Aid Still Required
While Hunter and Andrea were in Haiti for the last two weeks, Jill Higgins and her daughter Ivy took time to fly in for 6 days to visit and get a look at several of the Aid Still Required programs around the country. Below is Jill’s reflection on her time there.
Fund a Jatropha Seed Oil Press for Haiti, Change the Lives of Thousands For the past three years, 1,000 farmers have been growing hundreds of thousands of Jatropha trees in southern Haiti. Why? Because the seeds from these trees produce oil so rich it serves as a straight replacement for diesel fuel. Yes, that means you can run your car, truck or farm machinery on it. Right now, Haiti has to import all of it’s petroleum. The jatropha program can reverse this trend.
As everyone has heard by now, the Philippines has been struck by a typhoon Haiyan, one of the largest storms ever recorded and it has caused indescribable destruction. We pray for those who have lost their lives and their families. Now we must turn to all those people whose lives were spared, but are now in life threatening situations without water, food, access to shelter or medicine. At this time, Aid Still Required is only helping to facilitate donations to the Philippines and cannot do direct service. It is our mission to go to countries after the first responders have…
One of the people we met with in New Orleans said that her city is more like “the Little Difficult than the Big Easy” but we found in our jam-packed week there that there is a lot to be hopeful about in the Crescent City. We were all in New Orleans about 6 months ago and it just felt like a different city then. This time we met with 4 powerful after-school and extra-curricular youth development programs at both the middle and high school levels. Charter schools now represent 85% of the city’s public education system and for the most…
Up and coming country music star and ASR supporter Payton Taylor is working on the release of her new EP and she is using Kickstarter to do it. Payton has talked about Aid Still Required programs at her concerts and even made a PSA to call attention to the work that still needs to be done in New Orleans. Last year, she even wrote a song about the great storm, Katrina, that left New Orleans battered over 8 years ago. And now, she needs your support. Go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paytontaylor/payton-taylor-new-ep-release and chip in to help Payton put out her latest record.…
ASR founder Andrea is in NYC this week for the UN Womens Conference on Women connecting with female leaders from around the world as they seek to create a more just society for women. One of the women Andrea met this week was Hania Moheeb, an accomplished Egyptian journalist who is speaking out to call attention to the plight of women in her home country. Hania has related her personal experience of the sexual assaults on women in Tahrir Square. According to an ABC News report last month, Tahrir Square has become a hotbed for violence against women with dozens…
We just received word that the funds Aid Still Required sent to the Community Tsunami Early Warning Center (CTEC) in Sri Lanka have been put to good use! CTEC is an incredibly important facility for the people of Sri Lanka. If the system had been in place before the 2005 tsunami, many of the 2500 lives lost that day may have been saved. The Center is helping to protect the villages of Peraliya, Thelwatta, Seenigama and Dalwathamullah and the goal is to expand the warning system in order to protect the entire coastline. In addition, there is an educational component…
If you did not get a chance to see our first blog post on Darfur United, please check it out here. Briefly, iAct is putting together an all star soccer team comprised of the best players in the Darfuri refugee camps in eastern Chad. From roughly 280,000 refugees spread out over 12 camps across Chad, the top 5 players from each camp were invited to try out for Darfur United, the team that will represent Darfur in the Viva World Cup in Iraq in May of this year. Darfur United is coming together! Over the last several days, the Darfur…
-from the desktop of Maureen Charles, ASR Board Secretary Today is World Water Day, and in Aceh, Indonesia, where an estimated 160,000 people perished and over a million were displaced in the wake of the 2004 Tsunami, thousands of people have been without safe, clean, accessible water for over 7 years. Imagine all that ocean water rushing over your land, taking the leaves of your loved ones, and leaving you with no livelihood, and ironically, without water. Imagine going 7 years without a shower, unable to pour yourself or your child a glass of water without first hauling it for miles in heavy jugs or buckets……
In January’s Guidepost inspirational magazine, ASR collaborator and friend Alison Thompson shares the story of how she found her new vocation of passionate volunteer and shines the light on five areas around the world that she feels need our help the most. Hunter and Andrea met Alison in 2007 as they got more deeply involved in the work that became AId Still Required. Utlizing her nurse’s training as a first responder in the months following 9/11 changed Alison’s life and when the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami hit, her two week trip to offer aid turned into a 14 month Sri…
From our ASR Newletter…. We returned from 12 days in Haiti last month and it has taken these past weeks to distill our experience there. Our focus in Haiti was to implement a stress-reduction program for the women of Cite Soleil, Port au Prince’s notorius slum and to vet child services and reforestation projects. While we were there, Haiti got under our skin. Wharf Jeremie- Our project neighborhood Haiti feels overwhelming. It has something to break everybody’s heart: utter poverty, alarming rates of unemployment, illiteracy, rape, orphaned and abandoned children; and a once-lush countryside which has been almost entirely deforested.…
A year and a half ago, ASR co-founder Andrea was approached by transformational business coach Kimber Lim to participate in a project with 38 other visonary women. The result is Get Your Woman On: Embracing Beauty, Grace, and The Power of Women, an anthology of 39 women sharing their heartfelt personal stories of transformation. Andrea’s chapter” Be Bold on Behalf of Others ” chronicles the actual and metaphorical journey which led to the founding of Aid Still Required. Other featured authors include peace activist and Jungian psychiatrist Jean Shinoda Bolen, eWomen Network founder Sandra Yancey, actress Barbara Niven, and…
“June 20th” quickly became an ASR household buzzword with weeks of tireless preparation, culminating into A Night of Culture for a Cause. Actress and ASR friend Barbara Bosson hosted the fete at her stunning Pacific Palisades home. Thanks to Marble Arch Fine Afts and the Cracking Art Group, guests were greeted by eco-friendly, larger-than-life animal sculptures made out of recycled plastic, highlighting ASR’s commitment to environmental issues. Animals included giant bulldogs and terriers, oversized sneaker-wearing chihuahuas, goats, giraffes, and alligators. ASR’s various projects in the tsunami region in Southeast Asia, Sudan, and New Orleans were featured on displays in the…
On June 3rd, in conjunction with hiving.net, philanthropist Sarah Nicole Dolgen hosted a Cocktails for a Cause Karaoke Night in honor of Aid Still Required at her lovely apartment off of Sunset Strip. It was a night of great Thai food from Sarah’s favorite neighborhood Thai joint, great drinks, and vivid discussion, with many young socialites in attendance, engaging Andrea and Hunter with incisive questions. We hear the singing went on until the wee hours. Thank you to Sarah and all the attendees!
ASR was invited to participate in HOPE Artist’s Vice for Nice Poker Invitational at Fred Segal Conveyor in Santa Monica, CA. The store was transformed after hours into a mini-Las Vegas with players crowded around gambling tables, gambling for good! Hope Artist Founder, Andi Scull Steidle is shown below with Hunter. Andi’s husband, Marine Capt. Brian Steidle, was one of the key influences who inspired Andrea and Hunter’s work on behalf of the people of Darfur. They met Brian at a 2006 traveling art exhibit, “Darfur, Darfur,” where Brian shared some of his experiences working as a photojournalist in Southern…
Andrea and Hunter attended the ceremony for the Feminist Majority Foundation Global Women’s Rights Award at the Beverly Hills Hotel on April 29th. They had the pleasure of seeing Jay and his wife Mavis there. They first met Jay and Mavis in a parking lot a couple of years ago to talk about what happening in Darfur. Two days later, Jay had George Clooney on the Tonight Show and and they discussed the history of the conflict, giving Darfur its due air time. Also at the April 29th event, Andrea and Hunter had a run-in with Christiane Amanpour, who was…
Along with Derek Fisher, Don Cheadle, and Participant Media, ASR hosted a roundtable discussion for 87 invited celebrities, athletes, and dignitaries.
Aid Still Required is featured in today’s Reuters story “NBA will not gag players competing at Beijing Games”. Check out NBA Commissioner David Stern voicing his support of the players’ right to free speech. Reuters