The Kurdish Human Rights Project, MicroLoan Foundation and READ International are on the shortlist for the Charity Awards 2010.
Kurdish Human Rights Project
Bringing justice to torture survivors
From as early as World War 1, the Kurds have been subject to genocide, crimes against humanity and a host of other human rights abuses including systematic torture and ill-treatment, ethnic cleansing, displacement and prohibitions on their culture and language.
The Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP) was established in 1992 in response to violations occurring across the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus. KHRP seeks to deliver lasting change through the promotion of human rights under international law, so that survivors and their advocates can better identify acts of torture and bring legal complaints. By pioneering the use of personal petitions to the European Court of Human Rights in Turkey, KHRP helped to make those violations a matter of record in the
form of court judgments.
KHRP also encouraged the Charity Commission to accept that the ‘procurement of the abolition of torture by all lawful means’ is a legitimate charitable objective. This has enabled other UK charities to include this in their mandate, bringing justice to countless Kurdish torture survivors.
The work of KHRP has inspired the global community to take action. A spokesperson for a Turkish NGO says: “Every single day we receive a petition from Kurdish people who have been forcibly removed from their land, whose relatives have disappeared or have been killed, or who have been tortured. We in turn approach KHRP, and ask them to evaluate the information and decide whether legal mechanisms exist to highlight the issue and provide
redress for victims.”
MicroLoan Foundation
Investing in the entrepreneurs of Southern Africa
When the MicroLoan Foundation first met Grace, her story was a familiar one for rural families in Malawi. Grace and her husband were living in a mud hut and struggling to support their three children. Grace had started a grocery stall, but did not have the capital to buy sufficient produce to make much of a profit.
After approaching MicroLoan, Grace received business training, mentoring and loans to help her grow her business. The family income increased from £31 to £185
per week. Grace is now able to feed her children three meals a day and ensure they receive schooling. Not everyone is as fortunate as Grace. Some 40 per cent of the
Malawi population is living in poverty with 94.5 per cent located in rural areas, the majority being subsistence farmers whose income depends on rain-fed production.
MicroLoan provides women with access to business education and small loans to start profitable enterprises that can provide for the needs of their family. “The benefit of giving our clients a hand up, not a hand-out, is that they experience the material benefits and dignity of self-sufficiency and being able to care for their own children,” says Ben Frampton, fundraising officer at MicroLoan.
“It is clear that rural households in Malawi need to generate more income and diversify their livelihoods to escape poverty. MicroLoan recognises the impact that a small amount of money can have on the lives of the poorest.”
READ International
Achieving development through the power of education
In Tanzania and Uganda, children are taught from an English syllabus very similar to that of the UK, yet there is a severe lack of educational resources available.
Some 4,500 miles away in the UK, new editions of books replace the old each year, and as a result good-quality textbooks considered to be ‘out of date’ end up in landfill.
The solution seemed obvious for Robert Wilson, READ International’s founding director, who first came across the problem while teaching in Tanzania on a ‘gap year’. “READ delivers collaborative, student-led initiatives to improve access to education across the world and increase youth participation in the global community.”
READ has come a long way since its humble beginnings with rapid growth during its first six years. In its initial year of piloting the READ Book Project, student volunteers collected disused textbooks from local secondary schools, fundraised
to cover the costs of sending the books to Tanzania and sorted them to ensure only the relevant, good quality books were sent.
The project has since expanded, now boasting 22 READ Book Projects across UK universities. This is supported by the small staff READ team of eight, together with over 750 volunteers. READ International has sent over 564,000 textbooks to East Africa, saving over 550 tonnes from landfill and contributing to the daily education of 260,000
children in Tanzania.
