The Affero Blog
You Are An Influencer
By Marc Krejci in News
What makes an influencer? This short documentary explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment. The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.
While much of the video is focused on pop-culture influence, there was a quote in this video clip that I thought was particularly relevant to us:
“It’s not about one individual. It’s about a brand embracing a culture.”
As an organization, we embrace your influence. You, the individual as a part of this community, is empowering and driving the Affero movement forward. You are the change maker. We embrace the culture we are all creating together as part of this organization. So speak up. Speak out. Make an impact on your peers. Share what you’re learning. And together we can all help end global poverty and injustice worldwide!
What better way could there be to use your influence?
Announcing October’s Winner
By Lucas Parry in News
Dear Affero Members,
Another month has passed and we’re excited to announce the winner for October! Blood:Water Mission has taken the month by storm and we’ll be sending them $762 to help towards supporting 3 HIV/AIDS clinics. Last year 17,580 people were tested for HIV and treated with over 22,000 people served through the clinics, impacting families, communities and changing lives. This year will see even more people helped and treated!
So a HUGE thank you goes out to YOU for contributing and helping us change the lives of over 20,000 people this month. Visit Blood:Water Mission’s page on our website http://afferoproject.com/organizations/bloodwater-mission/ to learn more about the clinics were supporting.
Remember, its not one person doing something great that will change the world. Its many people doing small things with great love.
Changing lives together!
Lucas Parry
Global Justice Links From This Week
By Marc Krejci in News
- Microfinance + Property Rights
Microfinance institutions have been hailed for the trusting relationships they have forged with the poor across the world. How can these networks be utilized? Some believe they could serve as an important tool in helping the poor understand their property rights, and access secure land title. Abby Callard reports.
Global Justice Links From This Week
By Marc Krejci in News
- Kraft uses social media to tackle hunger
Major brands have a long history of promoting social causes, such as Method’s partnership with Goodwill to facilitate clothing donations. Kraft, however, recently launched an effort that taps multiple brands and multiple social media to involve consumers in fighting hunger.
ECHO WINS SEPTEMBER!
By Lucas Parry in News
Dear Affero members,
We’ve come to the end of September and we’re excited to announce that ECHO has taken first place. We’ll be sending them $770 this week!
ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) works in 180 countries fighting world hunger through agricultural training finding sustainable farming solutions for families growing food under difficult conditions.
Malnutrition is the largest single contributor to disease and over 1 billion people were undernourished in 2009. Our donation this month will provide scholarships to development workers from Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Uganda and other countries who otherwise could not afford to attend the ECHO national symposium to be held in Tanzania, 2011. These national workers would not otherwise have access to the life-saving information and networking that can help them better serve the poor that they are working among.
Entire communities benefit when health, nutrition and agriculture are improved, therefore it’s hard to measure the scope of impact our donations will bring through this one opportunity to ‘train the trainers’. THANK YOU for your gifts this month and another HUGE THANK YOU for voting for ECHO. We’re proud to support such a wonderful organization!
For more information on Echo visit their website at www.echonet.org.
Together we’re impacting the world!
Lucas Parry
Announcing “Race The Trace”
By Marc Krejci in News
Ever since beginning my journey to become an ultrarunner, I have always wanted to raise awareness and support for a cause I passionately believed in. Running can be an extremely isolated sport, but when you focus beyond yourself to support a worthy cause, that accomplishment suddenly becomes greater than any one individual could have ever accomplished alone.
There are a ton of great organizations out there to raise money for, but I’ve never come across anything that I care deeply about in order to rally behind with all of my heart, soul and mind. That is, until now…
Today, I’m extremely excited to announce a venture we’re calling “Race The Trace“, an attempt to be the first person(s) in recorded history to run the entire 444 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway to raise support and awareness for the Affero Project.
Clean Water and Sanitation as a Business
By Rob Harvey in Articles,News
What if your next cup of water was going to make you or your children sick? Imagine being scared of your own bathroom or being forced to go outside to relieve yourself. What would it be like to walk past broken pumps and overfilled latrines every day of your life?
Nearly 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion do not have improved sanitation. The healthy and economic impacts are staggering. Around the world, dirty and diseased water leads to a cycle of sickness and poverty. Without safe water, communities struggle to teach their children, grow food, and earn a living. They can’t develop. Hope remains elusive. You can help change that by supporting programs run by organizations like Lifewater International or The Water Project. When a materially poor community or school receives a new water project, women no longer spend hours searching for a source of water. Children, especially girls, return to school. Water-borne illnesses are reduced. Hope is restored.
As our very own Barak recently posted, the United Nations declares water to be essential for full enjoyment of of life and all human rights. Yet governments struggle around the world to provide clean water and basic sanitation. There is a growing crisis. Who will help the majority world develop solutions these challenges?
This week I was talking with Mike Schneider, of GiveToWater.org. He was recapping these stats:
880 million people lack access to Clean Water. 5,000 children die every day from water related illness. 5.5 billion adult productive days are lost every year due to diarrheal diseases. 40 billion hours are lost every year due to time spent fetching water in sub-Saharan Africa. $15 – $20 can provide clean water for one person for at least 20 years.
More than 50,000 rural water points in Africa (36% of the total) are non-functional. In Sierra Leone the figure is 65% (UNICEF). A safe water source alone typically reduces water born disease by only about 25% or less (WHO). Even a short period of breakdown for a well can eliminate annual health benefits. The estimated cost of universal access to clean water is $42 billion – the estimated cost of repairing existing infrastructure is $350 billion. So the problem isn’t going to go away (WHO). In some countries 40% or more of government water and sanitation budgets are not spent – there are local resources lying unused (Wateraid).
Barak points us to pioneering work that creatively addresses the need to move beyond welfare and charity and towards true community development that fosters fully functional and enduring work. Water for People utilizes the power of the free market to address the world’s sanitation crisis. The key to sanitation as a business is to make ongoing sanitation services the goal, rather than the installation of the latrine. When sanitation services are profitable and businesses see everyone without a latrine as a potential customer, businesses—rather than development organizations—will expand latrine coverage to increase their profit margin. Thus many more people will have access to toilets than they would with typical programming.
Digging wells is the easy part. We know that solutions must last to make a long-term difference. We at The Affero Project celebrate the courageous organizations working with the enterprising poor and empowering local capacity to extend access to safe water, improved sanitation, hygiene education and the skills needed to pass these resources to future generations.
Global Justice Links From This Week
By Marc Krejci in News
- Why the U.S. Should Send Troops (and Spooks) to the Congo
They arrive in the night like monsters. In northeastern Congo, in a swath of thick forest the size of some European countries, the apocalyptic Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group is a constant, foreboding presence. The LRA’s fighters — many of them kidnapped teens — murder, abduct, rape and pillage while constantly eluding a half-heartedly pursuing Congolese army.
- Jacqueline Novogratz on the Pakistan floods and our shared humanity
Founder of Acumen Fund Jacqueline Novogratz recently visited Pakistan (along with TED Curator Chris Anderson) to offer what help she could and work with local friends on their relief efforts. On returning to New York, she gave a short talk at TED HQ and shared the stories of the Pakistani people she met along with a profoundly touching video created using her photographs against the music of Peter Gabriel.
- Seeding Progress in Developing Countries
Thirty years ago, if you asked development experts how to move people out of poverty, they would tell you, “Invest in agriculture.” Today, if you asked development experts how to move people out of poverty, they would tell you, “Invest in agriculture.” The problem, according to Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, who spoke at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, is we haven’t done it to the extent that we should have. And, he says, USAID is as guilty as anyone. As a result, many African countries are falling behind, food inflation has been hitting developing countries in extreme ways, and more people are sliding back into poverty.
Want to WIN a FREE pair on TOMS SHOES?
By Lucas Parry in News
Is easy and I’ll tell you how.
We’re calling it the 12×12 Campaign
Over 12 Days, Tell 12 People, To Help Us Give Away $1200 A Month
The Affero project (being the coolest non-profit in the world), is giving away TWO pairs of custom Affero Toms Shoes! One of a kind…. you can’t get anywhere else in the world.
At the end of this month we have a goal to be giving away $1200 a month. As of today we’re currently giving $770 to the categories YOU vote on. We have over 100 people giving every month, our largest donor gives $100 and our smallest $1. It’s something we ALL can do… and we don’t just support one organization, but 12!! :)
So we need you help to increase our monthly giving to $1200 :)
To enter the running to win these shoes you can do one, two or all three of these:
1) Sign up for and become a donor/voting member of Affero – HERE
2) Update your facebook/twitter status and link back to the Affero website or include the “@afferoproject” in the message or by using the hashtag “#12×12″ in your message
3) Forward this email with a personal message to 12 of your friends http://bit.ly/Affero12x12 (click here)
Thanks for helping is spread the word. Together we’re bringing change to communities all around the world!
Grandmum Adopts Child Soldiers – You Can Help
By Rob Harvey in News
Mary and I are looking forward to participating this week in the Nashville Benefit Dinner for International Justice Mission this week. Gary Haugen and his team at International Justice Mission serve as a human rights agency rescuing victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals perform rescue missions and provide aftercare to victims. They courageously prosecute perpetrators and promote functioning public justice systems around the world.
As I shared in a previous post, human trafficking is one form of modern day slavery. Affero aims to be a part of the modern day abolishment movement. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. We can stop it. We are working to bring it to an end.
But what about the child soldier? After 9/11 I remember reading an article in TIME about Mukhtar, an infrantryman in Afghanistan’s rebel army. He could shoot a man in a beard from a standing position at 200 meters or point out camouflaged Taliban bunkers through miles of dust. His platoon leader said the green-eyed soldier was perhaps the finest he commanded. Mukhtar took the compliment with a shrug of his skinny shoulders. “I have been in the army a long time,” he said. “So I should be good at my job.” At the time, Muktar was a four-year veteran of Afghanistan’s desert war. But he was only 15 years old.
The military use of children is widespread. There are international laws and dedicated organizations like Project: AK-47 committed to liberate child soldiers. The truth is many of the world’s youth have never known peace. Some kids are taken from their homes and forced to fight. Others join the war because there is little else to do and to keep their bellies filled. In countries with limited electricity or running water and few roads, many boys must forgo school to make money any way they can, even following cows with upturned palms to catch excrement to sell as fuel. Joining the army guarantees free food, clothes and cigarettes plus the chance to swagger. “When you fight for your people, you become a man,” says Shukrullah, 12, who strolls the mountainous streets of his country with a loaded, unlocked Kalashnikov. For these youngsters, it doesn’t matter that most soldiers have not received their $25 monthly salary for three months. “This is a very good life,” says baby-faced teenager Safaullah, sitting in a trench awaiting battle. “I can eat good rice, play chess with my friends and fire many interesting weapons.”
Children in war-torn regions of the world need our help. As I shared in a previous post, Affero is committed raise friends and funding to provide education and food for the orphans. Now consider a place like Uganda. Where 20 years of civil war has decimated it’s population to a litte more than 30 million and a median age of 14.9 years. Who will go and serve this young nation? Who will serve these children, provide day care, schooling, medicine and food? Meet Irene Gleeson.
An Aussie like our very own Lucas, she visited Africa and was moved by what she found. In 1988 she founded Childcare Kitgum Servants and left her beachside home, her four grown children and her grandchildren. This mighty grandmum courageously towed her caravan to the war zone of Kitgum and gathered her first 50 war-traumitized children under a mango tree and began to teach and feed them.
Today, Irene and her team give full day care, schooling and much love to over 10,000 children in five schools. They have established medical and malnourished feeding clinics and a AIDS hospice and infant orphanage.
Around the world, children are singled out for recruitment by both armed forces and armed opposition groups, and exploited as combatants. Easily manipulated, children are sometimes coerced to commit grave atrocities, including rape and murder of civilians using assault rifles such as AK-47s and G4s. Some are forced to injure or kill members of their own families or other child soldiers. Others serve as porters, cooks, guards, messengers, spies, and sex slaves.
But by sharing this post and joining the movement, you are changing all this. You are partnering with Irene and other champions working day in and day out as teachers, nurses, builders, drivers, counselors and cooks.
Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflicts around the world, and hundreds of thousands more are members of armed forces who could be sent into combat at any time.
Ordinary people can stop this. Your support is life changing for these kids. Thank you.