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Refugee4Refugees

For my last edition of #52nonprofits (can’t believe it’s the end already!) I wanted to look closer at a European organization.  I mentioned them last week, but working with NeedsList has been really interesting because I’ve had the chance to learn more about the refugee crisis, without even really needing or meaning to.  Refugee4Refugees is another one of its featured organizations.

Refugee4Refugees is based in Lesvos, Greece - one of the places in Europe most affected by the refugee crisis (over a million refugees since 2015!)

The org’s bio on NeedsList explains:

We feed and provide clothing for refugees who arrive on the northern coast of Lesvos, Greece. More than 2,000 refugees are arriving on the island every month. When they arrive they get brought to a UNHCR camp known as Stage 2. They usually stay there overnight until they get transported to the main refugee camp on Lesvos called Moria for registration and more permanent accommodation. While they are in Stage 2 we look after them. We provide food, water and tea and clean the camp. We also just opened a warehouse opposite Moria Camp to provide winter supplies (sleeping bags, winter clothing and underwear). Conditions are dire inside the camp and we are working to support the refugees throughout the winter.

Refugee4Refugees’s needs lists include requests for food, men’s underwear, socks, and children’s books and toys - really basic stuff.

The organization was founded by Omar Alshakal, a Syrian refugee “who fled his home town of Deir Ez-Zor in 2014 after ISIS took control and he was severely injured during a missile strike. Omar swam for 14 hours from Turkey to Greece to reach safety.”  Although he eventually got asylum in Germany, he returned to Greece to support others like him.  The majority of Refugee4Refugees’s work focuses on spotting and supporting boats to the northern coast of Lesvos and providing resources to Stage 2, the UNHCR camp mentioned above.

Refugee4Refugees just launched this year, so they don’t have any financial or governance information on the website.  Their partners are listed here.

One thing I really like about their website is the news/updates section - which is a really engaging way to follow what’s happening in Lesvos.

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AMURTEL

A few months ago I started working with NeedsList, an online marketplace where individual and corporate donors can contribute directly to meet needs of refugee-serving organizations in Europe and elsewhere.  The organizations featured on NeedsList serve refugees, and while perusing the site’s list of vetted organizations, I read about AMURTEL:

AMURTEL is an international, grassroots organization managed by women.  In Greece, we are committed to assisting refugee mothers and babies to have the best possible perinatal care, despite the challenging lives they face.

AMURTEL Greece is responding to the refugee crisis by providing antenatal and postnatal care, programs for infant and young child feeding, distribution of supplemental food bags to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and safe spaces for mothers and babies to gather.  In September 2016, we opened our Day Center in Athens.

The international/umbrella org of AMURTEL was founded in 1975 by P.R. Sarkar, “to respond specifically to the problems faced by women and children in their struggle to meaningfully develop in all areas of life.”  The main site goes on to explain that it,

works to help improve the quality of life for people experiencing chronic poverty or acute stress from environmental, financial, or political distress. We encourage and enable individuals and communities to harness their own resources for securing the basic necessities of life and for gaining greater economic sustainability and social and spiritual fulfillment. It is the goal of AMURTEL to assist communities in their recovery and development while honoring their customs, language, and religious beliefs.

AMURTEL currently has projects in Haiti, Kenya, Mongolia, Myanmar/Burma Peru, Puerto Rico, Romania, and Thailand.

Although not all of the organization works in humanitarian crises, AMURTEL Green - the part of the organization vetted and featured on NeedsList - does.  I like the org’s specialized focus on women and providing services for women by women.  Here’s the org’s complete list of projects.  AMURTEL Greece’s current lists on NeedsList ask for women’s underwear, pre- and post-natal vitamins, diapers, and funding for a food distribution program.

There’s no financial information available on the websites of either AMURTEL or AMURTEL Greece, which would be a valuable addition.  Their list of partners includes the IOM, World Food Programme, and Catholic Relief Services.

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Humanity United

Last week after posting my #52nonprofits entry on the Impact Travel Alliance, I exchanged some tweets and emails with its founder, Kelley Louise (update to the ITA post forthcoming!) At the end of her email, Kelley recommended that I check out Humanity United, a new nonprofit that her friend started.  Of course I think word of mouth is the best way to learn about anything, so I checked them out!

Humanity United “empowers communities to rise out of poverty through education, food security projects, and economic opportunities. [They] start by investing in women.”

Humanity United was founded by Maria and Anthony Russo, a writer/photographer couple.  It seems as though they organize all of their field work is through a local partner in Rwanda called Aspire.  The Humanity United website explains how their four tenets (my word, not theirs - powerful partners, community outreach, impactful implementation, evaluation and monitoring) help them implement their programs on education, food security, and economic opportunities.

I like that Humanity United is thinking about impacts:

We have provided 110 women with business skills, social and emotional support & training in health & human rights.  In total the program has impacted over 700 people including 500 children.

I’m curious about what “impacted” means, in a quantifiable way: How much has median income increased among participants?  How many more children went to school?  What other relevant impacts should they be measuring?

Based on the financials page on the org’s website, total 2016 revenue was just shy of $40k.  Since admin and overhead was covered by the org’s board members (about $3k) and project costs (about $32k) were covered by public donations, I’m curious about the $8k gap but imagine there’s either some overlap in their fiscal years or they’re saving up for 2017/18.  Honestly, the fact that they’re so transparent while being such a small org is pretty impressive.  I appreciate that they take that part of being a nonprofit seriously.

I also like that they’re thinking about their financial sustainability.  As a small nonprofit, it’s creative and outside-the-box to use an Airbnb listing for funding.  They’re also having a holiday fundraiser - tomorrow!

This seems like a very cool startup nonprofit - thanks to Kelly for bringing them to my attention.

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ACDI/VOCA

I don’t know how I got on ACDI/VOCA’s mailing list but I must’ve signed up at some point.  I know I received their annual report over the summer but honestly didn’t open it because I didn’t know who they were and was just starting a new job and figured it was just a PR thing.  I was prompted to take a closer look when I got a GlobalGiving request last month.  Anyway, fast forward (10 days) to today and...

ACDI/VOCA is an economic development organization that fosters broad-based economic growth, raises living standards, and creates vibrant communities. Based in Washington, D.C., ACDI/VOCA has worked in 146 countries since 1963. Its expertise is in catalyzing investment, climate smart agriculture, empowerment & resilience, institutional strengthening, and market systems.

The org’s name is apparently the result of “the 1997 merger of Agricultural Cooperative Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance;” both were nonprofits working in international development.  ACDI/VOCA implements its mission and vision with its signature tools.  Relying on cross-sectoral partners gives ACDI/VOCA a system-wide understanding and ability to create effective programs.

So what are their programs?  Actually, they call them “practices” and “projects”.  The five practices include: catalyzing investment, climate smart agriculture, empowerment and resilience, institutional strengthening, and market systems.  The list of projects is much longer.

Despite being eligible, ACDI/VOCA hasn’t yet been reviewed by Charity Navigator.  Nevertheless, the org seems to put its stats right out there: It has 45 active projects in 29 countries.  Annual revenues for ACDI/VOCA and affiliates total approximately $143 million.  There are about 1,270 current employees (about 12% in the US, the rest overseas) and they have “200–300 short-term technical consulting assignments per year.”  Although I’m always a bit stunned to learn about a huge organization that I’ve been oblivious about, I’m very quickly relieved to know about them now.

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Impact Travel Alliance

I learned about Impact Travel Alliance in the daily CSR Wire email.  The press release explained that

Travel+SocialGood, a nonprofit working in the global travel industry since 2013, changed its name to Impact Travel Alliance (ITA). The new name better reflects the organization’s long-term vision to affect the choices an average leisure or business traveler makes and the importance travel businesses put on a triple-bottom line.

ITA is a kind of community of practice in the sustainable tourism industry.  According to its website (which for now redirects to the old url), ITA was launched by the UN Foundation and +SocialGood in 2013 and has grown "from its original Summit into a nonprofit and global community with Hubs in more than 15 cities worldwide.”  2017 was designated by the United Nations 70th General Assembly as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, which ITA has apparently used to build momentum.

ITA’s initiatives focus on community-building within the travel industry to share tools that encourage sustainability.  Rather than catering to travelers, ITA caters to businesses in the travel industry:

Impact Travel Hubs are local ITA chapters. Through education, advocacy and community-building around sustainable tourism, Hubs build networks of travel professionals passionate about making a positive impact on our world.

The media network promotes stories of sustainable tourism across media platforms.

The annual Impact Travel Summit brings sustainable travel leaders together to discuss the state of sustainable travel/tourism and to brainstorm/collaborate across the ITA network.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information available about the administration of ITA itself - which I have been finding to be increasingly common among smaller nonprofits, no matter how beautiful their websites.  The “about” page includes the names of staff and the fact that there are 15,000 members across the local hubs.  There’s no financial or governance information, though, and it’s confusing how an annual 2-day summit yields revenues of only $21k. 

Warning: unintentionally long diatribe/defense ahead.

One thing that upset me during my ITA research was learning about the #StopOrphanTrips campaign.  When I wrote about Outreach360 back in February, I was reflecting on an organization that I think I know quite well, that I volunteered and interned for about seven times for a total of about six months, between 2004 and 2010.  Long story short, I don’t think this campaign completely applies to Outreach360, even though it works with orphanages:

For one thing, although the org used to be called Orphanage Outreach, they renamed and rebranded themselves a few years back in order to reflect the extent of the work they do in the community - they’re not exclusively focused on orphanages.

Second, part of volunteers’ orientation is a list of 10 principles about the need to be humble, flexible, and respectful - and those principles are reinforced throughout the volunteers’ stay.

Finally, my personal experience tells me that Outreach360 and the orphanage directors are not extorting these kids (whether “true” orphans or not) - although I can imagine that that happens elsewhere.  In fact, I remember conversations with the organization ED about the integrity of the orphanage director - so they’re aware of the risks of working with vulnerable populations like this.

Back to ITA, though - the Better Volunteering Better Care campaign was effective at making me ask those questions, though, which I think is a valuable exercise wherever you decide to volunteer.

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Energy for All

Energy for All is another nonprofit I heard about from Raptim.  It’s “an Alberta-based non-profit dedicated to alleviating poverty by increasing people’s access to clean water, renewable energy and improved wastewater infrastructure.”

To be honest, I’m confused about E4A.  There’s no “About” page on their website or any information sprinkled in about who they are, their history, their financials... Their donation page lists a bunch of Paypal links, which seems sketchy.  I can see on their Meetup page that their last event was 6 months ago and they have 148 “members” (but that’s a Meetup term, not necessarily signifying anything important for the organization). Their impacts are described as contributing to those of their local partners, which makes it hard to know if they have any impact at all.

But I don’t want to be a downer.  This is probably a tiny start-up-style organization that maybe doesn’t need the web presence or infrastructure of a bigger nonprofit.  That’s fine - maybe they’re growing and building capacity, or maybe they’re content just as they are!  It’s just too bad to not really have a good idea of what’s what.

But their work is interesting: They have a local education program as well as some (active?) international programs:

Tanzania Renewable Energy & WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) Country Program (includes separate toilet-building program)

Nicaragua Solar Lighting Micro Credit Project

Ecuador Renewable Energy & WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) Country Program

That’s all I know.  I suppose I could find out more by contacting their ED, which they tell you to do on every page.  But then when I go to their Contact page, they also apparently have someone based in Sweden?  So confusing, E4A.  Sorry.

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Engineers Without Borders

I think just about everyone has heard of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières) but I’d never heard of Engineers Without Borders until reading Raptim’s article, “Focus on NGOs: 45 Organizations That Battle Poverty.”

When Googling, I was confused to not find one primary EWB/ISF (Ingénieurs Sans Frontières) with possible country offices or affiliates.  According to ever-trusty Wikipedia, EWF is actually a common name used by many independent NGOs who use engineering for international development:

Many EWB national groups are developed independently from each other, and so they are not all formally affiliated with each other, and their level of collaboration and organizational development varies. The majority of the EWB/ISF (French, Ingénieurs Sans Frontières) organizations are strongly linked to academia and to students, with many of them being student-led.

According to Wikipedia, the first Ingénieurs Sans Frontières was founded in the 1980s in France, followed by Spain and Italy in the 1990s, then Canada and the UK.  There is an association of some of the EWBs - EWB International - which is based in the US with regional offices in Mexico, India, Denmark, and Egypt. 

The Engineers Without Borders recommended by the Raptim article was EWB-Canada, one of the largest EWB organizations. EWB-Canada was founded in 2000 with a mission to “unlock human potential”, which means investing in social enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa, building a community of leaders at home in Canada, and collaborating across the globe to promote learning and “challenge the national and global policies, systems and institutions that contribute to the flawed status quo.”

Using a theory of change model, EWB-Canada describes its work in three parts:

Investing in people, which includes several fellowships, leadership development programs, conferences, networks/communities, and more;

Investing in ventures, which means investments in Sub-Saharan Africa’s high rates of social entrepreneurship; and 

Advocating for change through numerous programs on including various campaigns, training, and initiatives to “evolve” the engineering profession.

EWB-Canada has a lengthy roster of public and private partners.  Its site includes “showcases” of some of its best cases. According to is 2016 annual report, EWB-Canada had the following impact in 2016:

Only its most recent financial statement is available on its website, but previous financial was reviewed on Charity Intelligence Canada (what seems to be the Canadian equivalent of Charity Navigator).

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Project AWARE

Project AWARE is another environmentally-minded nonprofit I learned about from Raptim.  It’s an ocean conservation org, with a focus on marine debris (ie, pollution, plastic, etc.), sharks and rays, and creating a community around ocean conservationism.  Learn more about Project AWARE’s current campaigns here.

Project AWARE got its start in 1989 as an environmental initiative of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) seeking to increase environmental awareness through diver education. The initiative was registered as an independent nonprofit in the U.S. in 1992, an established UK charity in 1999, and a formal nonprofit in Australia in 2002.

Although I’m not a scuba diver (I love the ocean but even snorkeling makes me claustrophobic) I like this org’s approach.  Often people of privilege travel to far-off, exotic parts of the world with a new desire to protect the beautiful sites and experiences they’ve shared; this org capitalizes on that to bring those people into a community of conservationism instead of letting that passion dwindle.  Kudos!

Project AWARE’s 2016 annual and financial reports are available online, as are its annual and financial reports through 2011.  The org has a long list of partners, including several alliances and corporate partners.

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CIVIC

CIVIC is an acronym - short for Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement - and an organization I read about last week on Nation Swell, in an article called “When the American Dream Becomes Human Rights Abuse”.  I can of course imagine that the U.S. legacy of detainment and mistreatment of vulnerable and targeted populations (à la Japanese internment in WWII, slavery! and so on) persists and that we have a long way to go to getting sensitive situations like this right, but it’s not something that I see or hear about everyday.

The fact that 165 people have died in U.S. immigration detention definitely gets your attention, though.

CIVIC describes itself as “the national immigration detention visitation network, which is working to end U.S. immigration detention by monitoring human rights abuses, elevating stories, building community-based alternatives to detention, and advocating for system change.”  The org works to abolish detention centers by monitoring human rights abuses - conducting over 54,000 visits to 43 of the largest immigration detention facilities each year - and offering alternatives to the current system (basically community-based accompaniment programs like those currently set up for refugees).

The watchdog also advocates for legislative changes, such as limiting ICE’s expansion of detention centers, and operates a hotline for detainees to connect with family and to report any abuses.  According to its site, CIVIC volunteers process around 14,000 calls a month from all 210 of the country’s immigration detention centers.

CIVIC got its start as part of an Echoing Green fellowship in 2012.  It isn’t eligible for review by Charity Navigator because it’s annual income is too low.

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Project Everest

Project Everest is an Australian organization that develops “sustainable solutions to some of the world's most complex issues by designing and developing lean social enterprises.“

I learned about the org in a recent article on Women Love Tech - “Bridging the Gap – Smartphones in Third World Countries.” It seeks to fill the skills and education gap that holds back university students from employment while working on the SDGs: The org incubates projects to venture-status that give university students the training and experience they need while creating sustainable social enterprises that meet development goals.  According to its site,

Project Everest [tackles] problems ranging from agricultural productivity and food security to sustainable fuel consumption and improving access to clean drinking water... In an effort to accelerate the development of our operations, Project Everest is looking to involve capable and passionate university students as participants in the Project Everest Social Entrepreneurship Program.

Project Everest was founded in 2014.  According to its site (weirdly hidden at the bottom of a page on Values),

The staff involved in delivering on Project Everest’s projects have over 16 years of combined experience in this space. We are currently operating in Cambodia, Fiji, Timor-Leste and Uganda with research and development resources going into developing an environmental sustainability project in Vietnam and agricultural related projects commencing in the Philippines. Project Everest has sent groups of up to 30 overseas to its destination countries. However, there is organisational experience in sending contingents of up to 150 students at one time. The length of trips that Project Everest run are generally between 3-4 weeks.

Project Everest “focuses impact across three key areas- communities in the countries we operate, individual student participants and cross-cultural links” and uses crowdsourcing to choose its next projects for incubation.  Its ventures “work in developing areas, collaborating with local communities, in order to establish real social ventures aimed at solving complex issues.”  Its most well-established social enterprise venture is FarmEd (featured in the Women Love Tech article), which seeks to “solve world hunger through accessible agricultural expertise.”

PS: I feel like a goof because Project Everest is for-profit and this is a blog about nonprofits.  I decided to go ahead and include it in #52nonprofits because, despite having a non-charitable model, I like their mission and I wanted to understand better how they operate.  Because it’s not a nonprofit, Project Everest has zero discernible transparency about its financials on its website, but all of its student reviews on Facebook are positive so I guess it can’t be all bad?

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African Wildlife Foundation

African Wildlife Foundation is another gem I heard about from Raptim.  Founded in 1961, their mission is to ensure wildlife and wild lands thrive in modern Africa.

AWF has 38 projects across 17 countries, focusing on wildlife conservation, land and habitat protection, community empowerment, and economic development.  Although I love seeing the beautiful landscapes and wildlife on the website, I was most drawn to reading about the org’s economic development work.  The site explains the link of economic development to its conservation mission:

Economic development saves communities, which in turn saves land and wildlife... By setting up economic enterprises, incentivizing conservation, and investing in landscapes across the continent, AWF creates new opportunities for Africans to both improve their lives and embrace conservation. These ventures allow people to earn additional income, learn new job skills, get sustainability training, generate steady revenue for their communities, and be an important part of conservation efforts.

The fact that AWF doesn’t just focus on animals and land but also on the people who live with and use those same resources and giving them the knowledge and incentives to in fact be ambassadors for AWF too shows how well-rounded their program is and how well they’re doing to set themselves up for a long-term role in the continent.

AWF has a 4-star rating on Charity Navigator and a grade of A- on Charity Watch.  88% of AWF’s $27.7 million in annual expenses go to program costs.  It’s financials and 2016 annual report are on its website.

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350.org

Raptim is a “humanitarian travel” org where I’ve seen some pretty cool nonprofits featured lately.  I’m currently obsessed with their “30 Environmental NGOs We Should All Support” list, which is where I found this week’s nonprofit:

350.org is a grassroots-building nonprofit named after 350 parts per million - “the safe concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”  According to the website,

350 uses online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions to oppose new coal, oil and gas projects, take money out of the companies that are heating up the planet, and build 100% clean energy solutions that work for all. 350's network extends to 188 countries.

The org has three main strategies:

Keep carbon in the ground (”revoke social license of the fossil fuel industry, fight iconic battles against fossil fuel infrastrucutre, counter industry/government narratives”)

Help build a new, more equitable zero-carbon economy (”promote investment in community-based sustainability solution, support communities confronting the impacts of climate change & building climate solutions for an economy free of fossil fuels”)

Pressure governments into limiting emissions ("run local and national campaigns targeting leaders, capitalize on big regional and international events, like climate negotiations and economic summits”)

Founded in the US in 2008, 350 is now an international “collaboration of organizers, community groups and regular people” that “leverages people power to dismantle the influence and infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry.”

One of my favorite parts of their website is how simple they make the science of climate change:

(https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/808791393569243140)

350 has a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator.  The org’s annual report is part marketing masterpiece, talking about successes from climate-change activists the world over, part financial disclosure.  I wish it was easier to tease out 350′s precise impact, but I guess because of the nature of the org as a collaboration that might be hard to do.  With $10.8 million in expenses, 86% of which goes to campaigns, they definitely have the funds to make an impact.

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No Bully

Well, I can’t say a Burger King ad has ever made me cry before (even when I was pregnant and cried at just about everything):

The two people in the video who stood up to the teen bullies were a really powerful representation of the impact one person can make.  And as for the people who only stood up for Whopper Jrs... seriously, what’s their deal?

The ad is part of a partnership between Burger King and No Bully, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that “ignites student compassion to eradicate bullying and cyberbullying.”  Last year, Ashoka and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation named No Bully a Champion of Children’s Wellbeing.  

According to UNICEF, more than one in three kids are bullied on a regular basis every year.  Students and parents’ claims of bullying are often denied by teachers and school administrators, and when they are believed, the bullies are often suspended or expelled.  No Bully works with schools to lead culture change to promote inclusion and acceptance, rather than isolating and picking on differences - which they say has a 90% success rate at stopping instances of bullying.

There are four main steps to No Bully’s system:

Prevent and build an inclusive school culture

Interrupt and refer to a Solution Coach

Hold a Solution Team and follow up

Implement an empathy-building action plan

According to No Bully’s profile on the Ashoka Changemakers site, the No Bully system is innovative because:

It educates school leaders on how to lead culture change and mobilize the entire school community behind a new social vision statement about a "story of us.”

No Bully challenges the traditional bully-target dynamic by engaging teachers, bully-followers, and positive student leaders to identify solutions rather than focusing only on punishment.

The No Bully Solution Teams incorporate state-of-the-art scientific research that promotes empathy, cooperation, and compassion “when schools create the conditions that support these behaviors.”

It expands teachers and school staff’s capacity to address any mental health, familial, and social/emotional skill challenges linked to bullies and victims alike.

“It raises teacher consciousness of the diversity issues that drive bullying (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and religion) and gives them tools to support students in feeling safe and proud to develop a unique identity.”

Although I was neither a victim nor a perpetrator of bullying when I was growing up, I was really moved by the mission of this organization.  As has often been the case during this #52nonprofits project, though, I’m frustrated by the lack of data available: There’s no financials data or ratings from Charity Navigator.  Their impact report is hidden away in a sub-sub-page of their site when I think it should be more front and center.  No Bully became a 501(c)3 in 2009, which is plenty of time to get this part right.

PS: If you want to watch a great documentary about bullying, checking out “Bully” (2012):

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Chowberry

Thus far this year, social media has been my #1 resource for finding out about new nonprofits.  So thanks, Mashable, for this week’s featured org!

Chowberry works on an issue familiar to #52nonprofits: food, hunger, and nutrition.  It’s a cloud-based app that works to provide affordable and nutritious food to the millions of Nigerians who are malnourished and suffering from hunger.  Globally, 1/3 of food produced is wasted, and Chowberry helps to reroute the nearly expired food on retailers’ shelves destined for the trash to people in need.

Chowberry’s founder, Oscar Ekponimo, has received a lot of attention for his org: He was named one of Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leaders of 2017, a Rolex Award for Enterprise Young Laureate, and has been featured at the Mashable Social Good Summit and on CNN and the BBC. He grew up facing hunger and food insecurity and now that experience fuels his passion.

Chowberry reduces costs for retailers by eliminating wasted stock and increases consumer traffic to their stores.  It also creates important linkages between retailers and NGOs and their beneficiaries.  As explained in the Time article,

As packaged food items near the end of their shelf life, the app initiates discounts that grow larger the longer the products remain unsold. Local aid groups and other selected nonprofits are alerted about these discounts and also when supermarkets are giving food away for free. Food that would otherwise have gone in the trash is instead distributed to orphanages and needy families.

Although the premise is good, the cynic in me can’t help but think of potential safety implications.  But with the exception of foods for sensitive consumers (like baby formula), expiration dates are quasi-meaningless (at least in the US) - which is to say, the product doesn’t turn to mold or become inedible on day X+1.  So the opportunity to sell and continue the lifespan of useable food goods, especially for low-income people, is incredible - especially when that food is in need now and won’t be sitting in someone’s pantry for weeks or months to come.

Although Ekponimo’s story is compelling, it would be great to have more information about the organization itself: When did they start operations?  What’s their financial model?  What has their impact been in the communities where they operate?  None of the links in their website’s footer go anywhere, so it’s hard to get a transparent look inside the org.

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Refugees Welcome

I learned about this week’s nonprofit on the site GreatNonprofits (which I learned about when my old friends Outreach360 posted about their nomination!) as one of 10 Ways You Can Actually Help Syrian Refugees.  I don’t want to be another voice in the “there’s so much bad news” chorus, but it’s true - there’s so much bad news.  About Syria, about hurricanes, and politics... So it’s really nice to see some good news for once!

Called an “Airbnb for refugees”, Refugees Welcome helps integrate refugees into the communities where they live, rather than separating them into camps.  Regular people sign up, get matched with a refugee in need, find funding sources, and voilà!  Their new roommates are refugees but also... just roommates, living their lives like other regular people.

Refugees Welcome was started in 2014 with the belief that “that refugees should not be stigmatized and excluded within large-scale living facilities, but rather that we should offer them a warm welcome.”  The group doesn’t accept empty flats or houses (refers them instead to other community organizations), insisting that “it’s about living with people and getting to know them”, and rarely allows multiple people to one room.

The org is currently working in 14 countries and since its founding in 2014 has matched 1,044 people to shared flats.

Between Q2 2016 and Q2 2017, there were over 42,000 first time asylum applicants to Germany, Refugees Welcome’s founding country - this makes up 28% of all applicants in the EU Member States.  This org is clearly not a comprehensive solution for all the challenges faced by refugees today - fleeing their home country creates a unique set of problems, not to mention the administrative tasks in the new country, finding work, language barriers, etc. etc - but I like that this small nonprofit is taking a bite out of a huge problem.

Interesting aside: When you Google Refugees Welcome, you actually get a lot of results.  It’s inspiring to see the same sentiment being shared across so many countries, even if they’re separate organizations or movements.  It helps balance the xenophobic hatred you read in the comments of articles like this.

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New Jersey Reentry Corporation

I remember when I was a college student in North Carolina I saw a presentation by a man who’d been wrongfully imprisoned for something like 10 years and then being asked to write letters for clemency by the Amnesty International club.  I think that was probably my first introduction to how unjust the prison system is.  Although I haven’t seen it yet (insert shame emoticon here), seeing the trailer for “The 13th” documentary on Netflix brought it back a bit.  This is another example of privilege: Not knowing anyone in the prison system makes it easy to forget or ignore... 

But then this morning I got an email from Nation Swell with an article featuring the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, a non-profit agency operating in NJ/USA with a social mission to remove all barriers to employment for citizens returning from jail or prison.  The organization was founded after a successful pilot program in 2014 and focuses on the inadequacy and excessive cost of the modern prison system to promote public safety and rehabilitate offenders, and the essential role of gainful employment in reducing recidivism.  According to the site, “Participants receive individualized assessments and treatment plans that first address essential needs, including housing, treatment, mental health care, medical care, and access to health insurance and other public benefits to secure these essential needs.”

I wish the website had more information about outcomes and financials (I’d guess nearly 100% state-funded?), but as it’s only in its 3rd year, I guess that’s all to come.  It’s definitely sparked a new interest in the subject for me, though.

Check out their YouTube page for more info about the prison system and about their client success stories.

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Courage Worldwide

I learned about Courage Worldwide because its founder, Jenny Williamson, was recognized as a L’Oréal Woman of Worth.  I know a little bit about residential treatment centers (aka therapeutic group homes) and was interested to learn more about this organization and how it works with such a targeted population.

Based on the telling of its 10-year history (see the video below) and the recent response letter on its website, Courage Worldwide seems to have faced an undue burden of challenges and credits its success over those challenges to God and the faithful community.  Currently there is only one Courage House in operation (the one in Tanzania) as the one in California has been closed and the ones in Mississippi and Texas are still in development.

Courage Worldwide has a 3-star rating on Charity Navigator (2 stars for accountability and transparency and 3 stars for financials). 82% of expenses go to programs, while 10% goes to administration and 7% goes to fundraising.  The site talks up the program in Tanzania, but it only gets 4% of program expenses - which raises the question, now that the CA location is closed, what will be the 2017 financials look like?

There are some other skeptical reviews of the organization, that point out, for instance, that the organization earns revenue from state payments per resident while still fundraising and soliciting funds from the faith-based community (to pay for the $50k in Tanzania?)

It’s not clear what the future holds for Courage Worldwide, if they’re true con artists as some have claimed or just mismanaged.  It’s too bad to see such an important issue marred with such drama and controversy.