African Medical and Research Foundation

AMREF’s mission is to improve the health of disadvantaged people in Africa as a means for them to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives. Their mission determines that they work in six areas of focus, or Priority Intervention Areas: HIV/AIDS, TB and sexually transmitted diseases; malaria; safe water and basic sanitation and family health, clinical services, disaster management and emergency response, training and health learning materials. The AMREF mission is to be achieved by: developing, testing and promoting the adoption of models for improving health and reducing poverty; training and capacity building at all levels; and contributing to the development of an environment that enables health and wealth improvement.

AMREF is the African continent’s leading health development organisation. AMREF has offices in 5 Eastern and Southern African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. They also have field offices in Somalia and Sudan. Each year they train health professionals from countries all over the African Continent. Their headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya, and they are proud that 97% of their staff is African.

AMREF began its life almost 50 years ago. Three dedicated doctors with planes flew to remote health outposts and hospitals and trained doctors and health care workers. At the same time they also trained the community to avoid illness. They learned how communities functioned, what challenges they faced, and what would help them in the future. In almost every case, they learned that the community itself had the answer to many of its own problems if only someone would enable them to do it.

This experience brought AMREF a great deal of knowledge about the kind of practical solutions that would work for communities. AMREF does not believe it is worthwhile or cost effective to give a man or woman a fish: rather, that is better to give them a rod and to teach them how to fish for themselves.

Christian Foundation for Children and Aging

CFCA’s mission is to walk with the poor and marginalized of the world. They provide personal attention and direct benefits to children, youth, aging and their families so they may live with dignity, achieve their desired potential and participate fully in society.They invite people of good will to live in daily solidarity with the world’s poor through one-to-one sponsorship. They build community by fostering relationships of mutual respect, understanding and support that are culturally diverse, empowering and without religious or other prejudice.

Founded in 1981, the CFCA worldwide community now includes more than 310,000 sponsored children, youth and aging friends in 25 countries; more than 275,000 sponsors; a board of directors; U.S. and overseas staff; partners; and U.S. and overseas volunteers. CFCA sponsorship is distinguished by personal attention and outreach to each sponsored person and family, and by a commitment to honoring the God-given dignity of each person. Helping those sponsored to live with dignity means to invite them to be authors of their own development and participate fully in their communities.

The heart of sponsorship is the relationship that is formed between a sponsor and child or elderly person. Through a sponsorship commitment of $30 monthly, a donor can choose to help a young girl or boy, a teenager, an elderly woman or man, or a person with special needs. CFCA is a force of love in a hurting world.

Gratefulness.org

is a non-profit dedicated to gratefulness, a universal principle that serves as the core inspiration for personal healing, cross-cultural understanding, interfaith dialogue, intergenerational respect and ecological sustainability.

Gratefulness enables us to find peace in all circumstances by freeing us from resentment. As long as we are merely thankful, we give thanks for what we perceive to be beneficial, yet we retain the lurking fear that something harmful may come our way instead. To be grateful is more. It is our courageous trust that life itself – kind or harsh, happy or sad – is good, if only we receive it as gift. The gift is the opportunity either to fully accept or to change what the moment brings. The moment we trust in this truth, we are at peace. A person at peace will serve as an agent of peace in the world.

Activism for peace is necessary. Yet no matter how sincere and how admirable, it will have no effect unless our own heart is at peace, because gratefulness has made us fearless. Since fear is at the root of all that is wrong with our world, we start healing the world by overcoming fear through gratefulness.

Heifer International

Heifer International provides livestock and training so that families can improve nutrition and earn income for health care, shelter and education for children. Each gift multiplies because every family that receives a Heifer animal promises to “pass on the gift” by giving one or more of their animal’s offspring and knowledge to another family in need. Where hunger ends, peace can begin.

Circles of Light

The circle is a universal symbol of wholeness and harmony. Circles of Light is an organization committed to celebrating and honoring that bright potential and sacred wholeness in all people, in communities across the globe.

Circles of Light programs are focused in three areas, all intended to celebrate the spirit of creativity, wholeness, and health in each person. Offerings focus on supporting individuals in creative and holistic development and are designed to be integrated with the needs and resources of the community. Workshops are facilitated by artists and teachers who specialize in cultural, healing, and creative arts.

Since 2003, Circles of Light has been a partner in the World Peace Project for Children. Youth from around the world are invited to create origami cranes as they learn the story of Sadako, a young girl living in Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped. She developed leukemia, the "atom bomb disease." After hearing the story that anyone who created a thousand paper cranes would be granted a special wish, she began to create origami cranes. While she did not finish creating a thousand before she died, her friends and classmates continued for her until the goal was reached. Kimba Arem, an international performer who lives on Kaua’i, brought the first batch of cranes and a booklet of art and writing about peace to Hiroshima for a special concert she offered there as a prayer for world peace. For more information on the World Peace Project for Children, visit their website, www.wppj.org. For more information on Kimba’s work, visit her website, www.heartherapy.com.

Global Fund for Children

Global Fund for Children works to advance the dignity of vulnerable children and youth worldwide by supporting and strengthening grassroots groups and harnessing the power of books, film and photography. Your gift to GFC helps to strengthen and expand the support of small grassroots organizations around the world that improve educational opportunities for children who would otherwise be left behind.

Doctors Without Borders

is an independent international medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, or exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries. Each year, MSF doctors, nurses, logisticians, water-and-sanitation experts, administrators, and other medical and non-medical professionals depart on more than 4,700 aid assignments. They work alongside more than 25,800 locally hired staff to provide medical care.

In emergencies and their aftermath, MSF provides essential health care, rehabilitates and runs hospitals and clinics, performs surgery, battles epidemics, carries out vaccination campaigns, operates feeding centers for malnourished children, and offers mental health care. When needed, MSF also constructs wells and dispenses clean drinking water, and provides shelter materials like blankets and plastic sheeting.Through longer-term programs, MSF treats patients with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, and HIV/AIDS, and provides medical and psychological care to marginalized groups such as street children.

MSF was founded in 1971 as the first nongovernmental organization to both provide emergency medical assistance and bear witness publicly to the plight of the people it assists. A private nonprofit association, MSF is an international network with sections in 19 countries. MSF is often one of the first humanitarian organizations to arrive at the scene of an emergency. Its large-scale logistical capacity ensures that MSF emergency teams hit the ground with the specialized medical kits and equipment they need to start saving lives immediately.

Seva Foundation

Seva (say-va) is a Sanskrit word for service. Seva Foundation was formed in 1978 with a mission to alleviate suffering caused by disease and poverty. Seva Foundation started as a small group with a big idea, and the idea was this: To be fully human, we must translate our compassion and concern into useful service. That simple statement conveys something about the nature of compassion that is expressed in most spiritual traditions around the world — that compassion is not just about helping those less fortunate than ourselves, it's about the realization that we are all connected as one human family.

That sense of compassionate service motivates all of Seva's work, as Seva builds programs that support people around the world in their efforts to build healthy communities. Seva's programs, spanning many cultures and countries, share certain fundamental principles: serving the underserved, building healthy communities, promoting sustainability, working through partnerships.