Fundraising

So my justgiving site is now up and running, and is imaginatively at www.justgiving.com/nicoleroberts.

The charity that I am supportin is Access2information, or a2i, which is an Amersham-based charity that funds health and education projects for poor children, families and communities in the Philippines and India. They people who run the charity don't take any overheads and all the money they raise goes straight to the projects in Asia:

- Angeles: A pre-school, school meals and community empowerment project for a dumpsite scavenger community in Angeles City. The community lives and works on the dumpsite, collecting recycleable items such as glass or tin cans from the rubbish. Everyone works hard, including the children, picking through rubbish and collecting what can be sold or used. The pre-school, however, gives the children the chance to go to school, have a meal at lunchtime and to learn to read and write, with the chance of a job away from the dumpsite one day. We also fund training for parents, including in community empowerment and leadership, health and hygiene, plus a small revolving loan scheme to help set up small businesses.

- CPREF: A project in the poor Tondo area of Manila, which offers free physiotherapy for children with a range of disabilities, including cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus and spinal bifida. The therapists also run a weekly class, allowing the children to get together to learn and play in a safe environment, whilst reducing the families’ isolation and building up a self-help network. Parents are also taught basic therapy techniques for their children.

- The Blessed Hannibal School: a2i funds 12 children’s education - tuition, uniform, books, medical care and a daily school meal – at this ‘multi-level’, or catch-up school. The children all come from a squatter community near the airport and would not have any chance of an education otherwise – some coming to school quite late in childhood to catch up on what they’d missed until then. The school is massively oversubscribed and with more money, many more children could be in school! a2i's pupils are in Grades (Years) 2, 3 and 6 and are thriving, as the smiles in the photo opposite demonstrate!

- Project Hope: a health, hygiene and feeding project in Ludhiana in northern India that improves the health and wellbeing of children from a very poor area by providing free healthcare (by fully registered, qualified doctors) for poor families and also teaching children the basics - such as the importance of washing your hands with soap - right up to how to look after yourself and the family if they're ill. Project Hope also provides remedial feeding and vitamin supplements for malnourished children and trains teachers and local social workers to pass on health messages to improve community health.

Money can go such a long way there, for example:
£30 pays for daily school meals for a week for 30 pre-school children in Angeles (food, cook's salary and cooking fuel)
£40 covers the pre-school teacher’s weekly salary for Angeles
£8 buys a big bottle of vitamin syrup (easier for disabled children to swallow)
£30 pays for a training workshop for parents of disabled children in Tondo (teaching them basic physiotherapy for their children)
£35 covers the salary and expenses for a Tondo physiotherapist for a week
£25 is cost of tuition, uniform and meals for a student at Blessed Hannibal Multilevel School for 4 weeks
£30 covers the salary of a health and social worker in Ludhiana for 2 weeks.

So do please go and visit my fundraising page. I am hoping to go and visit some of the projects during my trip, so I really will be able to tell you how much of a difference your money will make.

Ciao for now
Nicole