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Liz Odera receives the French Order of Youth and Sports Medal!

Posted by saima on July 2nd, 2008

We’d like to congratulate Liz Odera of Sadili Oval and the Malezi Foundation for receiving the French Order of Youth and Sports Medal from the French Government for her work in the development of youth sports in Kenya, and her commitment to excellence in education. Liz has three great projects on GlobalGiving: Train 3000 Kibera youth in sport & life skills, The African Child Sport & Education Fund Needs You, Provide Kibera Slum Children with 1500 Solar Lamps . I met Liz in the spring of 2007 when I traveled to Nairobi for a Sport for Social Change Network meeting where Nike was one of the sponsors. I was there to talk about online giving at GlobalGiving and to get a few projects up and running on our website. Over time, I have gotten to know Liz and she is one of the kindest, most dedicated persons I know. Kenya is so lucky to have Liz and I feel incredibly lucky to have met and befriended her. She has several times invited me to visit again and I certainly hope I will be able to do so soon. “I really do hope to have you in Kenya one day in the near future. Do let me know whenever you wish to come. We have a guest house with very simple setup, nothing like what you have in the USA, but you are always welcome to come with Arshad and stay there at no cost. I remember that you had really difficulty finding food that you could eat when we were at the workshop, you will be able to cook for yourselves, or eat out at some of our many restaurants in the city.”

Besides Liz just being a wonderful awesome person she has many amazing accomplishments:

  • Liz is an international tennis player
  • Through initial support by the IOC (through the Kenyan National Olympic Committee) and Professional Tennis Registry, she initiated the Tennis Africa Cup, which is now the single largest network of junior players.
  • Her work in establishing East Africa’s first performance academy programs has seen the national rugby 7s and 15s grow to high world rankings.
  • She has taken Kenya’s tennis juniors, Rahab Mbugua and Maurice Wamukowa, to play Division I University Tennis and attain full scholarships in the USA.
  • Under her active encouragement, the Sadili Flames Basketball team was the first junior team ever to break through the Division I to enter the Kenyan National Classic League in 2004, and many of the team members went on to play top college and league basketball in Kenya, USA and Australia.
  • She successfully piloted the Nature and Sports Camps together with UNEP and GSA, a children’s sport and environmental leadership initiative that is expected to roll out to other underprivileged communities in the world.
  • Liz holds degree qualifications in sports sciences, immunology, parasitology and education.

Again, congratulations Liz!

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I don't want to write 'Goodbye' because I hate 'Goodbyes'

Posted by saima on June 6th, 2008

Before I send my farewell message to the project leader universe, I thought let me post a farewell on the GlobalGoodness Blog (a practice goodbye if you will). Saying goodbye is harder than I thought it would be…so here’s a go at it…

My husband and I are relocating to New Orleans so this is the end of a lovely seven years in DC to start a new adventure in an entirely new city. I look forward to getting to know the city and its people and hope that I can volunteer and learn more about some of the work that is going on there. This really isn’t a goodbye because I will always be a GlobalGiver and am fortunate enough that I will be working on a few projects with my colleagues from NOLA.

I love that at GG you can connect with a project and be a part of it from afar. You can see this in the comments that donors have left wonderful comments on updates-like this one:

 ”Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to help support these wonderful brave women. Giving financial help as a tool and respecting that these women  truly are the experts in their community and do have the best ideas to make social change is in my opinion the best type of support .  I have been looking for a way  to give my support so thank you so much”

Then there’s our great project leaders whom I feel are a big global family.  Between emails discussing projects, project updates, and donors with project leaders, there were also emails about family life, dreams and everyday life in the US and abroad. Over 2.5 years I have formed lifelong connections with extraordinary people doing amazing work all around the world in circumstances so very different from what I face everyday. I feel so connected to many people whom I have never met and hope that we will always keep in touch and that our paths will cross again. GlobalGiving has allowed me to get to know these wonderful men and women.

And of course, I am sad to be leaving DC and GlobalGiving because I leave behind a family here at GG. I am so lucky to have worked with such a passionate group of people doing so much good for givers and community leaders around the world. 

GlobalGiving to me is passion, connection and just pure goodness. Every day is a new experience, a new donor, a new project leader and a new beautiful story or story of courage from the other side of the world.

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Driving one's way to Development

Posted by saima on March 6th, 2008

One of the things quite a few of my colleagues know about me is that when I joined GlobalGiving, I didn’t really know how to drive. Okay, in complete honesty, I could drive but I just couldn’t reverse. So when I finally learned to drive properly and reverse, it was truly a moment to celebrate!I always have managed to live without a car for the most part and frankly I thought I would never learn or need to learn. However, after I learned to drive, it gave me a new sense of freedom and mobility. This feeling was one that I have always taken for granted. Sadly, in some parts of the world women are not being allowed to drive, such as places like Saudi Arabia. In fact, I was in Riyadh when women took the roads to protest the refusal to let them drive. There is another movement again that has started to continue that 1990 protest to let women drive and we’re all hoping that happens. As one woman puts it in this interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor:

“I don’t even like driving,” says Ms. Aishah el-Mane, who received death threats and was forced to leave her home and job in Riyadh. “Even if I could drive now, I wouldn’t; I much prefer to have a driver. It’s about female empowerment and mobility. Women need incomes, they need jobs, and they need a way to get to those jobs,” she says.

International Women’s Day in on Saturday, March 8 and I wonder which project I should support in honor of International Women’s day. This year I think I will go with Livelihood for 500 Tribal Women in Gujarat that teaches women how to drive so that they can sell their crafts in markets. It is a pretty cool project and by teaching just one woman to drive, this enables her to teach another 500 women to drive.

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A Rocky Start to 2008

Posted by saima on January 7th, 2008

The new year has been off to a rather sad, turbulent start with all the unrest around the world. Myself, I was slated to meet some project leaders in Pakistan and accompany a team of evaluators visiting a project GlobalGiving donors have funded in Mansehra. With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, that plan was cancelled and I flew back to the US from India. Something we often chat about is our worries about our Project Leaders when we hear of such events. I know that at times I get frustrated if they are not responding to emails or are late in follow up. Then I read emails like the ones below and I realize that these men and women are doing great work in very difficult situations.

Hearing about things in the news is one thing but hearing from people in the midst of the chaos, really brings home to me that these are real people, dealing with real situations and real turmoil be it the fallout of post-election chaos or the assasination of a political leader.

From Project Leader Stella Omunga in Kenya:

Yes, indeed they are now even burning people who have taken refuge in churches. The situation in Eldoret is the worst and believe you me, GEMINI has not been cowed by all this. We are regrouping and doing anything in our power to provide humanitarian assistance and on a personal level, I’m providing shelter to the most vulnerable women and children and psychological counseling to the affected families in a nearby church compound.

You can support efforts to provide comfort and relief to those affected by this crisis here:

Urgent Aid for Kenya– Food, Supplies, and Support

From Project Leader Nabeel Khan in Pakistan:

Things in the state of Punjab especially Lahore is settling down as there is deployment of the police however i cannot say the same about the state of Sindh where Karachi (the largest metropolitan) is in a state of shambles where a majority number of cities are under curfew where Rangers have been given a shoot to kill order (which is more to intimidate than any credible threat). Banks and Food Chains have been set on fire. Furthermore, since Kashf has had branches in many parts of Punjab, the area managers were put on high alert. Most offices in Pakistan were either closed due to security reasons and even if some were open, there was but little staff.It is indeed a bad way to end a reasonably good year however lets all hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Our thoughts are with our Project Leaders and we hope for a much better 2008 for everyone. You can always check our see results page for the latest news from the field.

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On the Road

Posted by saima on December 11th, 2007

Earlier this spring, I had the opportunity to visit some project leaders in Nairobi. I was so impressed with their enthusiasm and eagerness to learn about GlobalGiving and how to appeal to GG donors. I have to say, some folks from that batch have turned out to be real rockstars!

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Towards the end of December, GlobalGiving will have the opportunity to meet some Project Leaders in India, Indonesia and Pakistan. We’d love to learn more about the leaders behind these projects and find out about the work they’re doing. We plan to host a few workshops to bring them together and to answer their queries!  Here are just a few of the people we’re planning to visit:

However, as a GlobalGiving donor myself, I wondered, “What would I want to learn from the donor perspective?”

So I would pose this question to you-have you supported any projects in Delhi, Udaipur or Chennai or Indonesia and Pakistan? What more do you want to know?  What else would you like to see? Do you want more project photos?  Interviews with the people behind the project?  Be creative!  Send us your thoughts and questions, and we’ll try to answer as many of them as we can while we’re there.

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