Palestine

The Al Madad Foundation is proud to support the following three charities in Palestine:

The Spafford Children's Center offer an integrated range of services providing healthcare, special education, and psychosocial services for disadvantaged children in the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. The Center is committed to providing comprehensive medical care for babies, children and their mothers. For many years the Spafford Children's Center was the only children’s hospital in the Old City and West Bank. In 1970 it became a day-centre clinic, now run by its Director, Dr Jantien Dajani. Out-reach clinics have been opened in other parts of Palestine, including Taybeh. The Center has gained an international reputation for medical excellence, and its staff include Arabs, Jews and Christians of eight denominations – a beacon of tolerance and practical co-operation.

The Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation (BASR) was founded in 1960 as one of the Leonard Cheshire homes. It offers comprehensive rehabilitation services to beneficiaries from all parts of Palestine, particularly those with special needs regardless of their gender, age, religion or social class. It adopts a holistic approach to rehabilitation and maintains a highly specialised multi-disciplinary staff concerned with all aspects of dealing with the emerging medical needs of the Palestinian community.

Birzeit University was initially founded as a school in 1924 by Nabina Nasser, a member of a pioneering family of Palestinian educators. Degree courses were introduced in 1972 and in 1975, "Birzeit University" was officially adopted, creating the first Arab university to be established in Palestine. Now a thriving institution with over 4,000 students and staffed by more than 650 faculty members and employees, Birzeit University discourages the elitism associated with higher education by maintaining a strong link with the wider Palestinian community. The Al Madad Foundation supports the University's photographic department, some of whose students' work is reproduced in Silent Witnesses.

Kashmir

The Citizen's Foundation was founded just 16 years ago and is Pakistan's leading education charity. It builds and operates purpose-built schools in the country to provide modern, holistic and quality education at an economic cost, for disadvantaged children. With 15% of government 'schools' without an actual building, 71% of those with buildings without electricity and 24% without textbooks, it is evident that the children have been failed.  With only 2.1% of GDP spent on education, the result is that 45% of children aged 5-15 are illiterate.

The Citizen's Foundation arose as a result of such a desperate need and has grown to have nationwide presence in 51 districts and 83 towns across Pakistan with 730 school units, teaching over 102,000 underprivileged children- 46% girls- regardless of ethnicity, gender, caste or religion.

Since more than 2/3 of women in Pakistan are illiterate, one of TCF’s most important aims is to have a 50:50 gender mix. To achieve this, all 5400 TCF teachers are women located in the heart of the communities they serve, which encourages parents to send their girls to TCF schools.

The Citizen's Foundation has won numerous international accolades for its professionalism, transparency and robust educational model which has proven itself as a template for the delivery of outstanding standards of education and thus a beacon of hope!

Niger

Niger is a land locked country located in the heart of the Sahel with three quarters of its territories covered by desert. It is affected by wide spread poverty: 63% of Nigeriens live below the poverty level, 34% live in extreme poverty.

Only 20% of people have access to adequate sanitation and in rural areas this percentage drops to a shocking 5%. This desperate situation includes a lack of infrastructure to eliminate household wastewater creating a breeding ground for insects and bacteria causing potentially fatal diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea, and it is particularly the children who suffer from the related diseases of cholera, guinea worm and trachoma.

Less than 50% of the people in Niger have access of safe drinking water. Most people source water from unimproved wells, the Niger River or from standing bodies of water such as ponds, the results so depressingly predictable: diarrhoea and cholera.

In association with UNICEF, we are raising money for a programme in Niger as well as trying to raise awareness of the plight of the children there. Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Some of the projects effected by UNICEF and Al Madad include:
Social mobilisation and communication to promote behavioural change in participating villages.
Geophysical studies for construction of 12 cemented wells.
Construction of 12 cemented wells.

Through this project, UNICEF and the Al Madad Foundation aim to improve children's health by increasing access to drinking water and basic sanitation. In the past, construction of the water points in four of the villages has begun, and will allow people to have access to safe drinking water.