Madeleine McCann

You have probably heard about Madeleine McCann abduction. It took place on 03/05/2007 at Praia da Luz, in Portugal. She and her parents were spending some vacations there and, one night, she disappeared from her bedroom, while sh was sleeping.







It has been now 53 days since her disappearance and her parents and police authorities continues to search for her. Many leads have been followed, but none of them proved to be true.


If you have any information you find useful, here are some contact information:


TELEPHONE
Portuguese Police: 00351 282 405 400
International Crimestoppers: 0044 18 83 73 13 36


WEBSITES
Help Find Madeleine McCann (http://madeleine.ceopupload.com/)
British Police (http://www.leics.police.uk/)
CEOP (http://www.ceop.gov.uk/)
ACPO (http://www.acpo.police.uk/)
Crimestoppers UK (http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/)

Crisis in Darfur

A grave humanitarian crisis is happening in Darfur, a region of far western Sudan, in Africa. Since 2003, an ongoing tribal conflict has made nearly 2 million refugees. Some 200.000 of them have crossed the border into Chad, fleeing from the conflict.





In this conflict, armed militias attacked civilians, killing them, raping the women and destroying their villages. Torture also spreaded throughout this region.

Since 2004, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is helping those refugees to survive. Refugee camps have been built up. These camps are literally small villages, with shelters, latrines, water supply, schools and other basic services. A big logistics operation is on course, bringing to the region thousands of tents, blankets and other relief items. The lack of water is a big problem.

UNHCR continues to set up new camps to take in more refugees for Darfur.

You can find more information on the UNHCR's website, at http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/chad?page=home.

UNHCR need our help to continue to help these people. You can make an online donation on UNHCR's website, at http://www.unhcr.org/donate/index.htm. For just $80 they can provide a tent for a family of 5.

The Dhaka Project

Hello all!

Today I'll talk about the Dhaka Project. It's an non profit organization founded to help some of the poorest people of Bangladesh. Their primary objective is to help those people to get new sources of income, using local resources whenever it's possible. They focus mainly on children, but adults get their help too. The organization have three programmes:

CHILDREN'S EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

Children from poor families, aged 4 and above, are provided with education and basic needs, as food, books, school materials and clothes. They also make available a learning center, a library and sports.

WOMEN'S SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Women get English training and manual skills, like tailoring, fabrication of handicrafts and others. When their courses are completed, they are transferred to awaiting job vacancies. They are also provided with a daily meal.

MEN'S SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Men also get English training and are admitted in a driving school. The organization have a small number of Rickshaws, which the men may rent to get supplementary earnings.

This project was founded by Maria Conceição, a portuguese flight attendant who works on the Emirates Airlines. On her first trip to Bangladesh, she became aware of the extreme poverty in Dhaka and decided to found this project to help them.

To learn more about this project, visit their website at http://www.thedhakaproject.org/. There you have more information and photo galleries showing their work.

You can also help. If you live nearby, you can make donations in various places, or supply them with food or other things. Or you can make a donation via electronic transfers (all the details are on their website). Did you know that for just 5 US$ they can get them baby's food for a week? And that for 20 US$ the can get vaccination for Hepatitis B and Typhoid plus a year's health cover for a child?

Think about it!

No justice for victims of rape in Hungary

Amnesty International reported that, in Hungary, women that are victims of rape in their own homes are not getting protection from the government. Many fear reprisals and, because of that, their cases never reach court. Amnesty said that the criminal justice system does not work properly. Also, it's often said in Hungary that it is acceptable for a husband to force his wife to have sex.

Let's help all the women in Hungary. If you visit the page about this case in Amnesty International's site, at http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/hun-100507-action-eng, you can find more details, a video, a sample text that you can copy and the contacts of Hungary's Prime Minister. Send him an email asking to ensure protection to all women from being raped in their own home.

The Rainforest Site

This is my first post on the blog. There will be always many themes
to bring here and I'll choose one for each post.

For this one, I've chosen climate change.

We all talk about climate change. Some of us believe it's hapening.
Others don't. Unfortunately, there are a few key individuals who don't
care about it. I'm talking about our goverments leaders, who have
enough power to change things, but prefer not to, just because it will
cost them some votes for the next election (that's just my opinion).

Well, the good thing is that we can do something. It might feel that
it's not much, but then again, if we all do a small thing it will turn
into a big thing. Visit The Rainforest Site, at
http://www.therainforestsite.com and, with a single click, you'll be
helping.

The deal is this: you click on the green button and the site owner's
will buy, through their sponsors, a few square feet of rainforest
land, preserving it from destruction.

You can click once a day, saving that amount of land each day. The
more you click, the more land you save. And if you want, the site
provides other ways to contribute more.

Have a nice click!