Fundraiser

From an email:

“In the past two months almost 700,000 Rohingya refugees have traversed the monsoon rains and bloodied fields of Myanmar into Bangladesh’s make-shift and overcrowded refugee camps. Given the scale and pace of death and devastation, the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have all called the violence nothing short of “ethnic cleansing” at the hands of Myanmar’s security forces.

The UN’s children’s agency (UNICEF) estimates that 60% of these refugees are children. They have witnessed their homes go up in flames, and their families and friends brutalized, raped, and murdered. In their trauma they have traversed for days over the minefields of Myanmar to reach the refugee camps of Bangladesh, which has opened its borders to them.

The ordeal of Rohingya children does not end here. Tens of thousands are now in the midst of an “acute and severe” malnutrition; and they remain vulnerable to kidnapping, sex trafficking, exploitation, and the psychological impacts of having had their lives uprooted in the most violent ways. Dozens are going missing every day.

There is a way to help, and Washington DC is coming together on the evening of November 14th at The Gibson (2009 14th St, NW) for vibrant night market inspired food and cultural experience at to help create Safe Havens for the over 400,000 Rohingya refugee children in the refugee camps of Bangladesh. (more…)

“Hoops Sagrado is a Washington, D.C.-based youth leadership and development nonprofit organization that gives at-risk youth from the D.C.-area a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend a month during the summer in the highlands of Guatemala learning another language and culture, teaching their Mayan indigenous peers basketball skills, developing their sense of self, and gaining a new perspective on life.

Using the game of basketball as the common thread, the D.C. youth volunteers and their Guatemalan counterparts are able to not only share their love of the game, but the D.C youth learn how to communicate with, understand, and appreciate another way of life, which while different, shares many of the same challenges they face at home — racism, poverty, broken homes, lack of opportunities and social marginalization.”