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History >> Back in August 2002 a friend of mine [Adam] started up the "Ten Dollar Club" after attending the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. He collected 10 dollars each from his friends, colleagues, and family, and sent off this money to a project in a developing country. He has been doing this successfully for close to two years now, and getting more donations each time. So far his Ten Dollar Club has purchased solar cookers for elderly and disabled refugees in Kenya, rehabilitated a water well in Nicaragua, bought warm bedding for the elderly in Tibet, funded school lunches and a community garden in Belize, enabled the purchasing of medicines for a hospital in The Gambia, and supported a part-time doctor and painting teacher at a school for disabled and orphaned children in Vietnam. Seeing as there are plenty of worthwhile projects in Kenya that could use a little boost (without having to wade through heaps of paperwork and paying overhead costs), and that as some of us make some good coin, I thought it would be good to see if we could get a similar initiative off the ground - as one recipient of Adam's money noted, the Ten Dollar Club is "deeply humanitarian in its conception, profoundly elegant in its simplicity, and hugely practical in its delivery".[Wendy Jackson/UNEP] |