Good Causes 2

Dear all

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an update on good causes by friends who doing different activities to raise money for, well, good causes. There were a couple I didn’t get a chance to include in the last update. I am doing this, however, almost as an act of karma, after so many people helped me raise money to come to Honduras a couple of years ago. I will start with Kayleigh McGinn.

Kayleigh McGinn

I have known her for a couple of years and is my cousin’s former partner. She hails from Glasgow and we always had a good laugh, putting a friendly arm around me at my brother’s wedding after I misplaced his wedding ring (I was the best man), and I will always remember receiving a can of Tennants for Christmas from her, after a year away in Honduras. Very straight to point and a fan of the odd swear word, she’s going to be doing the challenge of a lifetime. Like my friend Joe, she is going to be climbing Kilimanjaro at some point this year, although I’m not too sure when. She is raising money for Concern Worldwide. It is a huge challenge for anyone, but I am really pleased she is doing it. The sense of accomplishment will open more and more doors for her. I must admit, I don’t know too much about the charity, but here is a snippet about them:

“Concern Worldwide works with the world’s poorest people to transform their lives.

We are an international humanitarian organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and suffering in the world’s poorest countries.

We work in partnership with the very poorest people in these countries, directly enabling them to improve their lives, as well as using our knowledge and experience to influence decisions made at a local, national and international level that can significantly reduce extreme poverty.” 

Taken from https://www.concern.net/

Please visit her Justgiving site, which is: http://www.justgiving.com/Kayleigh-McGinn

 

Kris McGee

Kris has featured in my blog before. In fact, I am sure I can go back and find pictures of her. Yes, I think I am going to include one now!

If you have followed my blog long enough, just under two years ago, I went to help paint a school in the small town of Pespire in Southern Honduras with the Canadian Girl Guides, of which Kris was a Guide leader. Above is a photo of her as she was about to leave the beautiful little town, and she is with her lovely host family, Los Nietos. I haven’t been able to stay in touch with the people of the town as much as I would have liked. I loved my week or so there, and it gave me a brief, educative insight of rural town life in Honduras (other than my time in Tatumbla). It made me reflect a lot seeing this nice side of this country, away from the insecurity and crime of the cities. Below is a picture of the gang, outside of the school they painted. They were great fun. I hope they look back at their Pespire adventure with as much fondness as myself.

Back in Canada, Kris is a school teacher in Kitchener. She is a larger than life personality, very funny, and a good sparring partner to make fun of. She puts much of her time into the Guide movement, taking people away on trips to random parts of the world and being life and soul of the party. I remember how she motivated the troops of scorching days, sacrificed massive amounts of her own energy, money and belongings to make sure other people enjoyed themselves and took as much as they could away from the experience. I enjoyed our many funny conversations during those two weeks together. A good friend, and I promise that one day, when I have money, I will fly up to visit her up there where polar bears roam and kill children, and where orcas float around murder defenseless baby seals. All slightly exaggerated, but I promise to go and somehow sabotage Roger Federer’s game (to give Murray a chance winning at least a set).

Kris has decided to do another great cause in her life by doing a run. I don’t know how far, I don’t know where, nor do I know when, but she is doing it to raise money for United Ways Centraides, a charity which is trying to tackle poverty in Canada. I’ll be quite honest, I do not know too much about the charity like above, but I thought I would include another snippet.

“Our mission is to improve lives and build community by engaging individuals and mobilizing collective action. We call this our community impact mission.

Community Impact

Community impact is about achieving meaningful, long-term improvements to the quality of life in Canadian communities, by addressing not just the symptoms of problems but also getting at the root causes. It’s about making fundamental changes to community conditions.

All United Way Centraides are working together for real change to happen. We do this by:

• Influencing public attitudes, systems and policies
• Focusing on underlying causes of social issues
• Strengthening the network of services and the capacity of non-profits and the community
• Engaging and mobilizing the community’s financial resources, influence, time, knowledge and action”

To see more, visit http://www.unitedway.ca/. Also, to donate money to Kris, you can visit: https://raceroster.com/pledge/?e=245&u=17547

Please spare whatever you can.

I will be including a couple more good causes soon.

Now to include something completely different that I saw on Facebook, a short video protesting the deportation of Latin American migrants in the USA.

http://www.upworthy.com/you-dont-need-to-speak-a-foreign-language-to-understand-how-insane-this-is?c=bl3