What Can You Do to Help Our World?: Dreams Turned into Reality

By Barbara Wolf and Margaret Anderson

What Can You Do To Help Our World? is packed with ideas for you to spark a dream that can be turned into a reality. Salva Dut dreamed of drilling water in the desert. He started with nothing and today he has drilled many. Rigoberta Menchu Tum wanted to help youth and today she has a Nobel Peace Prize. Lend-A-Hand India teaches job skills. UN Women helps women. The book has ideas on education, health, building skills,
preservation of the environment, garden projects, and much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468557947

Book preview

WHAT IF? FOUNDATION HELPS HAITIANS

Note from Barbara Wolf and Margaret Anderson: We want to begin our book with a success story.

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After returning from a volunteer trip to Haiti, Margaret Trost of USA had a dream–feeding hungry people–and she turned it into a reality. She created an organization called WHAT IF? FOUNDATION which is dedicated to providing food and education to impoverished children in Haiti.

Since 2000, her foundation has partnered with members of the Ti Plas Kazo community in Port-au-Prince. Their efforts began with serving meals to a few hundred children on Sundays. Today her foundation funds 5,000 meals each week, 200 school scholarships, an after-school program for 200 youth, and a summer camp for 550 children.

You may wonder what is the source of her foundation’s name.  She chose the words What If because they convey possibility. During one of her visits to Haiti, she asked children to share their what if ideas.  One small boy said, What if we had hoses?  Why, he was asked and he answered, Hoses would provide water and would help cut down on the need to walk miles to get it.

In her book, On That Day Everybody Ate (Koa Books, 2008), Margaret Trost describes how she watched during a wind and rainstorm a young teenage boy with a bar of soap in his hand take advantage of a stream of water pouring off a roof in order to give himself a thorough shower before returning home.

Most of the diseases that kill Haitian children come from drinking contaminated water. Bacteria thrive in untreated, unfiltered water, rusty pipes, and dirty faucets. Some of the kids I saw carrying water on the side of the road were using old paint or oil containers as their buckets.

 It’s even harder to find potable water in the countryside. People climb up and down the mountainside to dip their jugs in rivers and streams. During part of the year, some of these natural water sources dry up, making the search for water even more difficult."

The level of poverty in Port-au-Prince was on a scale that Margaret had never seen before, but her Haitian colleagues taught her an important Creole saying that inspired her to take action and persevere. Piti piti na rive. This means little by little we will arrive. These words of wisdom guide Margaret in her work with the What If? Foundation, and remind her how important it is to keep taking steps toward positive change, even though they are small.

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Margaret Trost, What If? Foundation

1563 Solano Ave., #192, Berkeley, California, 94707, USA.

Telephone: [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

http://www.whatiffoundation.org

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Dear Reader, you can write your notes here.

LEND A HAND FOUNDATION

From Barbara and Margaret:

We believe the LEND A HAND FOUNDATION (LAHF) began with a dream that led to a reality. No matter where you live in this world, perhaps youth in your community need help and the California-based concept will help you form your own project.

LAHF is a relatively new foundation focusing on impoverished youth in California. The foundation worries about high truancy and drop-out rates among high school students living in shelters or in crowded conditions because their families have lost housing and must move in with others.

To stimulate a return to school, the foundation has a program to provide backpacks with school supplies in them. Another program called the Teen to Adulthood Project works to improve youth self-esteem by teaching them life skills in workshops and by escorting them to sporting and cultural events.

A Stay In School Program has recently opened to additionally inspire high school students to continue with their education. Mentors monitor their attendance and their grades and they are encouraged to attend Saturday morning workshops as well as to participate in a specific community service project that will help build self-esteem and confidence.

Lend A Hand Foundation

8105 Capwell Drive, Oakland, California, 94621, USA.

Telephone: [phone]

[e-mail]

http://www.lendahandfoundation.org/wordpress/

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Dear Reader, you can write your notes here.

LEND-A-HAND INDIA

Millions of youth living in rural areas of India migrate to cities to search for work. Too often they are disappointed because they do not find work. The cause can reflect their school education that has not provided them with skills needed in job markets they are trying to enter.

LEND-A-HAND INDIA attempts to train both rural and urban young adults in skills that will be useful for entering job markets in the areas where they live. For example, rural youth living in a poultry raising area will be given skills pertaining to that occupation. Young city adults will be given skills suitable for them to find a job where they are living. Training is given in twenty different skills, such as carpentry, nursing assistance, construction, garage mechanic, electric maintenance, farming, water harvesting, and waste management.

http://www.lend-a-hand-india.org/

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From Margaret:

http://www.lend-a-hand-india.org/photo_swadheen.php will give you an excellent glimpse into the vision and accomplishments of Lend-A-Hand India students who present their goals for the future–becoming a teacher, starting businesses, beginning a ground water testing lab for a village, etc.

One picture shows the Mechbull, ‘mechanic bull’, a mini-tractor designed by a 15-year-old that is small and cheap and can perhaps be affordable for poor farmers. Another picture shows a dome house that is inexpensive to build as well as earthquake-proof.

http://www.lend-a-hand-india.org/photo_catalyst.php has pictures of Project Catalyst, a community program training young men and women. Another picture shows a group of proud graduates who have received their diplomas for Basic Rural Technology.

Lend-A-Hand India is based in New York with London and Indian offices.

Lend-A-Hand-India

784 Columbus Avenue, #10G, New York, New York, 10025, USA.

Telephone: [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

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ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD

The goal of ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD (OLPC) is to provide low-cost computers to children living in remote areas of the world. Usually these children are poor and have little or no education. An estimated nearly two billion are inadequately educated. One in three do not complete the fifth grade and many do not receive any education at all.

One Laptop per Child wants to give these children, ages five to eight, a computer that can be easily carried. These computers would be compatible with each other as well as the Internet

Today in South America there are about two million children learning with this laptop computer project and another 500,000 in Africa and elsewhere in the world. In Uruguay laptops are provided to every child in elementary school. Other laptop projects are in Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Rwanda, Gaza, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ethiopia and Mongolia.

One Laptop Per Child.

P.O. Box 425087, Cambridge Massachusetts, 02142, USA.

Email: [e-mail]

http://one.laptop.org/

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From Margaret:

http://olpcmap.net/ is a world map showing where these laptops are being used. Someday I want to look at a world map showing children using laptops everywhere.

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HOLE-IN-THE-WALL EXPERIMENT

Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist, has brought to reality his dream of educating poor children in India.

He discovered that children can teach themselves by using a computer. In New Delhi, he connected a computer to a high-speed data connection and embedded it in a concrete wall that was next to a garbage dump used as a bathroom for the poor. Then he walked away.

Sugata Mitra himself used a remote computer and video camera mounted on a nearby tree to record what was about to happen.

Children quickly learned how to use the computer, and by doing so, they learned to use English because the computer programming was in that language.

At first, one child tried to use the computer and he was able to understand how to use it. Then he called in three of his friends, slum children, to join him. They stood in front of