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October 04, 2003
Subject: A message to potential donors
Friends,
OneVillage Foundation is a speck of the convergence of global
consciousness that we are all one. We care about our future.
We know we must work together to have a future, so we have
worked to understand how to do so, and we have received a
vision, which we would like to share with you and the world.
This vision is to build on hope, toward a sustainable future.
It is to join the youth of the world, and especially the youth
leaders and the groups they serve, in a coordinated response
to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, especially for the children.
Our role in this is to identify and maximize the potential
of technologies to serve humanity, and to design holistic
strategies for eco-living – for living in harmony with
nature.
40 Million Hopefuls
It has been said that there are no meaningful celebrations,
anywhere, without children. Today there are 11 million AIDS
orphans worldwide – most of them in the developing world.
Just one child in distress can bring out amazing compassion
and hope in a community – and we are expected to have
40 million AIDS orphans in the global community by the year
2010. All these children are really our children – more
accurately, they are us, and our hope for the future.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote, "The deepest level
of communication is not communication, but communion. It is
wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and
it is beyond concept. Not that we have to discover a new unity.
We discover an older unity� We are already one. But we imagine
that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original
unity. What we have to be is what we are."
As part of the human family, we share in the responsibility
and the challenge of welcoming these children, supporting
them, and creating the conditions that will allow them to
build a sustainable future as they mature.
What we are Doing to Realize
the Vision
Technology Development
As one major step toward implementing the vision, we are
collaborating with the Dalai Lama Foundation, which is committed
to fostering peace and ethics in the world, and with Mincius
Sodas, an information technology incubator in Lithuania. Each
of us proposed a project to the Soros Foundation Open Society
Initiative.
The three projects complement each other. They support knowledge
sharing and communication to empower youth leaders, their
members, and the communities they serve. The oneVillage Foundation
proposal for a Community Knowledge Delivery System is on our
website. To review it, go to the Empowerment
Programs for Sustainability page and click on Community
Knowledge Delivery System. When you click on the link it will
download to your desktop. Links to descriptions of some of
the other oneVillage Foundation projects are there also.
The link to 40 Million Hopefuls gives you an Executive Summary
of oneVillage Foundation programs to assist AIDS orphans,
in a context of supporting the sustainability of their communities.
Links to descriptions of some of the other oneVillage Foundation
projects are there also.
Organizing Youth
We are advising and working with key youth groups in Africa
and Europe in the WSIS Coalition. This coalition is preparing
a unified message to the World Summit of the Information Society
(WSIS): that a coordinated global initiative to both confront
the impacts of HIV/AIDS and create sustainable economies,
starting in developing nations, is the top priority of the
youth of the world.
Building Community Awareness of HIV/AIDS Prevention and
Care
OneVillage Ghana Director Kafui Prebbie is organizing Sports
People That Care, the second annual HIV/AIDS and AIDS orphans
benefit in Winneba, Ghana. It is set for December 1, 2003,
World AIDS Day.
Other Projects
- 40 Million Hopefuls – Executive
Summary of program to assist AIDS orphans in a context of
supporting the sustainability of the community
- oneVillage Unity Center design
package
- Catch IT Young awareness proposal
- Ecotourism program in Winneba,
Ghana
- Harvard-Columbia ecology and economy
integration initiative
- Humanitus Daily commentary on Humanitus
Radio
How you can make a difference!
We have totally committed ourselves to bring the vision
to life, so it can be shared. Now we ask for your support.
We invite you to invest in building the infrastructure of
hope in the towns and villages of Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and
South Africa – and beyond. Your investment in any of
the following areas will ultimately save many lives, by enabling
us to create social enterprises that are strong enough to
overcome inertia and doubt, and to demonstrate the capacity
of empowered youth at a level that cannot be ignored.
$14,000 per month: bridge funding to support our preparatory
work.
$30,000 each: build, equip and staff Unity Center prototypes.
$47,860: matching contribution for the $200,000 requested
in the Soros Foundation OSI grant proposal. Pledges and contributions
will be held until the grant awards are announced. The announcements
are scheduled to be complete by December 10, 2003.
Our needs are immediate – the situation of AIDS orphans
is critical. Please take a look at the work, take a look in
your heart, and talk with us about how you would like to make
a difference in our world. You can reach us using the contact
information below.
Sincerely,
Joy Tang
Founder
Children are our teachers in society; if we learn to listen
we can also heal ourselves. That is good reason to hope for
the future. |