Rwanda Radio Project for Orphans
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Summary
Provide Freeplay radios to orphaned child heads of households in Rwanda. Radio programs can help them learn to prevent disease, increase their garden yields, and keep their goats healthy.
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Received $8,188 from 90 donations from people like:
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More Information About this Project
Project Needs and Beneficiaries
As a result of genocide and deaths from disease, 1.2m Rwandan children are orphaned and 400,000 currently live alone. The head of the household usually is a girl who looks after several younger children. For example, Mukakrimba has been the head of her four-person home since she was 10. She maintains a subsistence living for her family with no parental care. Like most other 65,000 child heads of households, she cannot attend school. Radio serves as her constant companion, mentor and guide.
Activities
Since Freeplay radios need no batteries or electricity, the children can access radio programs any time. They can listen non-stop to broadcasts on health care, AIDS, clean water, farming, and animal husbandry, as well as to music and sports.
Funding Information
Total Funding Received to Date: $8,188
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $24,312
Total Funding Goal: $32,500
Additional Documentation
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
Resources
Why this Project is Important
Potential Long Term Impact
Orphaned child heads of households are among the most isolated in the world. Community radio broadcasts help them to integrate with their villages and, most important, to develop vital life skills that can improve their quality of life.
Project Message
“The most important thing I had was my goat, but now it is my radio. I listen to the news to learn, since I cannot attend school.”
- Mukakrimba, Head of her household in Rwanda since age 10
When this Project was Updated
Last Updated
This project was last updated on January 24, 2008.
Date Added to GlobalGiving
This project was added to the GlobalGiving project catalog on June 15, 2004.
Latest Update from the Field
News Release - Tom Hanks hosts eBay Charity Auction
By Michelle Riley - Director of External Affairs, January 24, 2008 02:28 PM
New York, January 21, 2008
. The Freeplay Foundation announced today that two-time Academy Award® winner Tom Hanks will participate in a charity auction hosted on eBay Giving Works Jan 22-Feb 1 to support the Freeplay Foundation.
Tom Hanks, the Freeplay Foundation’s U.S. Ambassador, will autograph 10 self-powered Freeplay Lifeline radios for the charity auction on eBay Giving Works, eBay’s dedicated program for charity listings. Each high bidder also will receive a personal letter and a signed photo from Mr. Hanks.
“The Lifeline radio can change the world one person, one house, one village at a time,” said Mr. Hanks. “The beauty of the Freeplay Foundation is the radio itself and the immediacy of its mission: to put radios in the hands of people who need them. Lifeline radios can make a positive impact from the moment they are turned on in one of the villages.”
People can go to www.ebay.com or can click on www.shopvictoriously.com to place their bids and to watch a special video from Tom Hanks.
Lifeline radios are not sold commercially; they are the first radios ever produced specifically for use in humanitarian projects. Radio is the primary means of mass communication in developing countries, but often, transistor radio batteries cost too much for people to buy on an ongoing basis and electricity is non-existent. The Freeplay Foundation provides radio access to the poorest people in the world via the wind-up and solar-powered radios, which do not require batteries or electricity.
Working mainly in Africa, the Freeplay Foundation enables hundreds of thousands of children to learn English, math, science and life skills through radio distance-learning programs. Coffee farmers learn new planting techniques using Lifeline radios, and people throughout Africa learn how to prevent HIV/AIDS while listening to their Lifelines. Nomadic tribes listen to Lifeline radios as they caravan, and orphaned children -- living completely on their own can grasp a “lifeline” to the outside world when listening.
“The first time I held a Lifeline, I felt like I was carrying all the promise of the modern world in my hand,” remembers Tom Hanks. “Music can come out of the sky without batteries being tossed into landfills. Information can be sent and received, and voices of freedom can be heard. All by winding up this little box.”
The Freeplay Foundation is a fund-seeking organization with 501 (c) (3) tax exempt status in the U.S., is a registered charity in the UK, and has Section 21 non-profit status in South Africa.
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Media contacts:
East Coast: Alexandrea Ravenelle, Global Fluency
(646) 652-5216 aravenelle@globalfluency.com
West Coast: Brielle Schaeffer, Global Fluency
(650) 433-4163 bschaeffer@globalfluency.com
For the Freeplay Foundation: Michelle Riley (912) 898-2195 riley.freeplayfdn@gmail.com
Links:
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