A Voice For the Voiceless

The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.

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AP Raises More Than $13,500 for Human Rights Advocacy, January 14, 2009

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AdvocacyNet 
News Bulletin 171 
January 14, 2009 
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AP Raises More Than $13,500 for Human Rights Advocacy

 

January 14, 2009, Washington, DC: Friends and supporters of The Advocacy Project (AP) donated $13,636 over the recent holidays to social justice projects in eight countries, from Bangladesh to Bosnia. 

 

The funds will provide Braille books to blind children in Bangladesh, support survivors of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, help women in Nepal to prevent the painful condition of uterine prolapse, and enable disadvantaged women in Malaysia to make baskets from recycled paper.

 

AP Peace Fellows played a key role in raising the money. Danita Topcagic, a former Bosnian refugee, served as an Peace Fellow last summer for the Blind Education and Rehabilitation Organization (BERDO), an AP partner that works with the visually-impaired in Bangladesh. 

 

Inspired by Ms Topcagic's work with blind children, staff members at Plural Investments LLC in New York donated $1,170 to BERDO. The money will pay for six months of internet communication technology (ICT) training at BERDO and provide Braille books for the BERDO school. AP has posted an interview with Rasheed Rahman, who graduated from BERDO's ICT training in 2006. Mr Rahman used his new skills to secure a job as a switchboard operator at the HSBC bank in Dhaka, at a salary of 10,000 taka a month ($148). "I am very much indebted to BERDO," he said, when interviewed by AP last summer.

 

Another AP Peace Fellow, Libby Abbott, recently raised $2,080 for the Women's Reproductive Rights Program (WRRP), an AP partner organization that seeks to treat and prevent uterine prolapse in Nepal. Ms Abbott served as a Peace Fellow in Nepal last summer, and displayed her photos and profiles of Nepali women at a coffee house in Sacramento, Calif. More than 800 people have visited the AP website to watch video interviews with Ms Abbott, Peace Fellow Nicole Farkouh and Samita Pradhan, who heads the WRRP in Nepal.

 

Survivors from the notorious 1995 massacre in Srebrenica also benefitted from AP's end-of-year fundraising. AP is promoting the Srebrenica Memorial Quiltwholesale cheap dvd, which is woven by members of the BOSFAM womens' group in Bosnia and commemorates victims of the massacre. The quilt has been exhibited at 21 events in the United States and Canada, and several events last fall generated another $1,555 for the BOSFAM weavers. In total, AP has raised $6,300 for the quilt project.

 

Late last year, AP also raised $452 from a sale of eco-baskets that were made by disadvantaged women from Salaam Wanita, an initiative of the Malaysian eHomemakers. The organization provides women with business skills and ICT training to help them become economically independent.
 

As well as supporting these four projects, donors gave $5,550 to assist AP's general program and another $2,879 to help AP's work in India, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bosnia and Peru. AP and its partners thank all who contributed, and will provide future updates on how the money is spent.

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