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Mon. 07-06-09
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For the past four years, Wookiefoot and the Harmony Park Community began fund raising for international relief and sustainable development causes. Our community rallied to the call, and we have already rasied over $137,000. Most of the funds are generated through our 100% charity fund raising festival, PROJECT EARTH.
The mission of WookieFoot Charities is two fold: to raise money through music and celebration, and to activate our community by raising awareness. From the vibration we collectively create here, there is a ripple that travels far beyond our shores. We would like you to understand more about the effect of that ripple. On this wensite you will find information on who we are donating to, how funds are raised and distributed, and why we are doing this. Thank you to all of you for being a part of this. Your hard work and generosity enables all of this to happen! We hope to see it grow not just in the resources it provides for those in need, but also the education and awareness for people here in our country as well. Thank you to everyone for volunteering their time, talent, energy, and donations to enable this magic to come to life.
In the last few winters, we've gone on missions across Nepal, India, South America, and Southeast Asia to find smaller non-profits where we could see their positive effects first hand. We met many visionaries who were strongly affecting change at the community level, with responsibility and sustainability. We are currently funding a de-landmining program and amputee orphanage in Cambodia, an organic farm whose proceeds go to building libraries in Laos, an elephant refuge in northern Thailand, and a fair trade, anti-child labor, school building project in Nepal. To learn more of our travels abroad or of Aimee and Megan's volunteer experiences, please click here.
To learn more about our fund raising festival, please visit our PROJECT EARTH website.
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NEED MAGAZINE
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This year we have had the good fortune of partnering up with NEED MAGAZINE (coolest magazine in the world!). Through their tireless efforts to support and promote humanitarian and social justice causes, they have introduced us to several new amazing organizations who we now sponsor.
NEED magazine is an educational artistic hope-filled publication focusing on life changing humanitarian efforts at home and abroad.
“We are not out to save the world but to tell the stories of those who are.”
w w w . n e e d m a g a z i n e . c o m
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NEW ORGANIZATIONS WE ARE SPONSORING
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The Nurani Insani School for street children — Jakarta, Indonesia
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The streets of Jakarta, Indonesia are home to tens of thousands of children. Without education or families who can take care of them, these children beg for money from commuters in the city’s crowded streets. Some who live in slums with their families must earn enough money begging to help feed their parents and siblings. Achmad Dedi Rosadi, a university student, decided to do something for street children. The small school started by one man now has a full teaching staff and over 200 students. The school provides primary and secondary education, food and medical care.
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Rabondo Community Project — Rabondo, Kenya
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Timon Bondo, an elderly blind man, is an unlikely superhero. He left his home in Kenya in the 1960s searching for the education that he could not get in his home country. After many years he ended up the United States and received a degree from the University of Minnesota. In 1996, he visited his home village of Rabondo and was overwhelmed. The people were impoverished, starving, uneducated and many were sick and dying of AIDS. “I knew I had to do something to help. I felt a responsibility that I could not run away from,” Bondo explains. But what could he, an aging man with failing eyesight who lives nearly 8,000 miles away, do for this village? Bondo went home and founded the Rabondo Community Project USA, a nonprofit which provides education and community projects for the Rabondo village. More than ten years later, Bondo is almost completely blind but continues to fundraise tirelessly. Through his efforts, The Rabondo Project has produced a primary and secondary school with enrollment of more than 1,200 children, most of them orphans. Clean water, job creation and a school feeding program have all enriched lives in Rabondo.
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Peace Rehabilitation Center — Kathmandu, Nepal
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Peace Rehabilitation Center — Kathmandu, Nepal In rural Nepal, where jobs are scarce and poverty is entrenched, many girls unwittingly fall into human trafficking. Girls who want to escape forced labor or the sex trade often have no way out. Peace Rehabilitation Center cares for trafficked girls and works to prevent trafficking. Formerly trafficked girls who live at its three homes become family to each other, healing from the mistrust they developed while trafficked. Girls who had contracted HIV and other infections in the sex industry learn about hygiene to live safely with their conditions. PRC also operates border patrol stations to rescue girls who are taken across the border and educates villagers about traffickers’ tactics in order to prevent trafficking.
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Miguel Angel Asturias Academy — Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
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Guatemala’s education system leaves out many children. Girls, indigenous Mayans, and children from poor families are particularly unlikely to attend school. Their situation is critical because these are the children who stand to benefit most from education. The Miguel Angel Asturias Academy in Quetzaltenango makes it a priority to reach them. Scholarships are given to students whose families cannot afford the tuition of $18 a month. As a private school, the Academy does not receive government funding, and is sustained by donations and tuition. Taking an innovative approach to teaching, the Academy infuses social engagement and vocational training into the curriculum. Students discuss social issues such as women’s rights and racism that indigenous students face
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PLEASE VISIT THE WEBSITES OF THE NON-PROFITS WE ARE SPONSORING
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The American Refugee Committee - World Wide
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Today, ARC works in 10 countries around the world helping victims of war and civil conflict rebuild their lives. ARC programs in Africa, the Balkans, and Asia provide health care, clean water, shelter repair, legal aid, trauma counseling, microcredit, community development services, and repatriation assistance to more than one million people, annually. ARC bases its relationship with uprooted peoples on mutual respect and a compassionate exchange of knowledge and values.
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Power to the Peaceful - Brazil (with Michael Franti & Spearhead)
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This year we partnered with Michael Franti’s non-profit organization which just began a chapter in Brazil. The favelas (or slums) of Sao Paolo and Rio are some of the most impoverished and violent in the world, with over 12 million inhabitants. This foundation raises money and funds several leading NGO’s that are helping restore hope to these forgotten people by supporting education, medicine, and opportunity.
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Casa do Zezinho - In the Favela of Sao Paolo, Brazil
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From assisting one child with a broken finger in the Favela, Tia Dag eventually opened a school for 80 children to provide music, art, food, sports, health and dental services, career skills , and employment. Over 30 years, the school has grown to provide services for over 2000 of Sao Paulo's most needy children and their families. It runs entirely on donations and love.
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The Panjea Foundation (with Chris Berry)
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We met Chris Berry when he performed at Harvestfest ‘07. There was an instant connection we all seem to be on the same mission. His foundation is dedicated to the preservation of the ancient traditions of Zimbabwe, especialy their music. They want to facilitate balanced and sustainable ways of living through appropriate technology, permiculture and medicine in order to enrich the people and land of Zimbabwe. He also is starting a cultural exchange program, so pack your backpack and let’s go!
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SOS Children's Villages
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SOS's mission is to provide children who have lost their parents or who are no longer able to live with them a loving home and a stable environment in which they can thrive. On average an SOS Children's Village has between ten and fifteen family houses. The village provides the background for an extended family community. This supplies the children with cultural roots and gives them a feeling of belonging.
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Kiva - Micro Lending Self Empowerment
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Micro Loans are a new idea that has been rapidly empowering people with limited rescourses all over the globe to lift themselves out of poverty. Kiva -- which means "unity" in Swahili -- allows individuals to make loans as small as $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Since Kiva.org was launched more than two years ago, it has brokered more than $6.5 million in collateral-free loans to more than 9,000 businesses.
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The Elephant Nature Fundation
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Founded in 2006, the Elephant Nature Foundation is a non-profit organization which advocates and acts on behalf of the rights of Asian elephants in Thailand. Our mission is to increase public awareness about the plight of the endangered Asian elephant, educate locals on the humane treatment of their elephants, and provide sanctuary for several rescued elephants at our nature park. Through education, public awareness, and preserving the elephants' habitat it is our mission to save the Asian elephant from extinction and give domesticated elephants a life worth living, free from abuse and torture.
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Hoste Hainse Schools- Nepal
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Promoting "Education for All", Hoste Hainse believes that education is the required foundation for the task of building the nation. Since its inception, Hoste Hainse has focused on supporting deprived and underprivileged children in their struggle for education.
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Cambodia Land Mine Museum Relief Fund
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The mission is to decrease land mine casualties and contribute to land mine survivor rehabilitation in Cambodia. The Land Mine Museum was founded by Aki Ra, a Cambodian ex-child soldier who has helped to clear some six thousand mines and unexploded ordinance. The Center will employ land mine educational consultants and technicians contracted to travel to mined communities in an effort to teach farmers and school children land mine safety. In addition, the new facility will provide a small dormitory and a school for child survivors of land mine causalities.
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Vangviang Organic Farm - Laos
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The profits from this farm are used to fund several community projects that support and educate the people who live in Phoudindaeng village. First, we help to teach the local farmers about the advantages of organic farming. In addition, we have led in the building of a local community center and we obtained a school bus to take the children to school each day. Our community projects have succeeded because they combine the talents and energies of foreign volunteers with the efforts of the villagers themselves.
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View the Videos below to learn more of our travels and charities...
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The Other Side of the Jar: Part III
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The Other Side of the Jar: Part II
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The Other Side of the Jar
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