Who are Americans?

Common Hope (St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American nonprofit organization with a focus on improving the education, health care, housing and family life of Guatemalans living in poverty. The staff in Guatemala includes Guatemalans and volunteers from around the world. Today, Common Hope works together with over 8,000 children and adults living in poverty in Guatemala.

The main focus of Common Hope is on providing educational opportunities for those who otherwise would not have that opportunity. Once that relationship is established, social workers from Common Hope identify specific needs of each family and work to ensure families have ways to meet these needs.

These needs might be paying for tuition, dental check-ups, building a new house, taking literacy classes, providing building materials for home improvements, building stoves and latrines, filling medical prescriptions, and other types of aid. Vocational training is also offered, along with day care centers, to provide a safe place for parents to leave their children during working hours. Read the rest

Theatre Without Borders (TWB) is an informal online gathering of hundreds of artists from around the world who are interested in supporting international theatre exchange. TWB welcomes professionals, academics, amateurs and artists from around the world.

TWB encourages the exchange of international theatre projects and artists, and also supports other organizations involved with international theatre exchanges. You can search for theatre contacts in other countries who can provide local information and perhaps make introductions to local contacts.

American theatre director, Roberta Levitow, founded TWB after serving a Fulbright Senior Specialist residency at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and attending the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre and theatre workshops in East Africa and Poland. Read the rest

International Relief Teams (IRT), based in San Diego, California, is a nonprofit organization that mobilizes volunteers and distributes medical supplies to support:

1. Domestic and International Disaster Relief
2. Medical education and training
3. Surgical and clinical outreach
4. Public health

Since its founding in 1988, IRT has worked in 42 countries to provide more than $5.6 million in volunteer services and more than $112 million in medicines and supplies.

Disaster relief projects in 2007 include humanitarian and medical aid to Sierra Leone, Earthquake victims in Peru, Ivory Coast, Honduras, Lithuania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Bolivia flood relief. In America, victims of Hurricane Katrina are still receiving aid. IRT teams provide medical care to refugees and disaster victims, repair and build homes, and provide emergency medicines and supplies. Read the rest

Global Playground (Washington, DC) is an American nonprofit organization that funds education projects in developing nations, and promotes cross cultural understanding. The first two school building projects are in Uganda (Africa) and Cambodia (Asia).

“Currently there are over 2 billion school-age children in our world. Over 1.75 billion, or 86%, live in less-developed regions.” (United Nations Report, 2003) Read the rest

‘One World. One Dream.’ … the motto of the Beijing Olympics. Yet the focus so often is on nations competing against nations. And more than ever, athletes are jumping from country to country to compete in the Olympics … and the boundaries of nationalism are becoming blurred.

Is it time to eliminate the focus on ‘country’ and just let the Olympics be a gathering of the best athletes in the world? 

Would it be fun to let Rafael Nadal (Spain) and Roger Federer (Switzerland) compete as a doubles team in Olympic tennis? Why not? 

Major international tennis and golf tournaments (Wimbledon, U.S. Masters Golf Tournament, etc.) are wide open to the world’s best athletes, and thrive without emphasizing national origin. The best come and compete … very simple.

Would it ruin the Olympics if American Kobe Bryant played on the Japanese basketball team, or American Jeremy Wariner ran track for Germany? Or if David Beckham played for the U.S. soccer team?

With each country making its own rules for determining who is eligible, the Olympic organizers admit the system has problems.

Tanith Belbin, of the Canadian-American ice dancing team of Belbin & Agosto, had to become an American citizen a few days prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics, so the duo could compete under the banner of one country only. What would be more in the Olympic spirit than two athletes from different countries competing together as a team and splitting their medal between Canada and the USA?

Chris Kaman is an American NBA basketball player who has never set foot in Germany and cannot speak German, but whose great-grandparents are German, and he receives dual citizenship last month so he can play with the German Olympic Basketball team … who are led by Dirk Nowitzki, who lives in Texas playing for the Dallas Mavericks. Read the rest

The Climb High Foundation is a nonprofit organization (San Francisco, CA) that is dedicated to teaching women in developing nations the skills that will enable them to benefit from climbing and trekking-related tourism.

Many of the world’s most alluring mountains are located in very poor nations (Uganda, Nepal, Tanzania, India, etc.) where women often are considered subordinate to men and lack equal opportunities for education, economic opportunity, medical care and other services. The nonprofit team focuses their efforts in these areas.

Alison Levine, who served as the team captain for the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, is a founder of the Climb High Foundation. Read the rest

WildAid is a nonprofit organization with a mission to end illegal wildlife trade by raising awareness to reduce the demand for threatened and endangered animal species products, and to increase public support for wildlife conservation.

WildAid is headquartered in San Francisco, California with branch offices in London (UK), Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), New Delhi (India) and Beijing (China).

Projects have included:

* Helping to secure international protection for the whale shark and basking shark under the United Nation’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

* Repeatedly reaching up to 1 billion viewers a week with celebrities (Harrison Ford, Yao Ming, Amanda Beard, Jackie Chan, etc.) asking consumers to stop purchasing illegal wildlife products. Read the rest