Global Community Partners: Change Makers: Providing "Change" (One community at a time)

Friday, June 20, 2008

Change Makers: Providing "Change" (One community at a time)

One of our fund-raising campaigns in the past several months has been collecting spare change--nickels and pennies mostly, but whatever that jangles in our pockets and coin-purses--and putting it in a jar (or ziplock for me) to contribute to our Providing "Change" campaign. This was what we put together and circulated for this campaign:

WHAT: Pennies and nickels (or all the change you can spare!)
WHO: Global Community Partners for Kings Victory High School
WHERE: Blantyre, Malawi (Africa)
WHY: To “change” a harvested maize field into a soccer field for the youth (many who are orphaned by the AIDS crisis)
HOW: By collecting as much change as possible to raise $600 – the cost for “changing” this field
WHEN: Deposit your change in jar/bag provided, or for collection information contact Eun-sil at: euneeq@gmail.com

So we have actually made our initial collection and I am amazed at the progress we have made towards our goal! There have been many change-makers who have contributed to this campaign; in no particular order, they are: Jeremy, Rana, Sylvia, Megan, Kay, Michelle, Yoon, Sung, Eunja, and a few other anonymous people. But in this entry, I just want to thank one particular change-maker: Megan, who is 9 years old. She collected $185.91 to contribute to this fund-raising campaign, and I am inspired by her! I know that I will not be the only one who is thankful for the change she has contributed, in more ways than one! And I will most certainly share this with the students at Kings Victory High School this August. We have collected a lot of change and will do a counting in a few days to see just how close we are to our goal. I am certain that we have at least $350 which is a bit over the halfway mark of our $600 goal. So if you are collecting, please continue! If you are not and you want to contribute, please begin!! You will always have an opportunity to be a change-maker, even if it's not with this particular goal!

And to share with you, this is our 9-year-old change-maker, Megan, who was happy to hear how much she had raised and also happy to see some pictures of the school where a soccer field will be created halfway around the world:

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Our Vision

Global Community Partners’ vision is to build partnerships in developing community around children all over the world. Supporting this vision are our guiding values that are integral to our organization. All our guiding values are based upon a way of work and life as followers of Jesus. We are a Christian organization that believes in one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and believe further that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. We believe that Jesus is an integral part of our lives and in Him, we see the example of how we are to care for those around us. Our work is guided by the following principle beliefs:

Children’s Rights

- We believe that children are vitally important to the improvement of our future. As delineated in the UN Convention of Children’s Rights and other such documents, children have rights that must be valued and protected, particularly in those places where poverty and crises exist.

Child-focused Community

- We believe that his/her environment, immediate, and removed, influences every child. Therefore, focus on children must also include education of the immediate community and raising the awareness of the global community. We believe in providing tools for the immediate and global communities through education, support, and training.

Community Partnership

- We believe in partnerships, partnerships with existing communities to help build a stronger, empowered community that can in turn help empower their children. We believe in building relationships in these communities and we believe in long-term goals rather than short-term goals, or one-time trainings, meaning that we are willing to work on an on-going basis with communities to provide input, education, and training on a long-term and on-going basis. These community partnerships include governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and other entities.

Respect for Culture

- We respect the cultural diversity of the global community and therefore believe in working with each community on an individual basis to incorporate cultures and traditions in coming up with a viable way to improve community. We believe in being responsible and maintaining respect for the communities we work with, the culture, the traditions, and the environment.

Overall Principle

- We believe that people, particularly children and their families, are integral and central to our work and to that end, we commit to uphold these guiding principles in the presence of God and of each other. We believe that there is no substitute for the manner in which we think, work, and live and our commitment to these guiding values must be evident in our interaction with each other, the communities we work with, and the global community at large.
Targeted beneficiaries will ultimately be children, but beneficiaries will also include the community around these children – families, immediate and extended, as well as other adult community members. Activities that GCP will undertake include research, program development, and implementation of programs as well as monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of program.