1%CLUB

Non polluting ecosan toilet

De 1%CLUB is a Dutch online marketplace for development projects. The projects are small and concrete.One asks only 1% of people’s time or money to invest in projects of one’s own choice from a list of ‘project owners’. So far only Dutch ‘owners’ could ask for support through the 1%CLUB’s website (see link attached). From January 1 foreign based organizations (NGOs and CBO’s) are invited to directly apply for 1% support.

AMAIDI is going to apply for funds for an ecosan toilet for its own project: AMAIDI Child Care Center in the slums of Cuddalore Old Town in Tamil Nadu. In addition to fundraise activities currently undertaken by Miriam and Lisanne van Zwol and Machteld Wit from the Netherlands, members of the Dutch Support Group of our CCC. The current toilet is not only insufficient for the 15 children and staff, it also pollutes the ground water close to the center. An ecosan toilet will keep the faeces not only separated from the soil (catching it in an above ground  container), it turns it into compost, usable for the (future) vegetable garden. The advantages for the children and staff from there on are obvious!

Join us by checking in the website of the 1%CLUB. After 1 Jan the international website will be operation. Be sure to come back by then and give as much as you can.

We hope for the best,

Regards,

Camille & Jansi

Filed under: charitable business, choice, control, Millennium Development Goals (MDG), new partner, projects, Uncategorized, 1%CLUB, direct sponsorship

Unaterra Project

AMAIDI is entering in a new partnership with an Italian organization called Unaterra Project, based in Ginestra in the province of Potenza in the south, with Fabrizio Caputo as CEO.

In a nutshell: the aim of Unaterra Project is the implementation of sustainable development projects in the developing world. To achieve this aim Unaterra supports local communities with integrated projects in the energy conservation- and development sectors. Their methodology is designed to cover all phases of a project from identifying potential investors to working with the local beneficiaries.

Potenza, home province of Unaterra Project

Unaterra  focuses on three main themes: sustainable development projects, climate change and international volunteering. One month ago Unaterra approached AMAIDI with a request to join their global network. Their aim is to provide a human resource platform for local NGO’s through sending out expert volunteers and to create a network of people eager to work for local sustainable development.

AMAIDI hopes to tap into the Italian volunteering market through its alliance with Unaterra. Contacts with Unaterra through Fabrizio are warm and promising.

Filed under: international volunteers, needs, new partner, professionals, projects, sending organization, voluntary work, worldvolunteer, Italian volunteers, Unaterra Project

AMAIDI Child Care Center

Care taker with a number of children from the Cuddalore slums

The slums in Cuddalore O.T. : some 1000 families live under deplorable circumstances with open gutters, giving rise to various intestinal diseases, a high unemployment rate, omnipresent alcohol misuse and a high crime rate and domestic violence that go with it. Children – especially the younger ones – and women are the victims: malnutrition, school drop out-ism and lack of awareness in the field of education, hygiene, legal rights and work opportunities.

AMAIDI Foundation, the offshoot of AMAIDI Volunteering in India, wanted to do something about this. Being near to Cuddalore and knowing the local situation very well, AMAIDI Foundation started in May 2009 using the unused ground floor of a community building in Cuddalore O.T., at the backside of St. Philomena School (for girls) at Pensioner Line’s Street. The first floor is in use as accommodation for volunteers (especially in January when teacher trainees flock Old Town for a traineeship in St. Davids Matriculation School nearby).

Lisanne, the first volunteer to work with the starters’ group of 15 children and a warden, was so touched by the work, that she decided to give the AMAIDI Child Care Center, as it was being called, a colourful face-lift. With merry colours and picto’s on the wall, inside as well as outside, and a lot of games and toys plus some tables and chairs, she transformed the center into a safe haven and heaven for the children and their care taker. With only one toilet for all the children and staff, the need to build an additional sanitary facility was badly felt. A proposal to get subsidy for such a toilet – a drawing has already been made – has been sent off. It will be a so called ‘Ecosan’ toilet: ecofriendly in the sense that the faeces will be kept away from the soil in a sealed container above the ground to ferment into compost after a while. When we manage to create a small ‘kitchengarden’ with veggies and other edible plants, the compost will come in handy. And the natural circle is closed, a perfect example of how you can preserve our nature and resources in a small but effective way.

Lisanne is now – together with her mum, Machteld and Corine, all from the Netherlands – actively fund raising to enhance the quality of the service given to children and parents in the ACCC. ‘Femmes d’Europe’ is one of the donor organizations they’re contacting for a subsidy to supply more play material, better nutrition and a better infrastructure. Wherevertheneed UK through the help of Bless in Cuddalore are also sought to help financially and materially. In the future local shop- and restaurant owners as well as traders will be asked for a contribution to this newest of the private child care centers in Cuddalore.

At present the ACCC is open on weekdays from 8.30-12.30. Around 10 the children – numbering 15 at present – get a healthy snack and at noon a healthy lunch. Something they had to fore go when they were still at home with their (impoverished) mothers.

AMAIDI Child Care Center in Cuddalore O.T. wants to create a replicable model for other slum areas in Tamil Nadu and Puduchderry.

For more information, mail us at info@amaidi.org

Thanking you,
Camille van Neer
AMAIDI Foundation

Lisanne, first volunteer and sponsor, at the entrance of ACCC

Filed under: Bless, charity, Uncategorized, volunteering in India, community, Cuddalore O.T. Child Care Center, slums, volunteering

Social Networking

There's no way around it (for non-profits): social networking is here to stay

In 2020 the number of NGO’s in India applying for foreign donations will be half the number we have now. Why? Because the other half is still not – or never going to be – social networking. Using the ‘social web’ or ‘web 2.0’ as it is being called, is increasingly going to be critical in acquiring attention (and who doesn’t get it, doesn’t get it) from ‘important others’. And, lets be honest, this is all that matters for local NGOs who want to implement their social projects for the beneficiaries they serve in the villages and urban areas in India since many years. We have to rephrase the term ‘digital divide’ in ‘social divide’. Not necessary to insert the term ‘digital’ anymore, as the ‘real’ world and its ‘digital’ representation on the Internet are increasingly interwoven. Take public health services, tax payments, agricultural news, marketing and interpersonal communication. More and more people will either ‘also’ or ‘only’ use social networking as a communication tool.

In other words: whether we like it or not, we have to jump on the bandwagon called ‘Social Networking’, get down to the specs as how to use it in our particular (hyperlocal) community.

Here’s a few leads to get yourself started: Social by Social – a Guide to Social Network, How to manage a Facebook group? & How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media

Go ahead!

Camille

AMAIDI Volunteering in India

Filed under: article, charity, information, social networking, Uncategorized, AMAIDI Volunteering in India, communication, Facebook, hyperlocal, social media, social networking, social technologies, Twitter, volunteering in India