timor.
Photovoices is a project that allows indigenous peoples to communicate their culture and way of life in a universal language, through pictures. The program trains the local people to use cameras, with a few workshops on technique and composition. Then for a year, the people document their way of life. Translators come in once a month, to capture the "words" to accompany these pictorial stories. The goal of this program is to get the local voice without losing meanings and important messages often lost in verbal translation.
To find out more about these organizations and how you can help check out their sites:
By Charles Ostertag, Give2Asia
Fluttering and curling between the winds of China and India, the flag of Nepal flies as the only non-rectangular national flag on earth. The amalgam of two pennants from the previous ruling Rana dynasty, the flag's jutting edges and celestial figures aptly mirror a weather-pleated, atmospheric land rising from the monsoon-prone southern plains to the rearing walls of stone in the north. Since its inception in 1962, however, the Nepalese flag has bared witness to profound social change: the June 2001 tragedy within the royal palace left Nepal without a king or queen; a decade-long civil war resulting in over 14,000 casualties; and last year the newly elected Constituent Assembly voted to end the 240-year-old monarchy. Even though this flag now stands for a recently formed nation (Nepal was officially declared a democratic federal republic in May 2008 and the first president was elected in July 2008), it has not been without cost. Today, Nepal depends heavily on foreign aid, possesses the second-highest unemployment rate in Asia at 42% after Timor-L’Este (from 2004 estimates), and remains one of the poorest, least developed countries in the world.
With one third of Give2Asia grants in Nepal being made in the area of women’s empowerment, we have chosen to highlight three of the many excellent organizations we work with—Empowering Women of Nepal(EWN), Himalayan Healers and The Asia Foundation —all focusing on improving the quality of life, social status and opportunities for women. The missions of EWN, Himalayan Healers and The Asia Foundation are imperative. According to 2001 estimates, only 34.9% of Nepalese women can read and write, while statistics from the Asian Development Bank point to poverty and lack of job opportunities as the driving factors causing women to resort to commercial sex work.
Continue reading "Development at Altitude: Women’s Empowerment in Nepal" »
By Birger Stamperdahl, Give2Asia
We at Give2Asia were stunned by the Mumbai attacks at the end of November. Taking place within the communities we support, these attacks are a reminder of the hard work that still must be done to promote prosperity and peace. It also highlights how quickly local problems can become global problems. To truly solve a problem such as the threat of terrorism in North America and Europe, we must think about the problem globally and in regions like South Asia.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, in an address to the United Nations in November 2007, talked about the causes of terrorism, and listed (1) prolonged unresolved conflicts and (2) social/economic marginalization as two of the key conditions that lead to this kind of violence. These are issues that global philanthropy is working to solve, and it may be cathartic, following the Mumbai attacks, to consider some groups that are doing work in Asia to support peace and prosperity.
We are highlighting groups in four countries where violence and poverty have put families at risk. The following projects take place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, in places where the communities benefit from education and vocational training programs. These programs build understanding between groups and help to aid in personal recovery following periods of conflict.
(Above image courtesy of Reuters)
Continue reading "Mumbai Attacks Reinforce Need to Solve Terror's Root Causes" »
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