A tip on how to start helping

One of the great things that is happening in America today is that more young people want to help out and make change than ever before. But the biggest thing that is standing in their way is being unsure on how to begin.

In a guest essay at Nicholas Kristof's blog On The Ground, we learn of one skill that help young people get started. Writer Rye Barcott talks about the charity he started after spending time in the Kibera slum of Kenya.

I’ve seen the effects of this first hand on the faces of college students across the country. After one presentation, a student eagerly exclaimed, “I’m a doer and I just want to do something.”

Her statement implies the question: How? How do you make an impact in an environment that is equally empowering and overwhelming?

The answer, I believe, starts with an old-fashioned skill: Listening. Listening enables trust, and trust is the foundation of positive change. We need to slow down and listen more before doing. This was a lesson I learned as the co-founder of a non-governmental organization (ngo) in one of the largest slums in Africa – Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya – and carried with me to Iraq as a Marine.

Fourteen years ago the Marines gave me an ROTC scholarship to attend college. Assuming I would be involved in peacekeeping missions, I took classes to gain a better understanding of why ethnic violence happened. I studied basic anthropology and Swahili, then travelled one summer to Kibera to conduct research. There I rented a small shack in the community and started listening to young men my age as they spoke about their lives and ambitions. It wasn’t long before that I recognized a fundamental truth about the world: talent is universal; opportunity is not.

Two Kenyans and I later co-founded Carolina For Kibera to combine more opportunity with talent by investing in local leaders. We referred to our approach as “participatory development.” It’s a concept from anthropology that acknowledges that sustainable change must be driven from within communities. It can’t be imposed from the outside. I found this to be true in Kibera, where our organization now engages more than 50,000 people a year, and also in the Marines, where we continue to wrestle with how to build local capacity during counter-insurgencies.

Changing your worldview by traveling around the world

Traveling across the world to see the plight of those in poverty can really change your perspective. People who come back often become more involved in social justice, by volunteering more, starting new charities and doing more advocacy.

From The Marietta Times, writer Kate York tells us how 20 year old Ellen Schott was changed by a trip to Nicaragua.

"I've always wanted to go abroad and do service work, but this is the first opportunity where I could without it interfering with classes or a job," Schott said. "Once I was there, I definitely saw a greater need and it made me realize everything we have here in our country."

Residents in the community of Papayal would wake up, listen to Latin music and start impromptu soccer games and be happy with those simple activities, Schott said.

But they also lived in areas with trash everywhere, sleeping under bug nets to prevent malaria and having latrines and bucket showers as bathrooms.

"They definitely live in poverty," Schott said. "They even fill the potholes there with trash because they have nowhere to put it."

The homes Schott and her friends built, along with masons from the organization Bridges to Communities, will help, but they're far smaller than the size to which most Americans are accustomed.

"The houses were really small with the entire families sleeping in one room," Schott said. "We couldn't get over that a family of six would be living in a house that's the size of one of our dorm rooms."

Video: Teacher Back Home in Ill. After Leaving Libya

From the Associated Press, a video about an Illinois teacher who has returned home from Libya.

A trip to Africa turns a professor into a development advocate

A professor who did some volunteer education work in Africa now wants to spread the word of what he experienced on the trip. Professor John Alsup says the trip changed his perspective and is now working with international students and will teach more about development issues at Black Hills State University.

From Rapid City Journal, writer Kayla Gahagan has this story on how one volunteer trip impacted John Alsup's life.

Alsup ended up traveling to Africa in July and August of 2007 to teach math in a rural village deep in Tanzania with the help of Global Volunteers, an organization that facilitates nonprofit, short-term volunteer work for people in education and health services.

Alsup shared his work with students and staff at BHSU earlier this year. He has also been called to share with others around the world. Since his trip to Tanzania, Alsup has traveled to Korea, Europe and Greece, as well as several conferences in the U.S., to speak about his trip and his work.

“My passion is education within the developing world,” he said.

His trip to Tanzania was “life-changing,” he said. Many of the African villages have been stricken with HIV and malaria. Poverty is a way of life, and education is often one of the only ways to escape it.

While in Africa, Alsup taught elementary and high school math to 80 students in a packed classroom.

“It was an amazing experience,” he said.

His goal now, he said, is to bring awareness to people in the U.S.

“I want to highlight, emphasize and bring awareness without being righteous about it,” he said, so people will be more conscious of the developing world.

Overnight links for December 28th include missions project in Sierra Leone, Cambodia's dependence on foreign aid, and Amnesty's 50th

Many groups in the Dallas, Texas area teamed together to create a medical facility in Sierra Leone. Writer Leigh Munsil of the Dallas Morning News says that Hope Center also provides educational facilities for the unemployed.


Cambodia has taken big strides in reducing the number HIV positive people within its borders. The country is on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goal for cutting AIDS in half. However, a new study warns that Cambodia's dependence on foreign aid might hurt future gains against the disease. From the IPS, writer Marwaan Macan-Markar details the new report.

Amnesty International will soon be marking their 50th anniversary. Writer Sir John Tusa of the BBC tells us how the organization's focus has changed over the years, resulting in what the writer terms as a "mid life crisis" for Amnesty.

Overnight Links for December 21st

A team of medical professionals from Kentucky took a missions trip to Haiti to help meet the health needs there. From the North Platte Telegraph writer Malena Ward talked to the people who took the trip.

Al Jazeera has a series of special programs on the upcoming independence referendum vote for Southern Sudan. The "Crossroads Sudan" program concentrates on the challenge of development for the new country.

The cholera death toll continues to rise in Haiti. The AFP story that we found at Google News says that the number of people dead has now surpassed 2500.

When Chelsy Pillsbury returned from a missions trip from Tanzania she found it more difficult to get back into American culture than into the lifestyle of Tanzania. So Pillsbury plans on returning and lead a team of volunteers to help out at a Tanzanian elementary school and orphanage.

From the Brattleboro Reformer, writer Jaime Cone interviews Pillsbury about her trip.

Pillsbury, a 2008 Brattleboro High School graduate who is currently enrolled at Champlain College in Burlington, spent three weeks in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, helping the local people renovate two schools and one orphanage.

"Coming back was hard," Pillsbury said. "We lived in poverty with these people for three weeks."

"I came back and nannied two little boys for the summer," she said. "It was hard to come back from being around children who had lost their parents to AIDS or malaria, who were making their own toys from tires and banana leaves, to going to a really nice house and caring for children who had more than what they needed."

She said the people living in Bagamoyo didn't have much in the way of personal possessions, placing a higher value instead on their personal relationships.

"Walking down the streets, you would see people living in dirt huts that were made out of mud and sticks, literally," she said. "But, when it would rain, they would see us walking by and invite us in for shelter, and be super open and nice... even though they do not have nearly so much, they are in tune with each other. It was really refreshing."

Pillsbury enjoyed her time in Tanzania so much that she's planning to back again next May as a group leader.

"I've been keeping in touch with the owners of the organizations (we volunteered with), and we'll get to pick up where we left off, or where they're still headed," she said. "Though it's difficult for these organizations to move forward without a good jump start from volunteers because their resources are so limited, I think we gave them a lot to work with."

She and her fellow students traveled to Africa with two suitcases-- one full of personal belongings and another stocked with donated supplies.

The group arrived with additional money it had raised as well, which amounted to a total of $2,000 for each of the three organizations the students worked on-- one art school for older students, one elementary school and one orphanage.

The art program is designed to gives students a safe place to learn drumming and take dance lessons, Pillsbury said.

"It's totally free for them," she said. "Basically, it's a way to get youth off the street."

4 Americans arrested in Zimbabwe over AIDS charity work

Zimbabwe has had a long history of harassing aid groups and charities. In the past, the Zimbabwean government has frozen or stolen funds from aid groups, or just kicked them out of the country.

The latest episode involves a US church mission that runs an AIDS orphanage. Six workers at the orphanage were arrested with accusations of giving out drugs without a license.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Google News, we read more details about the latest harassment.

The six — five Americans and a Zimbabwean — were arrested Friday and have been held at Harare Central police station, where conditions in the cells are notoriously grim. They will appear in court Monday on charges of operating without proper medical licenses, according to their lawyer in Zimbabwe.

Theophous Reagans, a minister at the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, said by telephone Sunday the church has been working in Zimbabwe for more than a decade and that this is the first time questions over licensing have been raised. He said one of the Americans lives in Zimbabwe, while the others are among church members who visit three or four times a year, paying their own way to help at a home for AIDS orphans the congregation has adopted.

"Our prayer and our hope is that they will be released," after Monday's hearing, Reagans told The Associated Press.
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In 2008, at the height of a political crisis in Zimbabwe, the government accused independent aid groups of supporting opposition activists and barred them from distributing aid for three months.

Zimbabwe also has clashed with aid groups over funding. In 2007, Zimbabwe's central bank confiscated U.S. dollars being held in local bank accounts, including about $12 million belonging to the Global Fund, a major international supporter of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. When the central bank failed to return its money, the Global Fund threatened to cut off aid. Its funds were eventually returned.

Conditions for international aid workers have eased since longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was forced into a power-sharing agreement with his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister last year. The partnership has been strained. Mugabe's supporters continue to be accused of abusing human rights, but Tsvangirai's party has been praised for its administration of key ministries, including health, education and finance.
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The Herald, a state-run Zimbabwe newspaper, quoted police as saying the church workers were being questioned about operating an unlicensed clinic and dispensing medicine without a pharmacist's supervision.

"It is our duty to ensure that all clinics and medical institutions are registered for easy monitoring," police spokesman Augustine Zimbili told The Herald. "There is a risk of dispensation of expired drugs. When premises are not licensed, it is difficult to check if (the law) is being complied with."

Jonathan Samukange, the lawyer in Zimbabwe representing the detained church workers, said they have proper licenses and were only supervising a pharmacy that mainly gave out AIDS medications.

Kendall Ciesemier, an Illinois teen with her own charity

An Illinois teen has seen her charity efforts grow from donating her birthday money to establishing her own not-for-profit and traveling to Africa. When she was 11, Kendall Ciesemier stuffed all of her birthday money into an envelope and gave it to World Vision.

A couple of years later, Ciesemier had her own troubles to deal with because her liver was failing her. Kendall used her predicament to call more attention to Africa, as she insisted that any money donations go to AIDS orphans.

Since recovering from two different transplants, Kendall's efforts have been shown worldwide on the Oprah Winfrey show. She has since established her own charity for helping AIDS orphans, and has traveled to Africa to she her charity at work.

From this Associated Press article that we found at WSBT, writer Robert Sanchez tells us more about Kendall's amazing story.

"It's hard to come so far from the moment I said I wanted to help these kids," said the Wheaton resident, now 17.

Seeing pictures and reading stories about the conditions in Africa weren't cutting it. She had to experience herself what was going on there.

Kendall got that opportunity in June when she and her family visited Zambia and South Africa. The Wheaton North High School senior returned from the trip knowing that she must continue what she started.

"Inspiration slapped me in the face and said, 'You're not done with Africa, Kendall. You have so much more to do,'" she said.

Some recent national attention might help her achieve her goal to raise $1 million and convince 30 high schools each to donate $5,000 to Kids Caring 4 Kids.
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In June, the Ciesemiers visited a school in Zambia. Thanks to money raised by Kids Caring 4 Kids, the school was able to build new showers, bathrooms and a sick bay for its 200 students.

The children live in mud huts and face various dangers, including malaria, every day.

Still, Kendall said, they literally greeted her with open arms.

"It's the greatest feeling to have a million kids just try to hug you," she said. "They were so happy."

She also visited an orphan care center that Kids Caring 4 Kids helped build in South Africa. Children go to the center for support, including food, homework assistance and medical care.

The first thing that struck Kendall was the massive size of the local cemetery because of the AIDS epidemic. "They've lost an entire generation of people," she said. "They've lost everyone's parents."

Despite the tremendous need, she notes progress. "You see what is changing; there is a difference being made."

Going around the world to fight poverty

A visit to Peru has turned into a new adventure for one family. After vising Peru and seeing first hand the poverty there, Teresa Keller decided to begin devoting her life to fight poverty. Keller sold most of her possessions and plans to travel the world participating in humanitarian development projects in each country. When word spread of her ambition she decided to turn the trip into a non-profit, that will not only seek sponsors for the travels but will later raise more money for the projects.

From Nashoba Publishing, writer Pierre Comtois interviews Keller on her decision to drop out and help out. To learn more about Keller's new non-profit go to roundtheworldwithus.com.

"The whole thing started when I went down to Peru, and for the first time ever, saw real poverty firsthand," said Keller who, until recently, worked as executive director for the Archeological Institute of America in Boston. "People there were just living in makeshift structures on sand dunes.

"As part of my job, I had to commute into Boston every day," Keller said. "My life was very busy, traveling and raising money and I didn't have a lot of time to spend with my kids. But I always thought that someday, I wanted to do something to help people. Well, after visiting Peru, I decided that someday was here."

She left her job, sold her house, got rid of her car and moved into a rented apartment. With the money saved, by traveling light and cheaply, and some fundraising, she saved enough to pay for herself, three of her children -- Jennifer Manglass, 18; Alex Gagliardo, 13; and Ella Gagliardo, 12 -- and her daughter's best friend, Meagan Franz, 17.

"We will just backpack and stay in developing countries where it's not very expensive," said Keller. "Ahead of the trip we started to set up volunteer operations like the one we did in Kenya at a village where they take care of kids who are HIV positive. I felt that since I had a fundraising background, how could I volunteer in that village and not do more to help the people there? They needed houses; they needed wells for water to grow food.

"One thing led to another," she said, "so eventually we decided to start a not-for-profit to raise money and awareness. We wanted to promote cultural understanding between people and countries because in America, we don't have as good an understanding of other cultures as we should have. I think it's important in our global world that we understand each other."
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Although the Kellers intend to pay for their traveling costs themselves, they hope to eventually raise $100,000 through their new nonprofit, which would be completely dedicated to the various charitable projects they hope to establish in different countries. Already, an anonymous donor has promised to give 5 cents for each hit on the group's Web site. Later, Keller said that she hopes to be able to post video at www.roundtheworldwithus.org that will show donors how their money is improving the lives of people everywhere.

Read more: http://www.nashobapublishing.com/groton_news/ci_15531023#ixzz0tsHs9ftV

Minnesota community gives Cameroon girl an education

In our feel good story of the day, we learn of a Cameroon native who was taken in by a Minnesota community. Bright Nfor is receiving an education in the U.S., thanks to the fund-raising efforts of churches in Hawley, Minnesota. The current round of fund-raising is sending Nfor to college. Nfor hopes to study law and return to Cameroon after graduation.

From In Fourm, writer Mila Koumpilova tells us how Nfor arrived in the states.

“It’s been so wonderful to see how the community has embraced Bright,” said Tom Olson, a pastor in rural Hawley. “People see it as a concrete way they can help Africa help itself.”

Olson befriended Bright’s family during his 15 years as a missionary in Africa. Her father, a baker, and mom, a seamstress, pass on their trades to people living in poverty to help them become self-sufficient. They are also active in HIV education and prevention.

A couple of years ago, Bright’s father, Silas, visited Olson in Hawley. He let it slip to Mike Martin, the high school principal, that he’d always wanted to see his eldest daughter go to school in America.

“Wouldn’t it be kind of neat if we gave him his wish?” Martin thought.

So Martin tracked down an exchange student program and, along with his wife, Kate, offered to host Bright. Folks in town threw a hog roast and collected pledges to run the Fargo Marathon, raising more than $8,000 for Bright’s travel expenses.

So last August, Bright arrived in town, “all by myself, just little me.” She noticed she walked a little more slowly and dressed a little more warmly than her new classmates. She had to explain occasionally she doesn’t live in a jungle and doesn’t have a pet lion.

But, “It was not hard fitting in at all,” says Bright, strikingly poised and unfailingly upbeat. “I got accepted from the first day I walked into the school.”

Bright was eager to try everything: She rode a combine, walked on a frozen lake, made a video of a blizzard and drove a snowmobile, crashing into a small tree. She ran cross country and made the third-quarter honor roll.

Spending Spring Break at a South African orphanage

A high school student who once spent time in an orphanage wanted to help children going through a similar experience. Then a visitor came to her school to talk about an orphanage in South Africa called Open Arms. Once Jen Deglmann heard about the orphanage she organized a trip with a few other students and teachers to spend spring break in South Africa.

Deglmann is familiar with what the children in South Africa are going through as she spent the first couple of years of her life in an orphanage in the Ukraine. Diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome she was adopted by a couple in Minnesota where she flourished into a healthy teen.

From the Star Tribune, writer Allie Shah talks to Deglmann about the visit.

The students' days at the orphanage were spent playing board games with the children, baking cookies for them, watching movies with them and giving them piggyback rides.

"It didn't seem like work when you were doing it," said Deglmann. "You're put in the middle of these kids who want love and attention, and you just go for it."

In all, there were more than 30 kids at the orphanage -- boys and girls 12 and under.

The children live in brightly colored huts with ceilings made of straw and cow manure. But the huts were tidy quarters, Deglmann said.

Their time spent with the boys and girls left a deep impression on all four student volunteers, said Nicole Rasmussen, the freshman dean at Benilde-St. Margaret's who chaperoned the girls along with another teacher.

They learned from the orphanage director stories of where each child came from, where their parents were, and how they came to be orphans.

One toddler girl had been stabbed in the forehead by her father. Another small boy had been found in the garbage.

Such heart-wrenching biographies opened the high school students' eyes to larger societal tragedies and how they affect people's lives.

"They have a deeper understanding of poverty and what child abuse and child neglect and disease and lack of infrastructure can do," Rasmussen said. "I do believe they are changed."

How Haiti changed a photographer

Going overseas on a missions trip can really change a person. A photographer for the Muncie Star Press experienced that change when she went to Haiti with World Renewal International. From her essay in the Star Press, Jeri Reichanadter relates some of what she saw.

Well, they were right. Haiti did change me. It showed me how truly blessed I am, how blessed we all are. Unemployment in Haiti is at 80 percent and they don't have stop-gap systems like welfare to meet people's needs. No homeless shelters, no food stamps, no government assistance. Imagine, no jobs, no welfare, no clean water, no food.

My mom couldn't understand why I wanted to go to Haiti when people in America need help right here. Honestly I didn't quite know myself until after I was there a few days. Now I know, the Bible commands us to love one another. It doesn't say just love Americans. It says "one another."

I saw poverty in Haiti like I've never imagined. I saw men, women and children pat their tummies with both hands as we drove past signaling that they were hungry. I saw babies with runny noses and red-hair, the tale tell sign of malnutrition. I saw people walk miles for clean water. They'd fill their 5-gallon buckets to the brim and carry them home balanced on their heads.

And my faith was made stronger while traveling up and down the mountains in the tiny tap tap. I watched one day as the driver turned the truck off and coasted downhill to preserve gas. His gauge hovered near E for more than an hour. If we'd run out of gas I have no idea what we would have done. God, you brought us here, I have faith you'll bring us safely home.

It wasn't all bad though.

I also saw much happiness in the children of the orphanage. They greeted us with a hand shake and a kiss on the cheek every time we saw them. Together we played games, hiked up a mountain and took many pictures, like we'd been a part of their family forever. During their regular Sunday evening worship time, they sang praise songs and did dances for Jesus, it was amazing to witness.

The 58 well challenge

An engineering club at Montana State University had an immense challenge. Build wells for each of the 58 school districts in Khwisero, Kenya.

The students had no idea where to start, but have come around to build six wells so far. Future classes of the engineering club will continue the work.

From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, writer Gail Schontzler describes the joy that one such well brought to a village.

Fresh, clean water gushed from the new water pump, and J.J. Larsen took a drink.

"Obulayi muno," which means "very good" in Kiluhya, he said to the Kenyan villagers gathered around him. "They all cheered."

And with that, the people of Mwisena celebrated their new water well with speeches, dancing and a chicken feast.

The well is the sixth installed by students from the Engineers Without Borders chapter at Montana State University.

Larsen, a 27-year-old from Seattle who just earned his master's degree in mechanical engineering from MSU, was co-project manager this summer. He was one of 19 MSU students who traveled to Kenya to tackle one little part of the vast problem of poverty in Africa.

The new well is another step toward the MSU students' long-term goal of bringing clean water to all 58 primary schools in the Khwisero district of western Kenya.

Installing wells means villagers no longer have to drink from muddy watering holes that can carry water-borne diseases. It means children, especially girls, no longer have to miss out on hours of school while walking miles to fetch water in cans carried on their heads.

"Being a college student, you can still make a difference somewhere in the world," Larsen said. "That just feels good, feels right."

The MSU chapter of Engineers Without Borders has come a long ways in five years. When the first MSU students expressed interest in 2004, the national EWB handed them a huge assignment -- answer a plea from Nairobi architect Ronald Omyonga to help children in his home district get clean water and a better chance at an education.

The students started from scratch, with no organization, no money and no idea where to begin.

Since then, students have learned a lot -- how to get wells drilled, build latrines, collaborate with Africans and raise money back home (each well costs $15,000 to $25,000). They have managed to build a student organization that keeps going, despite constant turnover and graduation, passing on inspiration and lessons learned to each new generation of student members.

This summer, in addition to one new well, the MSU students installed two sanitary composting latrines, ran a health clinic, distributed 200 eyeglasses, researched a water pipeline system and oversaw construction of the group's first bio-gas latrine, based on design work done last year by an MSU engineering class.

A second chance to help

A chance meeting with a disfigured Tanzanian boy effected a Baptist Bishop so much that it completely changed her worldview. Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves has since guided her entire church to raising funds for the boy's village.

From The Santa Cruz Sentinel, comes writer Kathy Kelly's touching story of the Bishop meeting Sadiki, the lesson learned, and the help that followed.

The woman who heads the area Anglican diocese has a question nagging at her, a question she spoke about passionately during a recent sermon at St. John's the Baptist Episcopal Church in the Seacliff area.

That question is whether a 12-year-old Tanzanian boy named Sadiki would still be alive if she had not encountered him one day, in March, in a remote area of that East African country.

Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves told of that brief encounter movingly and with self-reproach.

It is a story that changed her life, the boy's life and struck a chord with many others, Gray-Reeves said. It is undeniably tragic, yet growth has sprung from it.

The chance meeting with a disfigured child -- an epileptic scarred and infected after falling into a cooking fire during a seizure -- has led to a campaign by church members in the diocese to provide solar cooking classes, scholarships and other help to the boy's village.

The Sadiki story begins in March, as three bishops were visiting Africa after a partnership pact among congregations on the Central Coast, in England and in West Tanganyika.

As they drove a heavily rutted road and the driver stopped to adjust a window, a boy suddenly ran up to the Jeep, Gray-Reeves said. Later, they realized he had been holding a stick of sugar cane he wanted them to buy, but his face was like an open wound and it was somehow so frightening that they drove away.

"I gasped; it scared me," she said in a recent telephone interview. "It was devastating to me, I thought, what kind of Christian am I? I was overcome by it, and by not doing anything."

Gray-Reeves said she could see him running after them in the rear-view mirror.

Soon afterward, as Gray-Reeves preached and wrote about it, Bishop Gerard Mpango vowed to find the boy and located him, his parents and six siblings, arranging for medical care near his village.

They learned that Sadiki was an epileptic who had a seizure and fell into a fire near his family's mud hut, burning his face and causing a wound that became infected. Such fire-related accidents are fairly common there, Gray-Reeves said, adding that she spoke to one Saratoga doctor who said he came home after 20 years of treating such patients, as he "couldn't take it anymore."

On Oct. 25, the same Sunday the diocese kicked-off a fundraising campaign, President Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, and his wife, Susan, appeared on "60 Minutes," describing 20-plus years of severe seizures experienced by their daughter.
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For information, call 394-4465 or visit www.edecr.org. Write or send donations to PO Box 1903, Monterey, CA 93942. Send scholarship donations to St. John's, 125 Canterbury Drive, Aptos, CA 95003. Call the Aptos church at 708-2278.

A photographer returns to help Myanmar refugees

A former resident of Ashland, Oregon spends his days helping the refugees of the Thailand-Myanmar border. Fred Stockwell is a professional photographer and once took photos of the refugee camp for a non-governmental organization. Stockwell was so touched by the people's predicament that he left America to spend time helping them.

From the Ashland Daily Tidings, writer Chris Honoré tells Stockell's story.

It was in 2007 that Stockwell sold everything, left Ashland, and returned to Mae Sot, a city he had discovered by chance while on a photographic assignment for a non-governmental organization years earlier. And it was on that initial trip that he discovered the people of the Mae Sot dump. He vowed to return and do what he could.

But where and how to begin? He knew he was a stranger in a strange land, could not speak Thai or Burmese, and had only limited resources. It was an impulse of generosity, tempered by years of world travel.

"My first trips there (to the dump) were physically and emotionally overwhelming," Stockwell wrote in an e-mail. "The stench, poverty, and general living conditions had more impact on me than anything I had previously experienced.

"I wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do. I was faced with the common dilemma: Do I give a fish so they can eat for a day? Or do I teach them to fish, so they can live forever?"

Stockwell soon noticed that the children were walking barefooted among rats and snakes and shards of glass and metal, their feet cut, the wounds infected, open sores weeping.

"They know how to fish," he realized. "They just don't have the right equipment."

And so he decided that what the children needed were shoes, more specifically rubber boots which he found at a local store. He began making frequent trips to the dump with as many boots as he could carry. He realized he needed help and found people willing to assist, some from as far away as Ashland.

Rubber boots evolved into health care. Not only was the dump hazardous — a petri dish of hepatitis, cholera, typhoid fever, skin diseases and asthma — but the people there also suffered from malaria and dengue fever and intestinal parasites, all causing chronic illnesses and death. Malaria can be prevented by something as simple and effective as mosquito netting. Stockwell found the nets and as the weather turned cool, he located blankets as well.

Starting a new non-profit to help new mothers and babies in Tanzania

Nursing graduate student Michelle Kowalczyk has a heart for Tanzania. The desire to help the people there began with a trip to Africa with the aid group CARE. The trip inspired Kowalczyk to start her own non profit to help new mothers and babies.

From the Omaha World Herald we read more about Kowalczyk's work.

“It’s sad and really poor, but when you see them smile, it just warms up your heart,” said Kowalczyk, who is enrolled at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Everything she experienced in Africa influenced her decision to take another step: co-founding a nonprofit organization. It “works in the developing world to better the lives of those in need,” Kowalczyk said.

The idea for a foundation came after she crossed paths with Kim Krowne, another volunteer, in Tanzania. Together they formed Knock Foundation in 2008.

Not only does Kowalczyk help manage a growing non-profit foundation, but she also devotes much of what she earns to help people in Africa.

Kowalczyk started her acute-care adult health graduate program at UNMC in 2008, and plans to graduate in May.

“At the College of Nursing, we are enormously proud of Michelle,” said Janet Cuddigan, chair of College of Nursing’s adult health and illness department. “She truly exemplifies the ‘best and brightest’ in the nursing profession.”

Recycling soap for use in Uganda

Here is a great charity idea, bringing used soap to people in Africa. For those who live on less than a dollar a day, a bar of soap is a luxury and the money could be better spent on food. But it is the inability to stay clean and sterile that is one of the factors that keep many in poverty. Many diseases that could be prevented from using soap make many ill and further unable to provide for themselves.

A former Ugandan who makes his home in Atlanta has found a way to help his homeland. Derreck Kayongo recycles used soap bars from American hotels and sterilizes them for use by the poor in Uganda.

From this Associated Press article that we found at KOAT, writer Dionne Walker explains the soap recycling process.

Cleaning up with used soap sounds, well, dirty.

But Kayongo said soaps will be separated by hotel brand and gently washed to remove makeup and other surface dirt. Next, bars will go into a high-temperature oven where they will melt and transform into a soapy, sterile, slurry. Kayongo said the mixture will go into molds to harden and emerge as large bars of soap.

"All it needs is just cleaning and re-melting and remolding," he said.

Each day, in millions of American hotel rooms, the cleaning staff replaces soap and other toiletries.

Patrick Maher, a consultant to the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said hotels usually throw away used soap. But he said nonprofits have begun stepping up to recycle soap for charitable purposes.

"It's one of the new things this year," Maher said.

One such charity, Florida-based Clean the World, says it has collected about 17,000 pounds of used soap since February for distribution in impoverished countries worldwide.

For the Global Soap Project, Kayongo says he has gathered 10,000 pounds of used hotel soap from 60 hotels in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. Hotels collect lightly used bars which they place in bins. One of Kayongo's 10 volunteers takes the bars to a donated warehouse near Atlanta that he's using.

Kayongo's own family had once thrived off his father's business making soaps and running a printing press in Uganda. But Kayongo said they went from being members of the middle class to refugees, losing everything under the harsh rule of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

'Jesus es Mana,' giving food to Juarez, Mexico

Jesus Ruiz once left the city of Juarez, Mexico and vowed to never come back. Years later, his wife Maria visited Juarez and convinced her husband to do something about the poverty there. The family started the charity 'Jesus es Mana,' they return to Juarez every weekend to bring food to the people of Juarez.

From the Voice of America, reporter Roger Hsu gives us the heartwarming profile of the Ruiz family charity.

A river - and an international border - separate the city of Juarez in Mexico and El Paso in the United States. Even though they are in many respects worlds apart - Juarez is poor and crime-ridden and El Paso is prosperous and relatively safe - the two cities are bound by powerful ties. One of them is the family of Jesus and Maria Ruiz and the charity they have started.

U.S. Interstate 10 is a major thoroughfare in the city of El Paso, Texas, bustling with traffic night and day. Just several hundred meters to the south, on the hilltops overlooking the interstate, sit the concrete houses of Juarez, Mexico.

Jesus and Maria Ruiz and their 19-year-old daughter Liz and 13-year-old son Jesus Jr. live in a quiet suburb of El Paso. Like 80 percent of the city's residents, they're Latin American.

Every weekend the family makes a trip across the border into Mexico. They go not to visit relatives or friends but to help people in need.

"Once you cross the border [into Mexico] you see so many people there already, people all over the place. You see a lot of people who are hungry, who need food, who need money, who are asking for your help," said daughter Liz.

All along the way, they have to watch out for drug dealers and kidnappers. They also have to be wary of the police, many of whom are corrupt. One hour after leaving their home in El Paso, they arrive in one of Juarez's poor suburbs.

"These are the outskirts of Juarez. Usually the outskirts are the areas that's being forgotten," Maria said.

As on every weekend, the family's destination is an aid office that is the base they use to deliver goods to the poor.

"When we come over, it's not only the food. We bring hygiene supplies and school supplies," Maria explains.

By 9 o'clock on this morning, almost 200 people are lining up outside the aid office. The volunteers inside pack rice, canned food and vegetables into paper bags. All the people in line receive a free lunch and a large bag to collect 10 items of clothing, one pair of shoes and soap and shampoo.

Jesus is no stranger to poverty. He was born and grew up in Juarez. He came to the United States, illegally, when he was 14. The difference struck him immediately - and angered him.

"In those 14 years I lived in Juarez, I experienced poverty, I experienced everything that they are living right now till today, it has not changed even a bit. When I came across, I made a promise to myself, I turned around and I was so upset with the country and the society, the way they handle things, I screamed and I yelled to Juarez and said Juarez, Mexico I will never, ever, come back to you, turned around and left," Jesus explains.

But it was Maria, who was born in the United States, who changed his mind. She made her first visit to Mexico more than 10 years ago, for the funeral of a relative, and was shocked by the poverty. "I had to tell my husband, I said, 'I have to go back and I had to do something.' I couldn't just turn around and say 'Oh' and pretend I didn't see anything," she says. "I told him I want to do something, and he said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'I want to take apples, oranges and bananas and sweet breads to the kids to the school.'"

Soon, when word got out on what they wanted to do, people in and around El Paso began donating money, clothing and food to the ministry that the couple started, Jesus es mana, which translates as Jesus is the bread of life. With the approval of the local government in Juarez, Maria and Jesus built a church and an aid office on an abandoned lot in the middle of the slum.

As for the Ruizes, they gave so much to the ministry they started that their living standard in El Paso was close to that of those they were helping in Juarez.

"Even though we were living under the poverty level, when I would cross the border and see other people's need, then my needs were nothing compared to what their needs are," Maria said.

As the ministry they started has grown, so have their ambitions. They are now building a community kitchen with space to feed 500, an orphanage for 100 residents and a trade school.

Why do they do it? "When you make a child smile," Maria says, "it's awesome."

Great examples of volunteerism

Too many times people who get into volunteering are looking for what they can get out of it, instead of what they can put into it. We found a couple of great examples of volunteerism in a story from Mississippi's Clarion Ledger.

The story profiles a trio of college students who went overseas to help. Some of the duties they did over the summer were just simple chores, or long walks to village to village.

We will focus on two of the students for our snippet. Writer Galen Holley introduces us to Ben Long, and Sally McDonnell.

"It was probably the most challenging and most rewarding experience of my life," said Ben Long, a sophomore in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi.

What started as a language immersion trip for college credit turned into a life-changing experience for the Corinth native.

Long spent a month learning Spanish with friends in Costa Rica but when his time was up he felt restless. Since nothing back home demanded his immediate attention he hoped a plane to Guatemala. Despite being pretty much alone, Long threw himself headlong into helping at hospitals and orphanages.

"I didn't really have a plan," he said, recalling how his shaky Spanish and willingness to do whatever was needed helped him navigate the native culture for almost two months.

"I just trusted God was leading me in the right direction," he said.
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Maria Presley of Shannon started the summer in Mozambique working with AIDS patients. A grant from Emory University, where she's enrolled in divinity school, allowed her to help destitute women and to study ethnic and religious conflicts. After a month of working with native people, Presley set out alone across western Africa.

"I just tried to engage in as many conversations as I could and to learn as much as I could about how people talk about conflict and how they deal with it," she said.
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Presley's motivation stemmed from her belief that everyone is "called to place ourselves outside ourselves and to push beyond what makes us comfortable."