End of year/project analysis and recap

Our event went on Saturday with relatively no problems. It was fun to see everyone come out and play to raise money. It was especially rewarding to see all of our efforts pay off. Creating an organization and entire days event wasn’t easy but was certainly worth it.

Although our organization is new and has not yet fully established itself as a 501(3)(c), we worked closely with other organizations that helped us achieve our goals. We worked with organizations such as USAWA, FHI and IDYDC. With an estimated death rate of 1.6 million, orphaning over 11 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa we wanted to do as much as we could to assist and raise money for these organizations. As we took on creating this group we set up specific issues we wanted to address.

African youth health and well being was our top mission. We channeled our efforts on this issue through the Iringa Development of Youth, Disabled and Children Care (IDYDC, I will call them the ID). The ID’s mission is:

IDYDC exists to improve the living standards of the disadvantaged people (needy children, youth, widow, widowers and poor people) in Iringa region through establishment of rehabilitation and vocational centers; facilitating establishment of saving and credit scheme, training education on HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, gender, child labour, children right and organizing drama and sports.


Heatmap of HIV/AIDS infection- gray = no data available.

Map of Africa coloured according to the percentage of the Adult (ages 15-49) population with HIV/AIDS. Colour chart present in image. Countries coloured white have no information available. Data from UNAIDS - the majority of percentages are from 1999, although several are more recent (2001, 2002).


Key:

     0%-2%

     2%-5%

     5%-10%

     10%-15%

     15%-20%


     20%-30%

     No data

Note, that Tanzania is one of the "hotter" countries. We worked with the ID to especially target Tanzanian people/youths.

One of the primary and more successful ways the ID attempts to reach youths is through the game of soccer. In Africa soccer is very popular and can bring many people together in a team/community environment. In 2004 YouthNet worked with ID to form Edusport which “integrates sports and reproductive/HIV/AIDS education. The sport of choice in Edusport is soccer. This is partly were we got inspiration to have a soccer based fundraising event. Through this organization we were able to utilize already established means of outreach to better the lives of youths in Africa, thus achieving one of our primary goals.

In addition to this cause, another root of our efforts was in general HIV/AIDS prevention/education. As said, over 11 million children are left orphaned due to parents and guardians dying of AIDS/HIV. If we are able to help reduce the deathly effects, further transmission or help prevent the disease all together, this would reduce the number of AIDS fatalities and thus reduce the number of orphans. This again reaches back to our top goal as well. For these efforts we reached out to the USAWA and FHI, an organization that also works closely with USAID.

More information can be found at this link: http://dccfaa.org/about/fhi/



In looking at the issues it is tough to really comprehend the sheer numbers of people this disease effects. Although the death tolls are high as is, an estimated 22.1 million are said to be living in the Sub-Saharan African region at the end of 2007. Without proper education or means of prevention/protection, these people can continue to spread the disease to others, exponentially increasing this number. Sexual education is scarce and many communities report sexual activities with multiple partners, even at younger teen ages. Additionally, with every death comes a string of after effects, from widowing to orphaning. It leaves many out on the streets worse off than before because a family cannot support themselves without one of the spouses or children no longer have any parents to provide food and shelter for them. It staggers economic growth. Disrupts social networks and societies as well as creating gaps in local communities. These are all conditions and effects we aimed to help ease and at minimum bring awareness too. With so many people living relatively happily in the United States, even 1 dollar from half of the entire population would generate about 150 million dollars. Even 1% ($150,000) of that would be enough to buy supplies and provide education for nearly and entire country.

We hope to continue this event in future years with collaboration from these organizations, so we may further support and aid African Youths and better the lives of our global neighbors.


Pictures from the event, coming soon...

For more facts and input, check Tymon's report here.

Sources cited: CIA World fact book, UNAIDS, UNAIDS epidemic update 2007, Avert.org: HIV and AIDS in Africa

Rained Out :(

So as you know, it absolutely poured today (4/20).

Irene decided to cancel early in the day around 9:30am I think. But we are definitely rescheduling it for another day next week.

I think this will be even better- aside from the fact that it will not be raining, we will not be competing with a free concert on the National Mall.

I will have more details after we finalize the rain date.

It's unfortunate that we could not put this on when we wanted, but we will get another chance. I plan on writing a reflection of the whole process and experience after we put on the event.

This weekend

So the sailing regatta was canceled- I'll be DJing at the event.

I'm pretty excited to see how it goes. Hopefully it will be a hit and raise a lot of money. We are kind of lacking teams to register- but there's still two more days to go.

I've learned a lot about the cause we are helping through writing the pieces for the website- I really hope we can come through and help these organizations out.

DCCFAA Fundraiser at Robeks

Message from Irene:
hey guys - please don't forget to head over to robek's today in tenleytown and mention "Score a goal, Save a life" when buying your smoothie. 20% of sales will be donated to HIV/AIDS prevention in Tanzania, Africa. ITS BEAUTIFUL OUTSIDE today so no excuses :) - BRING YOUR FRIENDS, too!

And don't forget to register a team for the event this sunday - free BBQ, smoothies, t-shirts and some sweet prizes !!

Thanks so much!

-Irene

So help us out- go down to Robeks in Tenley today and drop out name! You'll be helping out the kids of Africa and fighting HIV too.

Some technical notes-

So with the event about 10 days away we are firming everything up. I've monotoned (made black and white) the logo for T-shirt purposes, added the flyer to the website with updated info.

We now have a co-sponsor of Robeks.

We are wrapping up the details of who is going to do what on the day of the event. I may be DJing and helping photograph- but we are not sure yet- A sailing regatta I am suppose to attend (which I was committed to before the DCCFAA even existed) is up in the air- so we'll see.

We'll need to get a PA system and make sure we have permission to have Amplified sound on campus outside.

All of these things are minor and its pretty cool to finally see this all come together to help out the African youth. Learning more about the culture in class has helped me identify more with the cause- however, we still really haven't gotten to more modern times- so some is still just going off what I already know.


Right now, we just have to keep getting teams to register- so do it!

Register here:
http://dccfaa.org/register

Some past meetings-

Over the past few weeks or so we have had a few meetings to talk about what we will do, for who and brainstorming ideas to raise money. So far we have come up with T-shirts, corporate sponsorships, team registration fees, raffles, donations and goal sponsorships. It will be interesting to see how all this works out as we go along.

We also talked about equipment donations but probably will officially rule them out because the cost to ship equipment to Africa would outweigh the significance of the donation. However, I had also mentioned we could sell donated equipment or better yet, donate it to schools in need in our area for an even more diversified effect and help those at home and abroad.

We will be discussing these options further in more meetings.

Another thing we are doing, will be asking corporations to match anything we get donated in order to try to increase our overall donations to the African organizations.

Creating the website

In building the website I tried to incorporate as much of the Africa and community aspect as possible.

I began in the banner by incorporating the three major flags as different elements of the image. The flags lined up together showed the unity of the project between us in DC, our counterparts in Tanzania and the people of Africa as a whole we were aiming to help.

Similar images and colors are incorporated into the logo which you can read about in a previous entry.

The content of the page mostly reflected the event, as this was our initial primary goal. However, as the organization we have attempted to create is not solely an event, but a real message an cause for the African people, I incorporated other sections, Such as the affiliate organization information pages and the donations page.

Within these pages, I used pictures provided by the organizations to better illustrate what they do and exactly who we are helping.

The registration page allows users to register their team for the even so they can play and donate money for our cause.

The website will continue to be updated and grow as we get more content and the event grows closer.