Firefly Children's Home (FHC) - formerly the Orphan Help Center
Whilst I do not have any of my own, I do have a big heart for children and when I saw Amanda's article in the local newspaper last year I simply felt compelled to get involved. Her old website was in desperate need of updating and modernising, and since I was teaching myself to write websites at the time, I offered to design a new one for her. I also set up a Facebook page and continue to maintain both as required, as my personal contribution to the cause.
Firefly Children's Home is a registered charity in Nepal and NZ. It is home to Nepalese village children whose parents have either passed away, disappeared, are imprisoned or are too poor to feed them. FCH not only provides food and clothes for the children; it also provides them with a unique opportunity to be educated at a private school and to be loved and cared for in a family-like environment. 100% of all money raised goes to the children. To find out more, please visit www.fireflychildrenshome.org.
Girls' Education Nepal (GEN)
Once again, due to lack of time and the necessary skills to update it (and their funds being better utilised elsewhere), GEN's website was terribly out of date, the formatting had gone completely wrong and their hosting company had lost some of their most recent updates. I couldn't bear to see it so untidy so once again I offered to help out as my personal contribution to the programme. I gave them a new website (and facebook page) and continue to oversee it and update it free of charge.
Encouraged by the success of FHC, Amanda and Nonna (co-founder of FCH) started GEN with the aim of providing girls from underprivileged families with an education. Sponsorship is aimed at the most desperate cases – girls who otherwise would have little or no chance of going to school. The GEN sponsorship covers all education-related expenses, and in some cases provides a small daily lunch allowance. To find out more, please visit www.girlseducationnepal.org.
Sustainable Coastlines
In their own words... "We set out to sustain and protect our coastlines: this is at the core of everything we do. We love our coasts and we work with our sleeves rolled up to keep them beautiful. We coordinate and support ongoing projects around Aotearoa / New Zealand and the Pacific, to make positive, real and long-term changes to local coastlines and communities."
I have now been lucky enough to be able to attend 3 clean-up events organised by these guys (and I'm about to attend my fourth at the weekend!). They do a stellar job each and every time and it's not surprising that they have been the recipients of several awards over the last few months. Apart from my hands-on contribution picking up rubbish and helping them keep our coasts beautiful, I have been proud to provide them with pictures of the events for use in the media and for their own publicity purposes. Find out more about them by visiting their website: www.sustainablecoastlines.org.
The picture on the right shows one of my photos as published in the NZ Herald online on 06.04.11.
