Good Works
‘Those who spend in Allah’s Cause,in
prosperity and in adversity, who repress anger, and who pardon men;
verily, Allah loves Al-Muhsinoon, the good-doers.’ {Chapter 3, Verse 134 – The Qu’ran}
In the next few weeks, my friend Mike Sierra will be riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge, to raise money for cancer research and treatment…he’s geo-tagging his route, so others can follow his progress in Google Earth (KML link). Mike lost his brother brother-in-law to cancer a few years ago. I’m sure his efforts are driven by his recent experience.
Separately, Andy Mitchell, one of the co-founders of local startup MeeCard, just took part in the Rickshaw Run to support Mercy Corps‘ work in India. Andy’s also behind MeeTimer, a charityware extension for Firefox, designed to help ‘curb your online procrastination’ and build awareness of Mercy Corps.
Lastly, I recently received a letter from World Vision explaining that my sponsored child’s project will soon be closing as the Peruvian village of Ipaumirim is ready to manage its own development. Samara Lima and I have written each other a couple times a year since she was five years old…she’s now fifteen and ready to contribute to her community. I hope I’ll be able to stay in touch with Samara and also be able to support another project.
Mike, Andy and I are amongst the wealthiest 1% of humanity that has ever existed and yet everyone – all of us – don’t do enough. Everything we do must be world-changing 🙂
UPDATE (7th September): With the Ipaumarim Area Development project drawing to an end, this eveningI wrote a farewell letter to Samara and received details of the next development project and the child I will be sponsoring. Benna Nakibirige is a young girl from Uganda who lives in an area around 120km West of Kampala. The Kibiga-Mulagi Development programme will focus on improving sanitation, HIV+AIDS awareness and school enrollment in those two sub-counties.
not to mention, Dominic Hodgson will be running in the Great North Run for Mencap…
Thanks Imran, actually back in the country and it was an amazing event. It worked on many levels – raised a lot of money for charity (at least £22,000 I believe, probably a lot more), was an adventure in the truest sense, and provided a completely unpadded experience of the realities of life for vast swathes of the population. For anyone who wants to do fund raising but has never found an event that really got you stirred up, I heartily recommend at least looking into it.