Upcoming Navajo Nation Program
Cross-cultural Connection
Applications are still being accepted for the September 29 - October 6 volunteer program on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Volunteers have the opportunity to work with Navajo youth in Tuba City Boarding School, connecting across cultures through service. Evening programming includes experiences of Navajo life and culture, a visit to the Grand Canyon, and a contemporary Navajo music performance. For more information on the Navajo program click http://amizade.org/Countries/Navajo.htm.
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Fall Fundraising Campaign
Raffle Prizes and Parties
The Amizade Fall Fundraising Campaign kicked off to a strong start last week with over $4,000 in immediate giving and several thousand more pledged for the near future. Donors still have an opportunity to get a raffle ticket for an Ocean City fall beach weekend by giving $250 or more before August 31. Around the country, Amizade alumnae are beginning to coordinate parties, pot lucks, and wine and cheese gatherings to raise funds and strengthen the financial base of the organization.
Over the past ten years, less than 15% of Amizade's budget has gone to central office administration. The current fundraising campaign preserves Amizade's ability to connect volunteers with communities to continue building schools, educating children, assisting with vocational training, and much more.
If you haven't already had the opportunity to demonstrate your support for Amizade's mission and efforts, please give now by making a secure donation at https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=19573 or mailing a check payable to Amizade to PO Box 110107, Pittsburgh, PA 15232.
On Tuesday, August 14 several thousand friends and supporters of Amizade received an email about the fundraising campaign and its importance. Many individuals responded immediately by simply making a secure online donation while others wrote checks. Several thousand other Amizade friends and alumni, however, are not reached through the current email list. Volunteers and staff members followed the email with phone calls and continue to improve our contact list and re-connect with our alumni community.
Due to a very generous gift, Amizade is able to offer vacation time at an Ocean City beach condominium as a raffle prize for donors. Individuals who give $250 or more between now and August 31 are eligible for a drawing for one of two fall beach weekends: September 14 - 17 and September 28 to October 1, 2007. The odds in favor of winning the raffle are, in short, excellent!
As Amizade friends and alumnae cooperate to empower the fundraising efforts, individuals are creatively finding ways to raise funds. Having a party, a potluck, or a wine and cheese social with 25 friends donating $20 each raises $500. Amizade alumnae have already connected Amizade fundraising with housewarming parties and going away parties, one of which included a lounge donating $1 from every person's cover charge on a Saturday night. Thank you all for your energy and creativity! |
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2008 Courses Announced
Go. Serve. Learn. Earn Credits.
2008 Amizade courses have been announced! Students may choose among Winter Break, Spring, Summer, and Fall Term Options. Credits are granted through West Virginia University and are available through eleven different disciplines. Amizade courses are some of the most affordable of their kind. Financial aid and scholarship opportunities apply. Students who apply and enroll earliest are most likely to receive financial aid opportunities.
Global Service-Learning courses offer an exciting and challenging combination of community-driven service, academic learning, intercultural immersion, consideration of global citizenship, and reflective inquiry. Courses are offered in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Ghana, Jamaica, Navajo Nation, Northern Ireland, and Tanzania. Visit www.globalservicelearning.org for more information. |
Tanzanian Reflection
The Importance of Experience
As the Amizade 2007 Tanzania Community Development Course drew to a close, Juma Massissi, representing a local community partner, said, "I don't have the words to express - Thank you." Juma is a Legal Director at WOMEDA, Women's Emancipation and Development Association. Amizade students had worked with WOMEDA in addition to cooperating with the Family Alliance for Development and Cooperation, or FADECO. Joseph Sekiku, FADECO Director, was no less dramatic and concise in his summary of the Amizade experience: "I think I will be changed forever."
Joseph's perspective is similar to that shared by Sarah Orgass, a returning Amizade student (alumnus of Bolivia 2004) and University of Pittsburgh graduate. While the students and the two community partner organizations successfully cooperated to improve quantitative and qualitative evaluation at both organizations, develop brochures, and create fundraising plans, the effects of the community interactions were felt much more deeply. Sarah's journal response to an article by Pico Iyer ("Why We Travel"), quoted here in its entirety, focused on the challenge and the importance of those interactions:
During the six months prior to our departure, I was questioned almost daily as to why I wanted to travel to Africa. My response usually entailed an attempted articulation of the deep longing I had to experience life on the other side of the world on a continent that I could not understand in the context of my own existence. I would have attempted to articulate why I wanted to travel as Pico Iyer did in saying that, "We travel in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas that we seldom have to face at home." I would attempt to articulate my desire to travel someplace where I could gain a deeper appreciation of the realities of life in a developing world.
Now that I have returned, there are moments when I find myself almost wishing that desire to travel had never been sparked.
Continue Sarah's reflection:
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