Presidents Day Fundraiser for Kansas City Justice!

Fundraising Team for KC!

Fundraising Team for KC!

“For the past eight years, we have used Presidents Day weekend as an excuse to dress up in costumes and bar hop in Kansas City, Missouri. What started out as just a silly day with friends has now transformed into a way to spread some love and do some extra good in our communities.

Last year, following the 2016 election, there seemed to be an excess of anger and hate ruminating in our country – no matter which way you lean politically, it was clear that we could all do with some extra love. So, rather than let those feelings of hopelessness and fear bog us down, we decided to turn our annual day of silliness into something that could help those who need it most.

In 2017, we raised $720 for the International Refugee Assistance Fund, to provide legal aid to refugees worldwide. This year, we’ve dedicated our bar crawl to the Justice Project of Kansas City, which provides advocacy and criminal justice system navigation for women in poverty who are suffering from homelessness, domestic violence, mental illness, addiction, prostitution, or other forms of trafficking exploitation and abuse.

Each year, we aim to choose a different organization that will help those who are in particular need or are feeling overlooked, marginalized or otherwise disenfranchised. The goal is simply to put a little good back into our world – and to have fun while we’re at it!”

This year, the team are raising money for the Justice Project of Kansas City. Check out their crowdfunding campaign below:

 

Help Emma unlock young refugees’ potential with Unicef UK

Emma Sinclair

Emma Sinclair

“My name is Emma Sinclair. I’m a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of alumni software company EnterpriseAlumni.

I spend a great deal of my time fielding questions from people about their careers and business: how to get ahead, how to secure a promotion, how to move industries. My best piece of advice is that it doesn’t always need to be all about the career ladder you’re currently on. In fact, on the contrary, my advice is it may be far more valuable to get a side gig.

My various side gigs have done many things for me. They’ve given me an increasingly powerful voice at many tables, from media to business and government. They’ve exposed me to people, places and experiences I might otherwise never have met. They have given me rich life experiences that make me a better employer, friend, corporate citizen and colleague. And hopefully they’ve encouraged other people I know to get a side gig too.

It was in pursuing one of these side gigs that I was able to visit Zambia with Unicef in September 2014 to front a programme providing financial, enterprise and employability skills to young people in communities where opportunities are limited. This visit made me a better, more informed person on youth unemployment and, more broadly, how to assist young people seeking a better future through access to opportunity. More than one billion adolescents stand at the crossroads between childhood and adulthood, 200 million of whom are in Africa, where they are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults. And I saw that first hand.

Following this experience, I wanted to find a way to bring my tribe of entrepreneurs, innovators and business people together to invest in and support a particularly at risk next generation of thinkers and innovators. Two weeks ago I launched Unicef Uk’s first crowd fund to roll out Innovation Labs in Azraq Refugee Camp, Jordan. 50 million children have been uprooted from their homes and face unimaginable hardships. Many have lost their family, their friends, their chance to go to school – a privilege most of us enjoyed. The roll out of these Innovation Labs, which this crowd fund is seeking to fund, will give young people support, seed funding and training in highly-sought-after digital skills, including coding and engineering.

It is in this way that I hope my own side gig will not only enrich my experiences but can help unlock the potential of younger generations of entrepreneurs.”

To learn more about Emma and join her in unlocking the potential of these vulnerable young people, check out her Chuffed.org crowdfunding campaign page below:

Open your hearts and support solidarity visits to Immigration Detention

Open Hearts by SDS

“My attention was first drawn to the issues surrounding immigration detention in the UK when I started at SOAS University in London. A lot of my course was about globalisation, migration and how crucial the movement of people is for our society to flourish. I soon got involved with SOAS Detainee Support Group to learn more about these issues, and how to challenge detention as an immigration control mechanism. I was disgusted to learn that 30,000 people are locked up in immigration detention every year. They are held indefinitely, with no time limit and without the opportunity to trial.

SDS have been working together for 12 years, and in that time have engaged so many people to take a stand against detaining people who have a precarious migration status. The state of immigration detention centres is appalling; they are built to prison standards, and run by private security firms, which is not only wrong but also really expensive for the taxpayer.

I think what is really telling about this subject is that when something like the BBC Panorama documentary comes to light, the general public are shown the brutality of the system and how these people are berated, bullied and demoralised. The problem is that people don’t know how they can take action against this abuse. This is where SDS comes in; they offer support to people in detention, regular visits, and emotional and practical support. Along with helping people in detention in the here and now, the group campaigns for the abolition of detention, run workshops around the UK on immigration detention and protests at detention centres and the Home Office.

For anyone who feels they don’t know enough about this issue, want more information, or feel they have the capacity to start visiting someone detained in one of the UK’s immigration removal centres, I would urge getting in touch with SDS.”
Mia Barrow-Sullivan, SDS Member

For more on SDS and this fantastic cause, check out their crowdfunding campaign:

 

 

Historic Chance to Protect our Oceans!

Ban The Bag
Ban The Bag
“My name is Rianti and I have been a diver for over 20 years, and in that time I’ve organised over 50 clean up dives. Litter is everywhere, and it’s killing our oceans.

Recently I teamed up with the Boomerang Alliance for a final stand against plastic bags!

Firstly, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who donated! After the crowdfunding with Chuffed.org ended, we used some of the funds to launch a campaign where we sent an SMS blast to over 5000 Boomerang Alliance supporters asking them to call the Premiers of NSW, VIC and WA to ‘ban the bag’. The campaign was intended to increase pressure before the Environment Ministers meeting on 28 July 2017.

We also asked our supporters to contact the premier and ministers directly and ask them to ban the bag.

This July, we’ve been busy visiting key Electorate Offices asking NSW MPs to help increase the pressure to #BanTheBag on NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian & NSW Environment Minister, Gabrielle Upton. The response has been positive with state member for Ryde, Victor Dominello stating plastic bags as “a scourge on the environment”.

We are happy to report that Victorian Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio announced before the Environment Ministers meeting that Victoria might consider a ban on light-weight plastic bag and while a national ban is the most effective way to address the issue, she has not ruled out Victoria doing it alone.

WA Minister for Environment, Stephen Dawson has also said that he is supportive of the move by various local governments to ban single use plastic bags and have asked DER to investigate the possibility of a state-wide ban.

NSW is currently the only state who still resists the ban. Premier Berejiklian made it clear a week before the meeting that she doesn’t support a plastic bag ban.

In response to this, the Boomerang Alliance team decided to sneak into the annual NSW State of the State Conference where Premier Berejiklian was the key note speaker. We used that opportunity to covertly place campaign material calling for a ban on plastic bags on each table and deployed a banner in front of the 650 high profile guests and the Premier herself.

Due to the intransigence of NSW, the meeting of environment ministers on the 28 July failed to agree on national coverage of plastic bag bans.

We still have a lot of work to be done but we will never give up the fight!”

For more check out their awesome campaign page below, which raised a whopping $25,923 for our oceans!

JaMels: Dedicated to Rehabilitating Horses in Queensland

Jamels
“JaMels is a fully registered ACNC charity located on the Tablelands Far North Queensland. We are passionate and dedicated to the rehabilitation and rehoming of horses, providing education and training opportunities to the community and to support horse owners in crisis.
JaMels is only able to operate with the support of the public, businesses and with the continued efforts of our small but dedicated and passionate volunteer team.
Our founders have been rehabilitating horses privately for more than 20 years. Since coming together as a team and forming as a charity, together we have been able to successfully help more horses and owners then we ever dreamed possible.
With Jamels being the only registered Equine Rehabilitation Charity in the North and Far North Queensland, we provide assistance to horses and owners as far as 1000+km away!
It’s dry season in QLD now and for horses that means the grass has died off and they require extra feeding. For some owners, the extra expense of feeding over dry season is not affordable. We see a substantial increase in the number of horses needing our help over dry season.
Equine rehabilitation is extremely costly, basics like food costing $15 a day per horse, veterinary care and treatment quickly exceeds $1500 and the horses typically require 12 to 24 weeks of care before being ready for rehoming.
In the past 7 days alone, we have received requests from owners for assistance with a further three horses and whilst we have the room and the time required to help these horses, we simply do not have the required funds to commit to them.
We are yet to turn horses away and desperately don’t want to start doing so. This is why we have chosen to run crowdfunding campaigns with Chuffed!”
Learn more about this cause by heading to JaMel’s crowdfunding campaign pages: