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Trees, Water & People was our Natural World beneficiary for the second quarter of 2013. Development Director Heather Herrell shared this report on how TWP will use the grant they received from FBB. FBB members donated $8,725 to TWP last quarter.

On behalf of the communities we serve around the globe, Trees, Water & People extends its sincere gratitude to Foundation Beyond Belief for its support! Your generosity will directly benefit both people and the planet for years to come.

Trees, Water & People is dedicated to improving people’s lives by helping communities to protect, conserve, and manage the natural resources upon which their long-term well-being depends. We believe that natural resources are best protected when local people play an active role in their care and management.

With your support, we will be able to continue and expand our programs:

• Efficient solar air heaters for Native American families living on reservations across the U.S. Great Plains to warm homes and save money
• Green Job Training for tribal members in renewable energy and energy efficiency at the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center to provide valuable skills for employment
• Fresh produce from Solar Warrior Farm for Native American families on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to improve health
• Life-saving clean cookstoves for impoverished indigenous families throughout Central America and Haiti to reduce deadly indoor air pollution
• Cleantech solar home lighting and cell phone charging devices for rural off-grid families in Honduras and Peru to improve livelihoods
• Community tree nurseries and reforestation projects throughout Latin America to protect local environments and combat global climate change

We cannot thank you enough for your generosity. Your caring and sharing empowers Trees, Water & People to accomplish our mission.

Heather Herrell, Development Director
Trees, Water & People

The second quarter of 2013 is drawing swiftly to a close, and it’s your last chance to distribute your donations among our five beneficiaries. To help you make your decision, take a look at this video for a summary of the important work being done by these beneficiaries.

Here’s a quick look at what our remarkable beneficiaries have been up to these past few months:

Our current Poverty beneficiary, One Acre Fund, looks for long-term solutions to fight the hunger crisis in many African nations. OAF provides loans, storage, and insurance for crop failure to help farmers to find their feet and develop their businesses. With a particular focus on the power of enabling women to support their families, OAF serves more than 137,000 families in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi. As of the end of 2012, One Acre Fund had helped more than 137,000 families, including almost 600,000 children.

Trees, Water & People, our Natural World beneficiary for the second quarter, draws a strong link between protecting the environment and protecting the people who live in it. Their projects include the highly successful Luciérnaga program, which brings solar photovoltaic lighting systems to communities, and its Clean Cookstoves project, which has built nearly 60,000 stoves that are safer and more efficient that traditional stoves—and use local materials and labor, creating jobs and improving lives. In the United States, TWP works with Native American tribes to develop environmentally sustainable practices on their reservations. More than 175 Native Americans have received training that they have taken back to their own tribal communities to make them more energy efficient.

Bernie’s Book Bank, our current Education beneficiary, distributes donated books to at-risk children around the Chicago area. Last year, they distributed more than 600,000 books, and their goal for 2013 is to distribute more than 1 million books. Our Science of Giving series took a look at why distributing these books can have such a huge impact on the future success of disadvantaged kids.

Our encore Human Rights beneficiary, the Innocence Project of Texas, is back for a second round—we first featured them in 2011. IPoT works to overturn wrongful convictions, especially through the use of DNA evidence, and educate the public about junk science in the criminal justice system. We took a closer look at their efforts to reform how eyewitness testimony is used in convictions.
 
Our Challenge the Gap beneficiary this quarter is T’ruah, an organization of rabbis who work for human rights. Among other projects, T’ruah works to end injustices in prisons, in North America and around the world, and they build bridges across religious traditions to find common ground and work together for justice. They have worked to prevent the eviction of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem and launched a campaign for Bedouin rights, working again to prevent the expulsion of thousands of Bedouins and to secure government services to several Bedouin villages in the Negev region of Israel.

Our current Small Grant beneficiary is the Pathfinders Project. Next month, the four Pathfinders will embark on their year-long global service mission, volunteering for clean water, education, and human rights projects, and blazing the trail for the Humanist Action: Ghana.

And one last reminder: Our current Humanist Crisis Response program to help those affected by the Oklahoma tornadoes will end on Wednesday, June 26. To donate, click here. So far, we’ve raised more than $45,000 for our crisis beneficiaries, Operation USA and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

Don’t forget to log in to the site and visit the “Manage Donation” area under “Manage Account.” For more information, visit our beneficiary pages for links to their websites and social media.

View a video summary of our Q2 charities

By Cathleen O’Grady

Trees, Water & People, Foundation Beyond Belief’s current Natural World beneficiary, draws a strong link between protecting the environment and protecting the people who live in it. They see the sustainable use of natural resources as playing a vital role in safeguarding the long-term well-being of communities, and they encourage sustainability by empowering people to play an active role in the preservation of their surrounding ecosystems.

TWP’s projects are wide-ranging, reaching from environmental education projects to dry composting latrines. Many of their programs have a strong focus on the provision of sustainable energy to communities in Central America and Uganda, as well as to Native American communities in the United States.

The highly successful Luciérnaga program, launched eighteen months ago in Honduras, brings solar photovoltaic lighting systems to communities, and is now branching out to other countries in Central America.

Luciérnaga, which means “firefly” in Spanish, not only brings electricity to parts of the country that until now have had no access to modern technology, but also helps to create jobs, all while taking care of natural resources and providing a sustainable and cost-effective source of lighting. The lighting systems, which are subsidized by a U.S. government grant, are resold through local farming co-operative societies, having been bought on consignment from TWP to reduce both cost and risk. The Cleantech project also works with small business owners and cooperatives to distribute solar phone charges and solar electricity.

Energy poverty has implications that reach further than a lack of modern appliances: In many countries around the world, cooking with biomass (wood or charcoal) not only produces greenhouse emissions, indoor air pollution and associated health problems, and depletion of resources, but is also often dangerous, with fires causing the deaths of approximately four million people globally every year.

To combat both the environmental and human aspects of this problem, TWP has developed a number of cooking stove models in its Clean Cookstoves project, which has built nearly 60,000 stoves since 1998. The stoves, which use up to 70% less wood than traditional stoves, are safer, save on carbon emissions, and use local materials and labor, creating jobs and improving lives.

To learn more about Trees, Water & People, keep up with them on their blog, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.