Greetings ALF supporters,

Alf has been quite busy since the end of last year, and we’re thrilled to announce that total funding commitments for 2010 have broached the 1 million dollar mark!  An awful lot has been happening with existing and new ALF projects as I will quickly summarize below.

In Bali, we’re in the process of leasing land on which we plan to build the Annika Linden Center, which once completed, will house YKIP (project administration), Yakuum (prosthetics), Corti (hearing) and have room for potential future projects and staff.   The land parcel is approximately 5,400 sq meters and is located in a nice green section of Sanur.  We’re having the land surveyed and reviewing zoning restrictions and hope to begin design of the building in the coming months.   Once this center is designed and built it will mark a new era in ALF as we’ll be able to consolidate resources in Bali and enjoy a state-of-the-art facility.

In December we approved funding for the refurbishment of the Jara Mara Pati Aged Care Home in North Bali.  The home is government-run, but in a terrible state of disrepair and the 80 or so residents are in dire need of better care.  We plan to work with the existing administration improve things for these unfortunate eldery folks who don’t have families to take care of them.  Our funding will refurbish some of the residences and provide for additional medical care.

In Thailand, we are funding a project via The Asia Foundation (TAF) and the Books for Thailand Foundation (BfT) to provide 115 Thai and 115 English-language children books (total of 230 titles) to 136 schools in Thailand.  These include 126 rural schools administered by the Border Patrol Police as well as ten schools in the Phuket area that are already being supported by ALF.  This project is a partnership with Nation Egmont, the children’s book subsidiary of the Nation Multi-Media Group.  Rural Thai schools are chronically underfunded and the libraries they have, if any are sparse.  This project will bring a nice selection of reference books, biographies and other popular works to thousands of students who otherwise would not have access to them.

ALF has been working with GHRE in the south of Thailand for 4 years now, and for 2010 we’ve added two new projects.  We’re contributing new funding for a Mobile Health Clinic and community health training for the many thousands of Burmese immigrants and refugees in the Phang Nga area.  We’ve also contributed funding for half of the land and land preparation costs of a new Unified Learning Centre (ULC) which will provide a high-quality, well-rounded education to Burmese migrant children in the Khuk Khak area.  Now that GHRE will own the land themselves it will allow them to save on rent costs and design a school building to Thai Government standards.  Given the size of the land purchase, there will be enough space for a football pitch and a playground as well.   201 students aged 5-12 will be relocated from 3 existing FED Learning Centers and 1 Mobile Learning Centre in the surrounding area.   Ex-students who are now integrated into local Thai school will also attend this new ULC after regular school hours for supplementary Burmese classes as their parents often worry about them losing the ability to read and write in Burmese.  The ULC will be used as the location for GHRE’s annual summer camp and also serve as a community centre where events, rights and adult education training will be held for Thai and Burmese community members.

In mid-January, Mark and I were joined in Mumbai, India by Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz and Dorothy Wagle, who arranged a helpful meeting with the US Consulate staff that gave us an overview of the local NGO scene, after which we visited three very impressive organizations working with the poorest of the poor in the surrounding slums.  As a result of this trip we’re now starting projects with two of these; Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust and Salaam Baalak Trust.

Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust provides care and support to street-based drug users and seeks to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. ALF is funding the incoming class of participants in Project Hunar (“Skill”) which provides sustainable livelihood training to recovering drug users.  The program has the objective of facilitating the rehabilitation of recovering drug users by equipping them with marketable professional skills and empowering them to transition into mainstream society.

Salaam Baalak Trust helps care for and educate thousands of street children in a safe and nurturing environment. Today SBT provides a holistic safety net of services covering the entire area of child development from physical and medical needs to the educational, creative, cognitive, social and vocational needs of the children.

Finally, in Brazil we plan to begin vetting projects soon and hope to have an announcement to make about a new project there in the near future.  Please keep an eye on the ALF website as it will be updated soon to reflect these new activities in more detail.  I also promise that future editions of this newsletter will include photos...

 Thank you all for your continued interest and support.

Kurt