Coalition for the Homeless, a New York charity.

Coalition for the Homeless is the nation’s oldest advocacy and direct service organization helping homeless men, women, and children. They are dedicated to the principle that decent shelter, sufficient food, affordable housing, and the chance to work for a living wage are fundamental rights in a civilized society. Since their inception in 1981, the Coalition has worked through litigation, public education, and direct services to ensure that these goals are realized.

For more than 25 years, the Coalition for the Homeless has developed and implemented humane, cost-effective strategies to end mass homelessness in New York City. Their model programs represent solutions that can dramatically reduce the homeless population and prevent homelessness among those most at risk.

Every day the Coalition helps over 3,500 clients with the tools and support to reclaim their lives. Through housing, job training, emergency food, crisis intervention, and youth programs, they rescue men, women and children caught in the grips of poverty. They understand what works, what doesn’t, and what makes sense. Their unique position allows us to advocate effectively on behalf of New York’s most vulnerable citizens, and offer hope and opportunity for economic independence and a brighter future.

From their first legal victory in 1981, Callahan v. Carey, which guaranteed the right to decent shelter, the Coalition’s efforts have consistently resulted in compassionate, long-term solutions to the epidemic of homelessness. Since their inception, they have demonstrated that there is indeed an end in sight, and that through the proper and strategic investment of resources they can make homelessness a thing of the past.

The Coalition is a vocal and invaluable city and statewide resource for homeless people, at-risk populations, other advocates and service providers, policymakers and the public at large. They have earned the reputation as the most credible source of information on homelessness, its causes, and solutions.

Coalition for the Homeless

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights to be respected and protected for everyone.

They believe human rights abuses anywhere are the concern of people everywhere.

So, outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world, they work to improve people’s lives through campaigning and international solidarity.

Their mission is to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated.

Their members and supporters exert influence on governments, political bodies, companies and intergovernmental groups.

Activists take up human rights issues by mobilizing public pressure through mass demonstrations, vigils and direct lobbying as well as online and offline campaigning.

Sewa Bank offers micro loans to self-employed Indian women

Self employed women need loans for a wide variety of purposes; to buy assets, raw materials, finished goods for resale, redeem old debts, upgrade their homes, buy transportation means such as a handcart or a pedal cart or put in infrastructure in their homes, such as water or electric connections.

SEWA Bank has been providing a wide range of loan products to meet the productive credit needs of its clients. SEWA Bank requires that a woman save regularly for atleast one year, before she is eligible to apply for a loan. In the absence of traditional collateral, a regular savings habit is deemed a necessary form of security, in SEWA Bank’s experience of banking with the poor for over 25 years.

Sewa Bank

Kiva

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on Kiva, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to entrepreneurs from communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Kiva creates an interpersonal connection at low costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery.

Kiva

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971.

Today, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. MSF provides independent, impartial assistance to those most in need. MSF reserves the right to speak out to bring attention to neglected crises, to challenge inadequacies or abuse of the aid system, and to advocate for improved medical treatments and protocols.

In 1999, MSF received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Who is MSF?

On any one day, more than 27,000 committed individuals representing dozens of nationalities can be found providing assistance to people caught in crises around the world. They are doctors, nurses, logistics experts, administrators, epidemiologists, laboratory technicians, mental health professionals, and others who work together in accordance with MSF’s guiding principles of humanitarian action and medical ethics.

MSF field staff are supported by their colleagues in 19 offices around the world, including one in New York. The vast majority of MSF’s aid workers are from the communities where the crises are occurring, with ten percent of teams made up of international staff, including more than 200 aid workers from the US in 2007.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières

Heifer International

Today, millions of people who were once hungry will be nourished by milk, eggs and fresh vegetables.

Families who for generations knew only poverty will be building new homes and starting businesses.

Children who once headed out to the fields to do backbreaking work will be heading into schoolrooms to learn to read.

And people who never thought they’d be in a position to help someone else will be experiencing the joy of charitable giving.

How is this possible?

With Heifer’s proven approach – almost 60 years in the making – to helping people obtain a sustainable source of food and income.

Cornerstones guide our efforts to end world hunger and care for the earth.

Long-Term Solutions emphasizing community involvement distinguish our work from that of global relief organizations.

“Passing on the Gift” means recipients agree to share the offspring of gift animals with others in need, making them equal partners with Heifer in the fight to end world hunger.

Environment and Sustainable Development is taught to our project recipients to help them achieve sustainable agricultural production.

Animal Well-Being Guidelines are strictly reinforced with professional veterinary training staff.

Disaster Rehabilitation, with long-term, sustainable development the goal of Heifer’s rehabilitation projects.

How We Measure Success shows how people’s lives have permanently changed since Heifer came along.

Heifer International

St. Judes Children's Research Hospital

• St. Jude covers the cost of everything—food, travel and lodging for patients and a family member.
• St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance. No child is ever denied treatment because of the family’s inability to pay.
• In 2009, Parents magazine named St. Jude the No. 1 pediatric cancer care hospital in the country, based on the magazine’s survey of more than 75 children’s hospitals nationwide.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital