WHY I SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL HUMANITY FOUNDATION

My name is Dan Gray, I’m a board member, financial supporter, and volunteer for IHF (International Humanity Foundation).  I’m a small business owner in Portland, Oregon, and so my volunteering is mostly from a distance.

I recently returned from an IHF trip, where I visited IHF centers in Kenya and Indonesia.  I hope you have time to read some of my log, and look at some of the pictures from my trip.
http://siderealtechnology.com/IHFTrip2006/

Carol Sasaki created IHF, and has a vision to help the poorest of the poor throughout the world. She has created (with some small help from volunteers in the U.S., and a lot of help from local volunteers) an organization that is different from any that I’ve ever seen, and my heart has been with IHF since I walked into their World Store in San Diego while on vacation with my wife, in early 2005.

I support IHF for a lot of reasons, but there are three main reasons.

1. IHF has no opinion on religion or politics. This doesn’t mean they discourage religion in the people they help, but in fact they encourage the people’s own religion, without trying to change anyone’s belief system. I find this huge, and I personally would have a problem supporting any organization that would try to “convert” the folks they are helping to any belief system (If you knew my upbringing, then you would know why I feel so strongly about this!) (There is more about this in my recent log.)

2. IHF is an extremely honest and thrifty organization. We are set up so when a person or organization sponsors or supports a child or project, 100% of that money goes for this. This is a hard concept to believe and it is difficult to maintain. But that is how it is, and it’s one of the founding principles which is in the IHF constitution. Volunteers need to provide their own airfare and other expenses. Carol herself and /or other supporters pay for extra expenses. There are no paid staff, except local directors and assistants, which have very small salaries. So, I can say with assurance, that a dollar will provide the most benefit if donated to IHF than any other organization (I don’t know this for a fact, but I highly suspect this is true!) There are also policies in place at the local level where every dollar is accounted for, and posted on a public bulletin board.

3. This is probably the most important reason, but it took me a year in involvement, and also a trip abroad to see it in action to truly understand this: IHF is a bottoms up organization. That means that each center has their constitution that is mainly the work of Carol (I think anyway). But after the constitution, the local people make their own decisions by democratic vote. The local board has women and even children, along with sometimes government officials or local Chiefs. The child’s vote counts as I vote, the same as the chief or even Carol’s vote. Thus IHF is owned by the people that are being helped. Every other organization that I’ve seen works from the TOP down, the head person makes the decisions which filter down until finally the people who are being helped have to live with these decisions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad these organizations exist, and they are doing a lot of good in a world that needs it badly, but I’m happy I’m supporting an organization that works from the bottom up.

One of the results of item 3 above, let’s say something were to happen to IHF (the mother ship.) The local IHF could continue without the mother ship! I find that really cool!

Well, there’s a lot more reasons I support IHF, local financial accountability, the IHF “pass it on” philosophy, and other reasons. So my heart is with IHF and the people they (well, really “we”) are helping and also the fact that IHF REALLY NEEDS the help to make this succeed, so I’m happy to be a part of IHF.

One more thing I want to say, is in my recent travels to centers, I made many new friends at all places, but I have to say my heart was left in Kenya with the Pokot folks, and the IHF folks that are helping them. They are the most needy because of their food, water, and medical situation.  During the next few years I have a personal goal to improve the water situation for the East Pokot people.

What can you do? Sponsor a child, sponsor a class, fill out the on-line volunteer form, and consider volunteering, either here or abroad.

I personally could use some help with the IHF website.  If you know PHP, SSL and/or MySQL, and are willing to volunteer, then I really want to hear from you!

International Humanity Foundation: http://www.ihfonline.org

Please email or call me with your questions: 503-887-3701 Dan Gray

I have a policy not to put my email on the web, in order to reduce spam.  The following is my email address, but you need to add a "g" in front of it.  It should read "grayarea", not rayarea!

rayarea@siderealtechnology.com