ORAF's Appeal - Message from the Archbishop

India’s Disabled and Desperate Children are in Your Hands.

India not only has a teeming population, but massive challenges for children with disabilities and hardship, like Mariam ….

As I’m sure you can imagine, India’s poverty is a huge barrier to a child’s future and their opportunity for an education, but one in ten children also face the added obstacle of a disability – children like Mariam, a little 8 year old girl with seizures.

Please throw your support behind this appeal for the Archbishop’s Overseas Relief and Aid Fund – and for our ongoing work through partnerships like these.

You may like to consider joining the Archbishop’s Monthly Partners in Care, regular friends who stand by our ongoing work, knowing that the love of Christ needs to be sown every month of the year!

Yours sincerely

Peter F Jensen
Archbishop of Sydney

To make a donation please visit: http://www.abau.org.au/ or phone: 1800 653 903

Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!

A Guinness World Record was shattered last weekend when 173,045,325 citizens gathered at over 3,000 events in more than 120 countries, demanding that their governments eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!", now in its fourth year, has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest mobilization of human beings in recorded history, an increase of about 57 million people over last year.

The photo is of our Stand Up event held last Friday.

Human Development Report 2009

UNDP's annual Human Development Report was recently launched. The 2009 edition is titled “Overcoming barriers: human mobility and development”, focusing on the underlying inequalities in migration issues both within and beyond borders. The report takes into account the impacts of migration on country or place of origin and destination as well as the question how migration can foster human development. In addition the HDR offers the comprehensive overview of Human Development Indicators for 2009. To read either the summary or the full report please visit: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/

Sudan – Micro Enterprize Development Project

The Micro Enterprize Development (MED) project goal is to improve individual and family well being in the 3 counties of Greater Yei (Yei River, Lainya and Morobo), through the learning and benefits derived from participation in group savings and loan associations (VSLAs).

This will involve improving financial management and credit access for 3000 VSLA members and their households in Greater Yei. This is being achieved through the formation of around 48 more groups and the selection of 16 from the current facilitators to receive further training and to take on more responsibilities.

ORAF has been funding this project for over 12 months and already the benefits of the project are clear as our partner agency, ACROSS, shows us in this feedback

“The Morebongo women group management committee members being helped by MED trainer Mr. Joseph Mawa to calculate and audit their funds for share out. Mrs. Abawu Hellen (in red blouse on right) purchased a sewing machine with her first dividends realised from the group and established her self and now says she is able to pay school fees of her two daughters. The first daughter has joined Senior one and second daughter is in primary seven.

Hellen says this programme has given her hope of educating her three children who were abandoned by their father ten years ago. She was not even sure if their father was alive (though she hears that he is) but since never showed up to check on his children this was enough to tell her that he was dead.

According to Hellen she never got married again for fear of being neglected again. Throughout her single life she was puzzled on how to educate her children, but the MED programme has come to her aid. With the trainings she continues to get from MED she now has a future for her children and will pass this knowledge to her children through investing on them in education and telling them how beneficial it is to be self-reliant.”

Refuge Egypt update

In their August newsletter Refuge Egypt shares their achievements for 2009:

- 396 new refugees have been registered with the Emergency Team, 80% of them Sudanese.
- Urgently needed clothing has been distributed to 1,049 people.
- 5,515 people have received much-needed food packages.
- 164 trainees have completed the Domestic Cleaning Training Program.
- The Employment Center has been able to find positions for 364 people, 80% of them women.
- 1,726 infants have been monitored at the Well Baby Clinic, which has also received 275 new clients.
- The Well Child Clinic, which was started just months ago in July of this year, now has 228 clients.
- Workers at Refuge-Egypt’s clinic in Arbaa W Nus have completed over 3,000 consultations.
- The Youth Department has hosted a conference for teens and youth.
- Registration at the Happy Child Preschool has increased to 60 children
- The Zamalek Clinic has provided consultations for 7,140 people.

ORAF is contributing funds to the Health & Nutrition program.