Most everyone has heard about the crisis in Darfur. The Sudanese military and a militia group called the “Janjaweed” are committing modern-day genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups in the Darfur region of Sudan. The United Nations estimates 450,000 have died in the conflict and nearly 2.5 million people have become refugees. In addition, a bitter Civil War has marred Sudan for years, pitting the mostly Muslim and Arab north against the predominately Christian and animist south. Because of the war, thousands of non-Arabs have fled Sudan into Egypt and other neighboring countries to escape persecution, slavery and death.

Within the past two years, thousands of refugees, both from Darfur and southern Sudan, have fled across the Egyptian border into Israel, fleeing the Khartoum government’s regime of genocide and ethnic cleansing. These asylum seekers tell horrific recounts of how they were treated along the way, and many of them fear for their lives of being sent back to Egypt or, even worse, the conflict areas in Sudan. Currently, the State of Israel has given Darfur refugees temporary residency, however for the South Sudanese, of which there are currently about 3,000, the process of extending their stay in is notably more difficult. Israel, having no mechanism to absorb these refugees, has relied on Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to take families off the streets and give them shelter, food, and medical care. But the community of southern Sudanese refugees in Israel remains optimistic, and rather than remain trapped inside Israeli prisons, or outside on the streets, they have expressed a deep interest in returning to Sudan after receiving vocational training necessary for their reintegration.

The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (www.icej.org), in partnership with 6 other humanitarian organizations, has launched an emergency effort to assist Israel in caring for hundreds of Sudanese refugees who have fled into the country from Egypt this year. As part of their humanitarian effort, ICEJ and other organizations are on the threshold of a very exciting, and worthwhile, program where they will provide vocational training for the Sudanese that wish to be repatriated back into Sudan. Southern Sudan currently relies on semi-skilled labor from Kenya and Uganda, as their own population is largely illiterate and unskilled. Providing vocational training to these refugees in Israel is key to the success of their repatriation, as the courses (which include truck driving, mechanics, and computer science) will give the returnees an employable skill and hopefully an income back at home. Furthermore, the introduction of semi-skilled labor into the region of southern Sudan will also have prolonged affects on the country as a whole, keeping it more stable overall, and hopefully helping to avoid another period of conflict and war.

GO! is proud to sponsor ICEJ in their effort to care for, and provide vocational training to, the thousands of South Sudanese refugees currently seeking asylum in Israel. On January 4, GO! directors will be traveling to Tel Aviv, Eilat, and a northern Druze village, in order to visit several of the most at-need areas, including shelters for single parents, unaccompanied minors, victims of rape, and pregnant women, among others. Our immediate goals on the ground are to provide food vouchers to several hundred of these Sudanese refugees, as well as raising funding for a traditional Orthodox Christmas dinner in honor of an Eritrean refugee community, also located in the area. On January 7, we will travel north to visit a village with several shelters that have been involved with the Sudanese since they first arrived in Israel, as well as a reception center that has been set up for the most vulnerable women and children refugees.

GO! not only plans to provide food and support for those in need, but also to assess the need for future project funding. Implementing a repeatable vocational training program for these refugees will be crucial to their successful reintegration, as well as to establishing a stable and prosperous future for Sudan. GO! has also pledged to donate 15 laptop computers to be made available for students planning to undergo vocational computer training program. The need for assistance with this program, as well as for specific course funding, is growing larger every day and can truly make a difference in the lives of these refugees. If you would like more information regarding the Bridges to Sudan project, or if you would like to help fund vocational training for Sudanese refugees in Israel, please contact us or donate directly using the form below.

Los Angeles is a city that even the most cosmopolitan of travelers can find exhausting and confusing. The city of lights, stars, immigrants, champagne breakfasts, martini lunches, Roman inspired bulimic dinners, endless roads followed by endless traffic, clueless beautiful people, and $15 bagels can all be seen in a span of 24 hours. As you imagine this sort of harried scenario, take a moment to consider what it must be like for the 6 Africans that had just flown in from Rwanda on their first journey to the United States.

After a 7 hour bus ride following a subsequent 34 hour flight, the Rwandans entered the world of Beverly Hills to immediately participate in the Los Angeles AIDS walk. As an immigrant here myself, I find it difficult to explain what the United States really is even to accustomed travelers that are coming for a first visit. The country is so massive and multi-faceted that how could one city really capture it?

What would you show?

Chicago?

New York?

Rutherford, Ohio?

Either way, whatever your conceptions of the United States may be, it’s pretty safe to say that Beverly Hills as your first foray into the first world is daunting and not representative of America AT ALL. It’s like taking a sheltered young child, giving him 3 espressos and then setting him loose in the biggest toy-store in the world where all the toys are free to see but way too expensive to buy. And even if you could afford them, they probably are over-priced and full of plastic.

In short, it’s culture shock on a massive scale.

Bartlomiej Skorupa, Megan Gilpin, Lisa Steckmest, and Kyle Miller

Bravely facing the Botox and smog elements of the metropolis behemoth that is Los Angeles, the Rwandans all managed to arrive in time for the AIDS walk. That is more than your correspondent could say for himself, who showed up rather dreadfully late. As Team Rwanda grew from 15 people to 40 over a course of one day, I found that getting such a number of people to meet in crowd of over 100,000 was not going to be easy. Still, the number of our team that showed up for the walk was really impressive and GO! would like to thank all those who made the event a GREAT success!!

And so our crew of 40-odd Los Angeles transplants joined 100,000s of people marching down the sunny roads of West Hollywood. Some were walking as individuals, some were walking as teams, but all were walking as a united front of humanity against a devastating disease.

The Rwandans not only managed to brave this bizarre parade of noisy humanity, they also bolted ahead of the crowd. As we did our best to keep our disparate team of 40 together, they plowed ahead seeing the world through an entirely new lens. A lens of unification, a celebration of life, and of hope.

Vanessa Starke, Paul Schapiro, Bartlomiej Skorupa, and
Nora Johnson walk The Walk

As this was all occurring, we found time to discuss the matters of the co-op that the Rwandans manage. They are here predominantly to attend crisis counseling sessions (see project One Thousand Hills) but GO! is also sponsoring a portion of the project to fund their own co-ops that they operate out of Rwanda. And this, I found out, is what made their arrival the day before the AIDS walk so serendipitous.

The co-op they run in Rwanda is specifically for those people that suffer from AIDS.

And here’s how it works.

Whether you live in the First or Third world, a harsh reality of lending money to someone with AIDS is that there is a considerable risk that the person will not survive long enough to be able to pay back the loan. It is a cold and logical fact that the world of capital lending simply needs to take into effect.

That being said, this makes loans for AIDS victims quite difficult to get. Add to this that many of the victims cannot afford the food to help make their drug treatments work (most anti-viral drugs need food not only to be more efficient but also to not simply vomit the contents) and your problem gets larger. Now multiply this by an entire continent that is being ravaged by the disease, this now becomes a massive bloc of people that cannot only get capital to invest in sustainable development, they are also literally dying in large numbers.

Enter Costo, a visionary local thinker with a brilliantly simple plan.

Costo is one of the Rwandans I had the privilege of meeting during the 5 kilometer walk and who we are partnering with in their quest to provide a neglected group of people secure and feasible micro-loans.  Born in Rwanda, Costo has a business degree with a specialty in micro-finance. With the core issue being that individual AIDS victims cannot secure loans, Costo helps to form small co-ops of a few people that apply for the loan as a group.

The risk of repaying the loan is marginalized, capital is distributed, and sustainable development is maintained. And, most importantly, a stigmatized and neglected group is provided with money they need to plow their farms, invest in small business, and be able to buy the food and medication they need to over-come a devastating disease.

For the project One Thousand Hills, GO! is donating five laptops (provided by Mac Service) to keep operations flowing in Rwanda and is also providing an initial investment of $500 for some of the micro-loans. If successful (we will rate on various financial/operational metrics to be announced later on), GO! would like to continue fund-raising to sponsor Costo in his noble cause.

With the project in hand and the finish line in sight, Team Rwanda began saying their good-byes to each other as we approached the end of the day. One small logistical issue remained, that being the transfer of the lap-tops to the Rwandans before I made my way back to San Francisco. With limited time, we made a quick plan for the pick-up.

As the sun began to set on the Sunday of my departure from Los Angeles, my extremely helpful and talented volunteer for the weekend, Nora Johnson, and I awaited the Rwandans to give them this donation. Neither of us knew quite what to expect as the day had flown by in a series of events neither one of us had yet begun to comprehend.

What awaited us as we lingered patiently with 5 laptops in our hands was a simple moment of joy, a closing to the weekend that will resonate through my mind for weeks to come.

Transported by mini-van over the sprawling metropolis after the AIDS walk,  Costo and the Rwandans pulled up to our meeting point. Escorted by Marion and Keith (our very kind friends that had organized the counseling, flights, and accommodations for the Rwandans), they quickly let me know that they had kept this portion of the project as a surprise.

In short, the Rwandans had no idea of our intentions to donate neither these laptops nor the money.

The van pulled up and we all said hello to each other again, all parties looking exhausted from the walk but also radiating satisfaction from a very fulfilling day. As the Rwandans shuffled out of the packed mini-van, Marion and Keith introduced me and I gave them a brief summary of our intentions to sponsor their co-op and handed out the lap-tops to each of the Rwandans.

And that’s when it really hit me.

After dizzily bumbling through the culture shock of Los Angeles, I never had the time to reflect on the true purpose of the trip. Worrying about flights, organizing rides, and acting like a spoiled child with Nora driving me to and fro, I neglected the true human aspect of the trip.

These people need our help and I could never have done this on my own. It was all the people that chipped in their time and efforts in whatever way they could that made this moment materialize.

All the travails and difficulties of each our respective efforts to arrive at this random gas station meeting point in Los Angeles culminated at this solitary moment of new beginnings.

As they held their new lap-tops for the first time, a human joy that we all share radiated in their eyes and their smiles. I looked at Nora and then at Keith and Marion and saw the same look. I saw the inner beauty of the City of Lights.

Los Angeles made sense.

The lights are not on the streets.

They shine in the hearts of the people.

*** Special thanks goes to Marion MacGillvray, Keith Alpaugh, Kyle Miller, Lisa Steckmest, Julia Dorn, Paul Schapiro, Vanessa Starke,  Robert Baker, Megan Gilpin, Dana Lund,  and Nora Johnson for making the walk and this project a great success.

GO! is proud to support Marion MacGillivray and her daughter Genevieve in their efforts to launch counseling programs for survivors of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.  With their innovative approach to dealing with this indescribable atrocity, and in partnership with Byron Katie of The Work (www.thework.com), they have a set up a pilot program for 5 Rwandan genocide survivors turned community leaders to come to Los Angeles for counseling and training this October. These survivors will be attending sessions for nine consecutive days with Byron Katie herself to obtain the tools required to help them process and cope with their tragic experiences.  Through her program, Byron Katie has found a unique and inspiring goal in her life: to teach people how to end their own suffering using a powerful process of inquiry, ultimately allowing people to identify and un-learn stressful beliefs. Based on Byron Katie’s direct experiences with how suffering is created and ended, The Work is an astonishingly simple and accessible process, requiring nothing more than a pen and paper and an open mind.

The goal of this project, while very ambitious, is fully justified in its approach, and GO! is extremely proud to help sponsor the event: One Thousand Hills seeks to familiarize these 5 community leaders with the process of transformation that they may return to Rwanda with the skills necessary to teach others in their communities. If the sessions appear to benefit other survivors, a secondary program will be implemented in which the newly educated Rwandan trainers will use the lessons they learned through this workshop to facilitate large-scale change. The success of this project is project is made possible by the generosity of Byron Katie, who has agreed to waive all fees associated with this pilot program (totaling over $20,000), and who has also pledged to travel to Rwanda personally to assist with training other genocide survivors in local communities.

Due to a coincidence in timing, GO! will also be sponsoring the Rwandan community leaders to participate in the annual Los Angeles AIDS Walk (www.aidswalk.net/losangeles) on October 17-18. Considering events of this nature are extremely rare in Africa, this walk will provide a unique opportunity to participate in an environment of openness and understanding regarding the disease. It is also our hope that these community leaders will establish connections and develop a network to support them in their ongoing efforts back in Rwanda. If you would like to sponsor Team Rwanda in the Los Angeles AIDS Walk, you can do so directly here. For those of you in Los Angeles, you can also join our team with the same link by clicking on the “Team” tab. The team name and number is: Team Rwanda - 0566. The fundraising goal for this project is $500 with all proceeds going directly to the AIDS Project Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by HIV, reducing incidences of HIV worldwide, and advocating for fair and effective HIV-related public policy.

In addition to our support, GO! has pledged to donate 5 Mac laptops to each of the training participants in order to facilitate the launch of counseling programs across Rwanda. It is our hope that each community leader will be able to use their laptop to spread awareness about the counseling programs, to track program progress, and to receive additional support from MacGillivray’s team. This donation is made possible by the generosity of Robert Baker of MacService (www.macservice.com).

For more information regarding Project One Thousand Hills, the Los Angeles AIDS Walk, or pledging your support, please contact us directly.

Now when you shop online at your favorite stores up to 37% of every purchase can be donated to GO!. Even basic web searches can generate up to $0.02 per search. Just think of how much money you could raise for GO! by continuing to shop or search online with GoodSearch. What are you waiting for? Add GoodSearch to your IE (Internet Explorer) or Firefox Search Box and start donating today!

GoodShop (powered by GoodSearch) currently supports over 500 online stores, from 1-800-Flowers to Zappos. Even iTunes music purchases made through GoodShop will support GO!. Now you don’t have to feel guilty about shopping online since a percentage of every purchase will be donated straight to charity. When has donating ever been easier? Keep shopping. Start donating.

Still not convinced? The above chart shows how quickly these small donations add up. If just 100 people use GoodSearch for 2 searches per day, and spend a total of $500 at participating retailers online, GO! could make over $2,000 this year. With 1,000 supporters, GO! could make over $22,000! And all without writing a single check.

Click on the image above and make your donation today!

Note: If you are unfamiliar with how to use GoodSearch please view this brief tutorial.

[See post to watch Flash video]

(Best if viewed in full-screen)

(GO! prefers Google Checkout for all donations! It is totally free, incredibly simple, and only takes a minute to complete your first donation.)

Why does GO! use Google Checkout?

• Transactions are 100% safe with guaranteed fraud protection.
• No fees processed by Google for 501(c)(3) donations.
• All major credit cards are accepted.
• No spam sent to registered email addresses.
• Google Checkout is simple, quick, and painless.

Note: If you are unfamiliar with how to use Google Checkout please view this brief tutorial.

GO! currently has corporate matching packages set up with Eli Lilly, Jim Beam, Charles Schwab, and Gap. If you are an employee at one of these firms please contact your HR department regarding donations to GO!.

If you work for a corporation that is not listed above, please consider setting up a corporate matching package with your firm. It only takes a few minutes.

Note: For a complete list of firms that currently support Corporate Gift Matching, please click here.

Do you feel like making a difference in the world? Do you have spare time on your hands that you would like to use productively? If you have a skill that you think GO! could benefit from, or are interested in joining one of our projects as a volunteer, please contact us for more information. Our team has everyone from software designers to photographers, from CEOs to students. We look forward to having you join our team and contribute towards improving our planet.