Charity & Volunteering 01 (Jun 08 - Mar 11)

[winston]

Grocer gives $20 million for schools
Money to foster Catholic education in Massachusetts
msnbc.com
updated 2:29 p.m. ET March 16, 2010

BOSTON - An 80-year-old grocery magnate is donating $30 million to a Boston College center established to revitalize Catholic grade school education.

Patrick Roche, 80, co-founder of the Roche Brothers supermarket chain in Massachusetts, credits a parochial school in Roslindale with helping his family when his mother died. He told The Boston Globe that Catholic schools need support at a time when the Archdiocese of Boston has been closing several small parish schools.

“It hurts, really, to think of what’s going on with the financial trouble,’’ Roche, who is giving the gift along with his wife, Barbara, told the Globe in a telephone interview from Florida on Sunday. “We never had those problems when I was a kid. We want to see if we can correct those problems now, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to try.’’

The gift will be used to help train Catholic school teachers and administrators, and to develop curriculum, said the Rev. William P. Leahy, president of Boston College.

“I think people realize how important education is, they know Catholic schools have been doing such great work, and they know these schools are under pressure financially,’’ Leahy said.

Roche and his brother Bud started the first Roche Brothers grocery shop in Roslindale in 1952 and later expanded the chain to 18 stores across eastern Massachusetts.

Roche credited his parochial school with helping his family when his mother died, leaving his father to raise four sons, ages 6 to 12. Roche, who was 9 at the time, remembers his parish and school embracing him and his brothers as family would.

“Everybody at the school was just fantastic,’’ he told the Globe. “All our friends and neighbors went to the school, and they just became closer to us.’’

Attending Mass so often, he added, “kept you closer to God, I’d say.’’

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35895453/ns/us_news-giving/

[kennynah]

U r alone having a teh tarik at your neighbourhood kopitiam on a quiet afternoon, reading... Then came along an old auntie. With her hand extended to u clutching on to 3 packets of tissue, she says "tolong, help me buy tissue"

before, we attempt to positively answer this question, which undoubtedly almost all will confess to buying... Let's ask ourselves secretly "how often do we do so?"... This one, no need to answer outloud here in this forum...

of cos, some of them lack communications skill (read impolite) but almost all of them shd be sitting comfortably at home watching tv instead of peddling.. but they do, which must imply the need to...

[winston]

I read a lot of shocking information every day but I can't remember when a statistic surprised me as much as this one:

More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war.

That statement is shocking, but the actual numbers are truly overwhelming. More than 3.5 million people die each year from preventable water-related diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery.

And this is the worst: That total includes about 4,000 children under the age of five who die every day.

Every day.

That means that every two months, the loss of young children alone equals the total death toll from the earthquake in Haiti.

I don't know about you, but I had no idea that a crisis this enormous existed.

This morning I happened across an article about World Water Day, which came and went on March 22 without much fanfare. (Yet, I'm sure if Tiger were thirsty one morning, we would have heard about it in painstaking detail.)

Every year for 17 years the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development has sponsored this awareness day to draw attention to what amounts to a permanent international emergency.

The article had no information about how to help, but after searching a bit I found an aid organization called "charity: water."

According to the website, charitywater.org, 100 percent of donations directly fund freshwater projects in developing nations. This is made possible by private donors who take care of all administrative costs. And if you like, you can direct a donation specifically to Haitian relief efforts. Needless to say, the fresh water situation there is dire.

So...a no-brainer? I guess that would be each individual's call. But the website calculates that just $20 provides one person with safe drinking water for 20 years.

That's a rock solid return on investment.


Source: HSI

[winston]

Giving Back to the World by Jeremy Gislason

Are you grateful for everything you have?

Consider this, whether you have a million dollars in the bank or a hundred – if you have a roof over your head, food on your table and the comfort of friends and family, you’re rich.

Millions around the world live a bare bones existence and the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness takes a backseat to survival. If you have a roof over your head, you have food in your stomach, and you probably have at least one car, a bank account, and an abundance of creature comforts then by global standards, you’re rich.

Take a minute to look around you, wherever you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading this from the comfort of your couch, if you’re sitting at a table in a coffee shop, if you’re sitting in your car, on your treadmill or exercise bike, or if you’re enjoying the sunshine and reading this outside. Take a look around you and make a mental note of all you have. We’re not just talking about the material items either. Friends, family, mentors, and pets are all blessings.

What about you? You have a wealth of strengths, skills, knowledge, and experience too.


What Are You Doing With All Of Your Wealth?

Gratitude has the power to bring more abundance into our lives. We know this to be true and by simply expressing gratitude daily, in every moment of your life, you will understand it to be true too.

In addition to attracting more of what we’re grateful for, like wealth, love, and good health, gratitude also invites compassion into our lives. There are so many people in this world who suffer, who struggle and who do not have the wealth and abundance you have right now, today. It’s important to point out that this is an opportunity for you. Giving back benefits you in a number of ways.

When you give back, you feel better about yourself, your accomplishments and your wealth – you feel grateful.

When you give back, you learn about yourself and about others – this is a valuable opportunity.

When you give back, you make valuable connections with people who have the power to change your life in any number of amazing ways.

When you give back, you gain both spiritually and monetarily. It’s the law of attraction – which states you attract what you focus on. The Law of Attraction says: That which is like unto itself, is drawn.

When you possess gratitude, compassion, and generosity of mind, money and spirit, you attract those things back to you – all which make you richer, smarter, and surrounded by life, love and happiness.

Consider for just a moment the amazing contributions of:

Bill Gates and his foundation which partners with companies around the world to improve health and education.

Oprah Winfrey and her angel network which works on global and local networks to improve the lives of others.

And Kelly a small business owner who regularly motivates her social networking followers to generate thousands of dollars to families in need by donating her time and services in exchange for monetary donations from others.

You, no matter what level you’re at or what goals you are striving for, have the mind-blowing opportunity to improve the lives of others, including your own, in a number of ways.

1. You have the power to change the world, to better the world.

2. By embracing and acting on your power, you will gain abundance both materially and spiritually.

“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” - Winston Churchill


How Can You Give Back?

There are a number of ways you can give back to the world.

#1 Volunteer. Volunteer your time, skills and expertise. Volunteering offers a number of benefits:

You Become Part Of A Community. Volunteering has a meaningful, positive impact on your community. We depend on each other for personal and professional survival and when you’re part of a community, your personal and your professional life prosper. Volunteering helps, you build and sustain your community, which in turn will give back to you. It’s a win-win situation.

Broaden Your Repertoire. People volunteer to contribute their skills and knowledge however it’s practically guaranteed that you’ll walk away with more knowledge and skills than you had beforehand. Volunteering is the perfect vehicle to discover something you are good at and develop a new skill.

A Sense Of Accomplishment. There’s little else in life that offers the same level of satisfaction like watching your hard earned efforts benefit someone in need.
Volunteering also offers you:

New interests
New Experiences
New People
Authenticity and credibility in your industry

#2 Donate funds. What’s your favorite cause or charity - something that’s important to you, your family or your friends? Perhaps it is the American Cancer Society, the Humane Society, or the Nature Conservancy. These organizations thrive on two things: Volunteers and Donations.

If you have causes, passions and charities which are near and dear to your heart, it’s important to do what you can to keep them in the black, financially solvent, and able to continue to provide their services.

#3 Use your business to tap into the needs of your prospects, community, customers, and associates. One of the truly wonderful aspects about being a business owner is the amazing power you have to give back. As a business owner, you have a rolodex jam-packed with contacts. This includes your lead list but it also includes your associates, vendors, partners, and always your friends, family and community members. You are a veritable Paul Revere – and one word from you has tremendous power, power to change the world and have a positive effect on the lives of others.

#4 Mentor. Mentoring is an exceptional way to share your knowledge and experience with others and give back to the world.

Mentoring is when you meet with someone one-on-one and help them learn and grow. A mentee can be a child or young adult struggling with choices, a professional who is interested in growing their career, or a person interested in starting a business similar to yours. A mentor/mentee relationship is essentially, however you define it.

The Next Step

If history and experience have taught us anything it’s that the more you give, the more you receive. When you take the time to give back to the world with the intention of improving the lives of others, the essential result is that you end up receiving so much more than you can possibly imagine. Give it a try. You’ll be amazed what happens in your life.


http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/givi ... _the_world

[kennynah]

Are you grateful for everything you have?

never a day passes that i am not grateful for all the goodness ...

[winston]

The Source of Rockefeller's Wealth by Debra Gordy, MS MRET

I recently read an article in the alumni magazine from my alma mater, entitled, "Why Giving Matters". The author told a striking story about the industrialist, John D. Rockefeller, who stated, " 'God gave me my money' ".

While some may misinterpret this statement, Rockefeller firmly believed that “‘the power to make money is a gift from God . . . to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind'. He truly believed that he made money because he was charged with helping others, and that if he stopped giving his money in the right way, then God would take his money away."

In the economic times in which we live, this is powerful food for thought.

Reading this article gave me pause to consider ~ how am I investing my money in helping others, in contributing to the upliftment and blessing of others' lives? How am I contributing to alleviate suffering in the world?

A dear friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Barbara Stone, is doing something awesome with hers. She and her partner are volunteering their time, talents, resources and loving hearts to go to Rwanda with The Grace Process International, to provide practical resources and powerful healing for the children left orphaned when their parents died in the genocide that wiped out 20% of the Rwandan population in 100 days.

These children lived through unimaginable horror, and now have few adults to care for and teach them, and yet they are demonstrating the amazing capacity of the human heart for forgiveness, kindness and reconciliation, through the relief work of friends and agencies like Barbara and the Grace Process.

Please visit www.createglobalhealing.org. to learn more.

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/the_ ... ealth.html

[winston]

Tent City closes as homeless go to hotel

CAMDEN, N.J. - A tent city built by the homeless next to a highway exit was disbanded abruptly Thursday as quick-moving and well-off benefactors took some 50 residents off in a bus with a promise of free housing and other services for a year.

The first stop was pampering. The people who lived in the encampment in Camden, one of the nation's poorest cities, were getting a night's stay at an upscale hotel in suburban Mount Laurel. They were getting a dip in a pool, manicures, fresh clothes and a new start.

The last day of Tent City, also known as Transitional Park, came three weeks after a deadline to close the place came and went.

Many of the residents — some had lived there for as long as three years — wanted to live under roofs, but they didn't want to be shoved around by government. The county government and a cadre of social service agencies, meanwhile, could not find them all places to live by the April 15 deadline.

Change came quickly
But then, change came quickly.

It began last week when Amir Khan's son showed him some video shot at the self-governing settlement, hidden on public land between train tracks and a highway exit.

Khan is the son of a doctor who worked for decades in Camden. He's also a wealthy entrepreneur, currently president of NextGen Wireless, pastor of a church in Camden's suburbs, and the founder of The Nehemiah Group, a nonprofit devoted to helping prisoners reintegrate into society.

Khan said he couldn't sleep for days after he saw the conditions in a place so close to home. "We said, 'How dare we live in the lap of luxury and have this in our backyard,'" he said.

While the people who stayed in Tent City were proud of how they built a sense of community, shared their meals and lived by a set of rules they've posted on boards nailed to a tree, the place had troubles. No running water. No bathroom. The fire extinguishers attached to some trees are an inadequate defense against open fires. In summers past, the population has surged to about 100.

On Sunday, members of his Khan's congregation, the Solid Rock Worship Center in Lindenwold, pledged $25,000 to help. The next day, he visited the encampment for the first time. Its founder and acknowledged mayor, Lorenzo "Jamaica" Banks, said his people would leave if they knew they could have free housing for a year.

By Thursday, Khan and his group had worked out the details.

They'd raise at least $250,000. After the night in the hotel, the homeless would move to a Nehemiah Center facility in Bridgeton, where they could stay for 21 days and have their needs assessed. Couples would have to live separately.

After that, they would occupy several rented homes and condominiums in and around Camden.

Some residents skeptical

The social service agencies that assisted them in Tent City would keep helping. So would job training and drug treatment programs.

Even as they knocked down their tents and sorted out their possessions Thursday, residents were skeptical.

In the morning, 31-year-old Jason Strom worried about the next 48 hours.

For Strom, a heroin addict for half his life, and others with drug problems, medical detoxification was to begin Saturday.

With no access to drugs, he was worried that people were going to be sick during the hotel stay.

And as others shuffled onto a tour bus at midday, he and wife, Jessica Kron, still hadn't managed to sift through everything they kept in the tent that has been home for the past year or so.

"If I came to their home and said, 'Pack up and come with me,' how would they feel?" he asked.

Before he got on the bus with his laptop computer, James Boggs, one of the top officials in Tent City's governing structure, seemed amazed that the help he always wanted to line up had arrived. And he wondered whether it was real.

"Where the hell were they before?" he asked. "Is this a backdoor way to get us to leave because they couldn't do it any other way?"

But Hal Miller, a homeless outreach coordinator for Volunteers of America of the Delaware Valley, said all of the residents had agreed to join The Nehemiah Group's rescue effort.

Volunteers assist moving effort
So residents and volunteers spent the morning carting away their possessions in wheelbarrows, shopping carts and wheelchairs.

Tom Lind, a doctor who often brought his family with him to hand out sandwiches and medical equipment for diabetics, took the rules off a tree. They were destined for the walls of his living room in Sewell.

Robins found a fresh source of food as they poked in the flattened mud where tents had sat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37001384/ns/us_news-giving/

[winston]

Jobless woman finds generosity on the streets By Jim Spellman, CNN

Denver, Colorado (CNN) -- When Shay Kelley lost her marketing job she got worried. When she lost her home and her car she got mad.

"I went off into the woods and I started yelling at God," she says. "I didn't know why God would lead me up to this point in my life just to have me left with nothing."

"I was like, 'Just tell me what my purpose is, tell me why I'm here and if you'll just tell me I'll work harder than for anything I have ever worked for anything else in my entire life.' "

Within weeks she had her answer: Travel to all 50 states in 50 weeks. Collect canned goods for charities along the way and take a ton of pictures. She has dubbed it Project 50/50.

She stayed with friends while she waited tables and got together enough money to buy "Bubba," her 1984 Ford pickup truck. She packed her camera, which she calls "Roxy," and her dog, Zu Zu, and hit the road.

She began on New Year's Day in South Carolina, randomly going door to door to collect canned goods.

"I set a goal of 200 cans a week, which doesn't sound like a lot, but the premise is [that] doing a little bit adds up to a lot," Kelley says. "After a year, [that's] 10,000 canned food items."

She began to meet homeless people as she dropped off the canned goods, and she says they have surprised her with their generosity.

She met Donald, a retired Navy sailor, at a library in South Carolina.

"He invited me to go to lunch to buy me a hot meal because I had been eating PowerBars for three days," Kelley says. "I found out after he left -- after he paid the tab and paid my meter -- that Donald was homeless, that he was actually living in the shelter."

"That was the first week when I learned the people with the least tend to give the most."

Donald was one of the first people she photographed. She posts her pictures on her website and Facebook page as she goes. She has more than 1,000 Facebook fans following her travels.

One of those Facebook followers is Laurie Holleman Sherrod, who contacted Kelley with an unusual request:

She asked Kelley if she could find her son, Trey. The last time she heard, he was living on the streets in Santa Cruz, California.

"I thought that's crazy, how do you find one homeless person in an entire city?" Kelley recalled.

But she agreed to try and sure enough a few weeks later she happened upon a nice young man on the streets of Santa Cruz.

"And then here I am sitting around the table with Trey shooting a video for his mother who lives in South Carolina."

As with everything that has happened to her so far, she credits her faith with guiding her.

"It is so important to me that God remains in the forefront of my life," she says. "He leads me. He tells me to go right or go left. I can't really explain that to people, but I don't do anything, God does it all. I'm just standing here."

Through her photos she captures people down on their luck, but not ready to give up. She says it has made her own uncertain future easier to deal with.

"I just hope that people who are in really rough situations will realize that God didn't forget about them. God is just trying to prepare them for something even bigger, even greater and even more blessed than they can even imagine."

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/05/0 ... index.html

[winston]

Millions face hunger in arid belt of Africa


JON GAMBRELL
AP Features

May 28, 2010 20:15 EDT

At this time of year, the Gadabeji Reserve should be refuge for the nomadic tribes who travel across a moonscape on the edge of the Sahara to graze their cattle. But the grass is meager after a drought killed off the last year's crops. Now the cattle are too weak to stand and too skinny to sell, leaving the poor without any way to buy grain to feed their families.

The threat of famine is again stalking the Sahel, a band of semiarid land stretching across Africa south of the Sahara. The U.N. World Food Program warned on Friday that some 10 million people face hunger over the next three months before the next harvest in September — if it comes.

"People have lost crops, livestock, and the ability to cope on their own, and the levels of malnutrition among women and children have already risen to very high levels," said Thomas Yanga, WFP Regional Director for West Africa.

The U.N.'s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said at the end of a four-day visit to neighboring Chad that many Chadians have gone as far as Libya to search for food.

"The level of malnutrition is already beyond the danger point," Holmes said Thursday. "If we do not act now or as quickly as possible, there is a chance the food crisis will become a disaster."

In Niger, some say the growing food crisis could be worse than the one that struck the country in 2005, when aid organizations treated tens of thousands of children for malnutrition.

"We have lost so much we cannot count," said one 45-year-old tribesman with a family of 20 to feed. He and others on Gadabeji Reserve drive starving donkeys through the burnt orange haze of a sandstorm to gather what little water they can on the desiccated plain and struggle to draw water from private wells.

Famine is nothing new to Niger, a former French colony nearly twice the size of Texas. The Sahel cuts through the middle of the country, serving as the dividing line between the sands of the Sahara and the lush farmlands of neighboring Nigeria to the south. Severe droughts have punctuated the region's history for centuries.

Yet outside of uranium mining, agriculture serves as the sole economic engine for a country where just more than a quarter of the population knows how to read. Generation after generation follows worn seasonal tracks, their belongings often fitted onto a single donkey-driven pallet.

Typically, the herders move south at the onset of December, searching for grazing lands. But this year they found only dried lakes and diminishing wells, said Hasane Baka, a regional administrator for AREN, a Nigerien development group for cattlemen.

"People were moving in all directions," Baka said.

Some have crossed into Nigeria, begging for food on the streets of the northern city of Katsina. Others remain behind with their cattle, knowing the livestock would die on a long trip south that could end with Nigerian police simply turning them back. Instead, they wait for rains that might not come.

Those who remain drive their cows into Dakoro, the largest and closest city for nomadic cattlemen. At the open-air market, the ribs of some cattle are starkly visible against their hides. Others die along the road or in trucks on the way.

"You can see the skin and bones of much of them," said trader Ibrahim Tarbanassa, 68.

A single cow once sold for the equivalent of $200. Now, some go for as little as $120 — if they sell at all. Food prices remain high after speculators cornered the already poor harvest last year.

Even in better times, roughly half of Niger's children suffered stunted growth. Now, mothers walk their children as far as 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to reach one of two aid stations operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said Barbara Maccagno, the agency's medical coordinator in Niger. The two stations now see about 1,000 children a week, some two or three times underweight, Maccagno said. The number of admissions has doubled in recent weeks.

"It's very hot and without any food available to the family, we're afraid we'll see more," she said.

Maccagno said her agency could offer children meals of vitamin-enriched powdered milks and other foods to help bring a child's weight up, but many children need up to five weeks to gain a stable weight. During that time, the mother must stay with the child, impossible for those who left other children behind, she said.

Other agencies like Oxfam hand out cereals and grains directly to nomadic families living in the bush, but money for such aid is short because of the global economic downturn. The WFP said it has a $96 million shortfall for a program it planned for 1.5 million people in the worst-hit areas of Niger.

Niger's government, now being run by a military council after a February coup ousted President Mamadou Tandja, has said it will provide more than 21,000 tons of food. In 2005, Tandja played down a similar food crisis, dismissing it as "false propaganda" used by the U.N., aid agencies and opposition parties for political and economic gain.

Each drought and crisis ends up gaining its own name. In 2005, traders and nomads began to refer to the crisis as the Tandja famine.

There's no name yet for the drought now facing the country. Many can only wait in a nation that faces cyclical hunger without an end in sight.

"Every time, it's the same situation," Maccagno said.

___

Associated Press writer Dany Padire in N'Djamena, Chad, contributed to this report.

___

Online:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/

http://www.msf.org/

Source: AP Features

[millionairemind]

Almost every Sat is a "flag sale" day in Singapore. That's when different charity groups try to raise funds by getting school going teenagers to go around with their metal cans and stickers asking passerby to donate to the cause.

A typical donation is a (edited to include) 20ct coin, a $1 coin or a $2 note.

I have observed that you can tell alot about a kid by the way he handles this kind of CIP work (community involvement projects).

95% of the kids would just stand there with their collection cans and talk among themselves..

And then there is this 5% of the pupils who would be very enthusiastic about it, approaching you and smiling while they ask you for a donation.

I always donate to those that come up to me.

My take is that this 5% represents the work force in Singapore...the group that climbs corporate ladders, is enthusiastic about their work and proactively carry them out....

Just some lazing musings on a Sat afternoon.