Liz Grant, Community Fundraising Executive
Oscar was a much-loved young person from Sussex, and after he died in December 2009, his mum, family and friends decided to do something meaningful to honour his memory.
This is how the Oscar Fund for L'Ecole Communautaire Mixte Fraternité began: a project set up to provide basic educational tools and resources for his mum's sponsored child’s school and community in Haiti.
Oscar's friends and family have been fundraising extensively by organising everything from pledges, collections and local gigs, to special events hosted by local schools and colleges. Perhaps most inspirationally, a group of Oscar’s friends created a beautiful limited edition CD; arranged, written, performed and even artworked by themselves – some of whom were only in their teens!
The school is the only one in the family’s sponsored child’s large, rural, very poor and vulnerable community, and struggles with very basic facilities in a shared-use one-room hall. It is accessible only by 4x4, and then an hour's walk. Classes are held in morning and afternoon shifts to accommodate the maximum students possible.

Oscar’s friends and family know that the Oscar Fund is doing something useful and lasting in an area that has such immense challenges and hardships.
If you’re interested in contributing to the fund, donating towards the fund by requesting a copy of the ‘Oscar Forever Young’ CD is a great way to do so. Get in touch at events@actionaid.org for details.

Jennifer Fash, community events officer
ActionAid’s York Supporter Group hosted its first craft fair this Tuesday and Wednesday at York’s Historic Guildhall.
The event was opened by the Right Honourable Lord Mayor, David Horton.
Although the group has been going for over 30 years in York, this event was a first for the group but it certainly didn’t stop them making it a success, raising £1,287.36.
The group asked the artists to make a donation to sell their work, selling refreshments including tasty homemade cakes and having an ActionAid stall with lots of bits including Christmas cards.
The proceeds from the event will go towards improving education for nomadic children in the Eastern Province of Kenya and helping vulnerable girls off the streets of Bangladesh.
“It was really good but exhausting! We’d like to thank the artists who have supported this event and have donated an item to the ActionAid table and we would like to thank the Guildhall staff, who have been very helpful and we would like to give a special thank you to the Civic Party for their support."
- Adelaide Morley, York Group and ActionAid supporter through Gifts in Action and Emergency Appeals.
Helen Jeffery, Supporter Care Team
This is one of the questions we get asked most often by child sponsors - and the simple answer is that the children volunteer.
The first thing that happens is that a community is identified as being suitable for sponsorship. After the community has been consulted and has agreed that this is something they wish to do, then all the children from that community are invited to meet with our local staff, who take photos and make notes of their personal history. These pictures and information later become the personal details that we send to supporters.
ActionAid has been working in Child Sponsorship for almost 40 years, we quickly realised that choosing individual children process could cause jealousy, so we make sure that we never single out any individual children. And all children in a community, whether sponsored or not, get to be a part of child sponsorship activities and projects.
ActionAid views the relationship between the sponsor and the sponsored child and their community as a partnership. It is carefully explained to the children before they join our child sponsorship scheme that they are acting as ‘ambassadors’ for their entire community, and are representing their community - since not all the children within the community are sponsored. It is explained that generous people here in the UK sponsor them and that they have one supporter in particular who they are linked to. It is our hope that through the handwritten messages shared between the supporter and the sponsored child, the child gets to learn more about their particular sponsor (and vice versa of course!)
If you're interested becoming a child sponsor, you can find out more about child sponsorship and change the life of a child and their community today. And please give the supporter care team a call on 01460 238 080 if you have any further questions.
GUEST BLOG: Kevin Palmer, Picture The Difference
What does change look like? For the last little while, I have dreamt of the difference we could make if we could just capture the hearts of the public.
I felt passionate about a vision of change for poor people in developing countries and to that, I came up with the idea of Picture The Difference – a photography competition which could harness creativity to create a positive change for the world.
The competition has just launched so if you’d like to be in with a chance to get your work exhibited in a London gallery and take a trip of a lifetime visiting an ActionAid project, enter the competition now. Here is a screenshot of our entries so far.
A few important details:
- Each entry costs £10, half goes to ActionAid to support the amazing work they do.
- For this fee you can enter up to 3 photos into the contest.
- Photos must be uploaded via the Picture The Difference website.
- The competition ends on 31 January 2012.
We have some great judges on board – Alf Kumalo, Antonio Gamito, Dan Kennedy, John Angerson, Justin Lane, Laurence Watts and Sophie Batterbury – all experts in the field of photography.
Through this photo competition, we want to give individuals the encouragement and the opportunity to share their view of the world through pictures. Hopefully we can use our creative methods to generate fresh donations from those that can afford and help those that really need it.
And we mean really need it, people that can't afford to feed themselves or their families on a day to day basis, whole communities of people that can't afford education, who live each day with the tragic knowledge that their offspring may never have an opportunity to fulfil their potential.
We dream of change, and to that extent we ask for your visions of change. Upload your pictures that best represent change to you now.
Kevin Palmer and the PTD team

Jennifer Fash, community events officer
Are you passionate about British companies taking responsibility for their actions?
Join ActionAid in London from 2-3pm on Wednesday 27th July outside the AGM of Vedanta Resources plc, a British-listed mining company. This is an urgent action to stop a mine being built, affecting the lives of thousands of tribal people and a unique ecosystem in India.
We will be protesting alongside Survival, Amnesty International, South Asia Solidarity Network, Foil Vedanta, and London Mining Network.

ActionAid has been campaigning here in the UK for several years in solidarity with the Kondh tribal people in the state of Orissa in India. In August 2010 we had a major breakthrough. The Government of India said that Vedanta should not have been given permission to mine and that the processing plant had been expanded illegally. This was a huge success!
However, Vedanta Resources are still pushing to build an their open-pit mine in the pristine Niyamgiri Hills.
Why target the AGM?
The AGM has been a big moment each year. In February 2010, two key investors, The Church of England and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, withdrew their investments from the company on ethical grounds. This sends a powerful message to Vedanta’s other shareholders about the risks of investing in a company with such a poor human rights and environmental record.
Shareholders have another chance this year to refuse to allow their money to be used in this way.
Join us; 2pm Wednesday 27th July 2011 outside Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, London.
Liz Grant, community events coordinator
Six ActionAid supporters took part in the race of a life this weekend; as they hauled a bed on four wheels across road and river in a fast-paced pursuit to raise funds for ActionAid!
The Great Knaresborough Bed Race is an annual community event run entirely by volunteers. It has become world famous for its riot of colour and pageantry, the courage and endurance of its teams, and the glorious eccentricity of its entrants.
The team, from Wetherby based company, Avacta, successfully built a rolling, floating bed and decorated it in the race’s theme of “British History”, before physically pushing it (and one helmeted passenger) round a course of 3km. The team managed to get the 3rd fastest time for a new team, despite their fears that their bed was significantly heavier than their competition!
Team organiser, Rob Harrand, enthused that the event had a “great atmosphere and a colossal turnout!”
The team were even interviewed by BBC Radio York where their hastily nominated spokesperson, Steve, mentioned that they were running for ActionAid. The team raised a fantastic amount!
Visit their MyActionAid Page to sponsor them for all their hard work!
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