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Surgeons of Hope's purpose is to bring local access to modern surgical care for indigent children with heart disease in Latin America. By building sustainable state-of-the-art pediatric cardiac hospitals, Surgeons of Hope provides lasting care to these children. Our motto "It's not only what we bring. It's what we leave behind" underscores our commitment to educating and sharing skills with our training programs that will enhance understanding and treatment of care.

The Purple Feet Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit organization focused on getting students to think about their future. Each summer we host the thinc Program - a week-long residential experience for underserved middle school students from urban school districts.

OBAT Helpers works for the welfare, support, and rehabilitation of displaced and stateless people by providing programs to alleviate the daily suffering and burdens of thousands of Urdu speaking people (known as "Biharis") who are stranded in makeshift camps in Bangladesh. OBAT Helpers implements projects in education and vocational training, self- empowerment through micro-financing, health care with clinics, drinking water, proper sewerage, and emergency relief projects. The Biharis have been stranded in Bangladesh since it achieved independence from Pakistan in 1971. Referred to as, astranded Pakistanis,a this community was supposed to be repatriated to Pakistan after the two countries separated but most of them could not due to political complications. They are presently citizens of nowhere, unclaimed by either country and marked by the UNHCR as refugees, yet deprived of the rights of refugees. They still live in the camps/slums that were supposed to serve as their temporary shelter forty years ago. This population is scattered across sixty-six camps which house around 300,000 people. Anyone visiting these camps would see a family of 7-10 people sharing a living space of 8x10 ft.; open sewers and overflowing drains; a single toilet or two for one hundred or so people; innocent six or seven year olds who should be in schools, working for a living; high-infant mortality rates due to absence of medical facilities; lack of clean drinking water; terrible or no sanitation facilities and nothing but abject poverty. OBAT Helpers is the only organization in North America which is committed to helping the Biharis to become self-reliant and empowered through proper education, health care and micro financing projects. OBAT started with providing help to one camp in 2004, and now, it is improving the lives of people in more than 30 out of the total 66 camps, after just six years. This is almost half of the total number of camps in Bangladesh.

The Idjwi Island Education Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of providing a better school for children in the village of Buhumba on Idjwi Island in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Idjwi Island, located in Lake Kivu on the eastern border of the DRC, has seen a dramatic increase in its population in recent years, much of which is the result of refugees fleeing violence in Rwanda and the DRC. A substantial number of these new residents are children, including many orphans. Approximately 400 children attend the existing primary school. This makeshift school is overcrowded, has a leaky roof, and does not provide desks or even books for the students. In 2009, Them Nyamunongo, who grew up on Idjwi and now works in Washington, D.C., returned to visit family on the island. During his stay, he gave gifts to children that he met in Buhumba. As he spent time with the children, he learned about the extremely poor conditions at the school, including how it has become overcrowded due to the increase in refugees and orphans. The children told him that their true wish was for a school with a roof so that they were not sent home every time that it rained. When Them returned to Washington, D.C., he and his wife, Safi, approached a friend who is a director at a local preschool. From this meeting in late 2009, the Idjwi Island Education Fund was formed. In just over eighteen months, the Idjwi Island Education Fund has obtained property in Buhumba for the new school (which was donated by Them's family), met with and conducted a needs assessment with the director of the existing school, and provided some interim support for the facilities at the existing school. The Fund has recruited a board of directors that includes professionals with experience in international development and project management. The Fund has also conducted a series of fundraising events through which it has raised more than $15,000, in gifts ranging from $20 to 1,000, from more than 100 different donors. With this foundation in place, the Fund is intensifying its efforts on the design program for the new school, interviewing representatives of other non-governmental organizations with experience with similar projects in the region, and identifying local organizations to collaborate in the building process. The ultimate goal of this effort is to provide improved facilities, desks, books, and a safe-haven for more than 400 primary school children in this isolated community.

The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company seeks to explore the original theatrical practices of the acting companies of Shakespeare's time; to provide high quality productions of works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to regional theatre audiences; to provide local actors, directors, and stage managers the opportunity to work with these wonderful scripts and to receive training in an original practice approach to Shakespeare's plays; and to maintain an organizational philosophy in which theatre practitioners participate in the administration of the company on a regular basis.

Mission: Providing Sierra Leone's children and women with education, health care and other basic needs - empowering them to develop a healthy nation. Vision: A strong and self-reliant Sierra Leone.

Barakat is dedicated to providing exemplary basic education in Afghanistan and Pakistan that advances literacy and increases access to secondary education, particularly for girls and women.

Perched atop the buried pre-classic Maya city of Chocola, the village of Chocola on the back slopes of the volcanoes that form Lake Atitlan, is poverty stricken yet poised to become a model of cultural celebration and self-sufficiency. What it needs most is leadership training and technical support to develop its potential for diversified agriculture, archeological-tourism, health care for its families and education for its children. In its simplest terms, the mission of Seeds for a Future is to help this impoverished community plan and achieve prosperity based on balanced development principles that protect cultural tradition, the natural environment and preserve the Mayan and post-colonial history of the town. Seeds for a Future traces its roots to the period from 2003 through 2006 when many Earthwatch Institute volunteers came to Chocola to work on the archaeological site, which was then being excavated under license from the Guatemalan government. The volunteers embraced being associated with an important archaeological endeavor and learned about the vast pre-Classic Maya city that may hold keys to the early development of Mayan language, system of time and other fundamental cultural practices. At the same time, many of us fell in love with the community, its families and children and the fabulous, healthy mountain environment. As a result, groups of volunteers organized to help a community struggling with terrible poverty and deprivation to find a way to prosperity without destroying their way of life or the delicate balance of their natural environment. A vision emerged among a core of volunteers, Guatemalan visionaries and local leaders in which Chocola is seen as lifting itself into a more healthy and prosperous community based on its historic farming skills, adding value to its coffee, vegetable and cacao producers and through community cooperative action. In the future, there is great promise for the development of Chocola as a tourist destination based on archaeo-tourism; conservation of the natural resources in which the community is embedded and conservation of one of the first and greatest coffee processing plants (beneficios) established during the 1890s. But we also discovered in the early years that before Chocola could begin to realize its potential, the people needed training in identifying their own vision for the future, learning to work together and acquiring the technical skills needed for success. Overcoming 500 years of economic and social servitude is not easily done, but real progress is being made and our program has been recognized as ground-breaking, by the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and others. Four operating principles guide the work we do: We provide information and technical assistance to the people of Chocola to help them evaluate new opportunities and to plan. We provide direct funding and other forms of support for community requests for assistance on specific projects. These requests must come through Chocola leadership and must demonstrate sustainability and a willingness and capability of the community to provide part of the needed resources. All programs must aim at achieving self-sufficiency. We will help with programs that governmental agencies believe may be of value, provided that they too meet the same test as is noted for the community above. All such requests must be consistent with our mission to help the people and do no harm to either the Maya archaeological site or to the 1890 Coffee Finca site. In all of our programs we try to ensure that the participants become more engaged in the social and civil fabric, that they gain self confidence in their ability to change their own future for the better, and that we provide knowledge and coaching for a sufficient period of time that their activities and new ideas become self-sustaining in the community.

Story Tapestries is a leading arts service organization that serves our Montgomery County, Maryland community and beyond through: 1) Professional performances in storytelling, theater, dance, spoken word and other art forms in a variety of public spaces including community centers, local theaters, libraries, and schools; and 2) Workshops and in-depth training programs for adults and children to develop skills in various art forms, cultivating how to use the performing, visual, and literary arts to develop their voice, share their stories and increase their literacy, social-emotional and STEAM skills. We use the arts as a bridge to increase accessibility and equity in educational and community settings. Our aim is to establish coalitions of organizations and individuals prepared to support meaningful, long-lasting arts-based programs. Since becoming a 501c3 in 2010, we have reached more than 840,000 individuals collaborating with over 1,300 organizations. We present programs employing a team of 30 professional artists, who are also master educators. Our motto “Empower. Educate. Engage.” guides us to create collaborative arts programs that cater to communities’ needs through free or affordable performing arts events and workshops for families, children, community leaders, artists and educators. We collaborate with local arts and humanities organizations to design sustainable, multi-year arts programs with support from individual donors, foundations, corporations and government entities.

Her Equality Rights and Autonomy's (HERA) overall aims are: (1) to prevent trafficking and re-trafficking of young women; (2) to assist trafficked and other women survivors of violence, conflict, and exploitation build on the resilience they have demonstrated to achieve their ambitions for a better life; and (3) to engage the business community in countering trafficking and support women's entrepreneurship.

The Movimento de Saude Mental Comunitaria do Bom Jardim (MSMCBJ) was initiated in 1996 as part of the outreach of the Comboni Missionaries in the Northeast of Brazil. MSMCBJ seeks to improve the lives of the people of the economically impoverished peripheral regions of Fortaleza, primarily the area of Grande Bom Jardim. To imagine a mental health project in a peripheral neighborhood like Bom Jardim, where the majority of people live in at-risk circumstances - in which extreme poverty, violence, a lack of housing and basic sanitation, street children, and unemployment predominate - is to believe that, even within pain and suffering, we can harvest flowers. That is, personal and social realities can be transformed. The challenge that MSMCBJ has been overcoming throughout its years of community action has been to demonstrate that, through the Community Systemic Approach, working with people's self-esteem results in greater self-awareness, which empowers people to create paths of liberation, thanks to the sense of participation and co-responsibility that MSMCBJ activities favor. The Movimento de Saude Mental Comunitaria do Bom Jardim welcomes the human being, respecting their bio-psycho-socio-spiritual dimensions, promoting the development of their potential, through the restoration of human rights and cultural values, with the goal of improving the quality their personal, interpersonal, and community relationships, for the promotion of the gift of life. We welcome and accept all people, despite their social class, race, religion, gender, or age; We stimulate the development of quality personal, group, community, social, and ecological relationships; We believe in the diversity of cultural roots as a principle on the strengthening of identity for the liberation and development of the human being; We exist within and are nourished by a loving spirituality in the search for personal and social integration and liberation; We offer a space for affective listening as an essential therapeutic instrument for the awakening and development of life; We participate in the development of human potential with the vision of autonomy and co-responsibility in the construction of the project of life; We value and recognize the talents of the individual, encouraging transparent and affective relationships as an opportunity for personal and professional growth; We believe in a work relationship that encourages the overcoming of conflicts as a form of maturing and growth; We encourage the awakening of a new consciousness that cultivates the essential values of love, peace, and justice; We gladly welcome partnerships that help to realize these life-restoring actions.

Project1808 promotes sustainable community development in Kabala, Koinadugu District, Sierra Leone by aiding young students in their efforts to identify and address the root causes of poverty, public and environmental health challenges, and other community-identified concerns. Among our project's specific aims are the following: Fostering academic excellence and nurturing a resilient knowledge base through student mentoring, tutoring, internships, and teacher training programs. Stimulating curiosity, creativity, and innovation through student generated projects that enhance knowledge and encourage students to implement their ideas in ways that benefit their communities. Facilitating local and global partnerships for knowledge exchange, training for students, teachers and community members, student mentoring, and resources to sustain the community knowledge base Our Model Project1808 Model for sustainable development At the core of our sustainable community model is an investment in disadvantaged youth, schools, and their communities to form the building blocks as LEGOs of healthy communities in Sierra Leone and Africa. Through specific GLocal (Global and Local) partnerships, we practice the concept of thinking globally and acting locally, enhancing the exchange of knowledge, increasing the cultural competency, and expanding the worldview of all of our participants. Project1808 is committed to optimizing partnerships between educational institutions locally, within Africa and overseas, particularly with the involvement of other African countries. We want to bring back hope to youths (and whole communities) whose lives, homes, families, schools, infrastructure, institutions were destroyed by 11 years of war in Sierra Leone.