Open House Group

2010

• Vicente Ferrer

  Committed to bringing about change that provides long-term solutions, this humanist organisation operates a range of educational and ecological projects.
  
  

  In 2010, we directed our support to a project in Anantapur, India, that gave university grants to the most academically gifted students, enabling them to continue on to higher education and forge their own futures. Within the healthcare field, we also contributed to the organisation’s scheme to provide essential nutrition to pregnant women, elderly people and children up to four years old.

• Intermon Oxfam

  In the area of Tanzania in which the charity is based, 60% of the population lives with the uncertainty of whether they will actually eat anything in the next six months.
  
  

  Between harvests, families have to get into debt in order to feed themselves, in some cases paying interest rates of 300%. Taking a long-term view, the organisation worked to boost the production capacity of the local population, so that they had access to food all year round and were better equipped to generate a more stable income.

• Unicef

  In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, every third child goes without the fundamental human right to education. In 2010 we contributed to the second phase of Unicef’s high-profile Schools for Africa project, which aims to increase disadvantaged children’s access to a quality education on a sustainable basis.

• Vicky Bernadet

  This foundation, based in Barcelona, runs a therapy centre offering advice and personalised treatment for people affected by the issue of child sex abuse. We made a contribution towards the invaluable work that they do in raising awareness of this issue.

• Ashoka

  This NGO is a worldwide community of leading social entrepreneurs – men and women who can bring about change. We made a general contribution towards their pioneering approach to addressing the challenges facing humanity.

• www.childrenwithcancer.org.uk

  This is the UK’s leading charity devoted to the battle against childhood leukaemia and other childhood cancers.

  At the start of this year one of our former interns was inspired to take part in a marathon aimed at raising funds for this organisation. We were glad to be able to make a contribution to her efforts.

2009

• Intermon Oxfam

  The landlocked country of Burkina Faso in West Africa is one of the poorest in the world – almost half of the population lives in extreme poverty (surviving on less than $1 a day). The country’s economy is based mainly on agriculture and in the production of cereals, rice, cotton, fruits and vegetables in particular. However, the yield doesn’t meet the needs of the people.

  The charity set up a project to support the farm workers of the Region of Cascades and the Hauts Bassins in the production and commercialisation of corn, cashew nuts and mangoes. It had an additional objective of improving the income on these foods for the local population. In the process, it instructed local farmers in how to negotiate better prices for their produce with the private sector.

• Vicente Ferrer

  In 2009 we contributed to several of Vicente Ferrer’s projects in Anantapur, India. These included providing secondary school pupils with bicycles to enable them to get to school and the construction of irrigation systems that would make best use of existing underground water resources.

• Save the Children

  In 2009 Save the Children launched the biggest worldwide campaign of its 90-year history, called ‘EVERY ONE’, with the aim of reducing the number of preventable child deaths.

  Highlighting the fact that not every child has an equal chance of survival, the campaign mobilised millions of people all over the world into putting pressure on their governments to take action. Focusing on the biggest killers of pneumonia, measles, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV and AIDS, together with maternal mortality, the charity doubled its investment in its child survival programmes with the target of reaching 50 million women and children a year by 2015.

Our plans for the future

As you can see, we’ve worked with several different charities and NGOs, and have contributed to quite a broad spread of projects. We find that it’s often more constructive to build on established relationships with our chosen charity partners than to embark on several new ventures each year. That said, we like to operate within a structure whereby we are not forever fixed to one particular organisation or project, and we remain open to suggestions for the future.

As always, we welcome any questions you may have, so if you’d like to find out more about our involvement with aid organisations, don’t hesitate to get in touch.