DONATIONS TO WORTHY ORGANIZATIONS

     All organizations need financial support - but, if, like me, you are frustrated by those endless, often twice a day, e-mails from politicians, struggling in a flawed system restricted to only two parties, who are convinced they need ever more funds to repeat their messages, thus forcing them to spend more time fund raising than governing and, if you are anxious to fund genuinely advantageous organizations that are improving our only world, allow me to name a few, space permitting, It is grattifying to find so many people who are helping those millions who are being neglected, persecuted, and used by the unscrupulous whose God is Greed. I will start \with Greenpeace having just received their latest bulletin Compass as a help.

Greenpeace, founded in 1971 in Vancouver, now has its headquarters in Amsterdam.

Greenpeace Russia helped establish in 2017 the Ladoga Skerries National Park, one of the largest in Europe.  This entailed supporting 40,000 people, 40 scientists, and 19 organizations to convince authorities to disallow fossil fuel interests in the park.

     During its 10 years in the area Greenpeace extinguished 80 forest fires.

     In California, Greenpeace is working with Governor Brown who will host in September the Global Climate Action Summit.

     Fighting destroyers of the environment is not cheap. In Georgia and California, Greenpeace fought

successfully a $220 million lawsuit by Resolute Forest Products, a Canadian company with harmful practices in the sensitive Boreal Forest. Now Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based company, has sued Greenpeace for $900 million for losses due to its support of the Dakota Sioux in opposition to the pipeline forced through their land. These lawsuits have little chance of success. Their aim is to destroy Greenpeace with killing legal costs.

     Greenpeace is now promoting an 1,118 square kilometre (695 square mile) Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary. Its ship Arctic Sunrise with its 2-man submarine found abundant life 2.000 feet down along the ocean floor and is persuading the fishing industry to restrict or cease especially its krill harvest that is crucial to such as blue wales.

     Greenpeace is pressuring 16 companies, including Unilever, Colgate Palmolive, and General Mills to keep their promises of a clean palm oil supply that halts the forest destruction in Indonesia to produce palm oil.

     In Vancouver, Greenpeace activists have ended their blockade of an oil tanker loaded with oil from the Alberta tar sands. This had been part of the protest against the Canadian government’s plans to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline to permit the expansion that will triple the amount of tar-sands oil flowing to the coast of British Columbia. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision in May to nationalize the pipeline project sparked widespread condemnation from First Nations and environmental activists, who say the project will increase pollution in Alberta’s tar sands region, endanger indigenous communities and increase greenhouse gas emissions.

     Greenpeace’s analysis shows that Energy Transfer Partners and its subsidiaries, including Sunoco, had 527 hazardous liquid spills from 2002 to 2017, causing an estimated $115 million in property damage. And at least 67 of the spills contaminated water sources.

African Wildlife Foundation, founded in 1961 by US judge Russ Train and other Safari Club members who were worried that independence granted in 1960 to 20 African countries would replace qualified European managers with untrained African. It started a program to train Africans and to show how protecting land and wildlife can be profitable. The headquarters of AWF is in Nairobi, Kenya.

Alliance for Climate Protection (combined with The Climate Reality Project) was founded in 2006 by Al Gore in California, moving to Washington in 2009. It was partially funded by profits from his 2006 book and film, An Inconvenient Truth, money from his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and his salary from his work for a firm By 2009 it had over 3,000 volunteers who delivered 70,000 presentations worldwide to over 7 million people.  This led to the 2016 Paris Climate Accord now signed by every country in the world except the USA.

Defenders of Wildlife was founded in 1947 with headquarters in Washington. It concentrates on protecting biodiversity in North America. Its CEO, Jamie Rappaport Clark, was director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service where she got the passage of the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 197l.

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) was founded in Geneva in 1971 by 13 doctors, who had gone to help people in Biafra persecuted due to its breakaway from Nigeria, to provide medical care to areas in need worldwide. It has 36,482 employees. It was awarded the 1996 Seoul Peace Prize and the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. During the 1994 Rwanda genocide it called for military intervention.

Earth Day 22 April was organized by Wisconsin’s Democratic senator, Gaylord Nelson (1916-2005) after he saw the 28 January 1969 Santa Barbara, California, blow-out that spread 3 million gallons of oil over 800 sq miles, killing over 10,000 sea birds and mammals, Helped by many including Dennis Hayes, Paul Ehrlich, and David Brower, the first Earth Day in 1970 saw pro-earth activities in 12,000 schools plus 20 million in peaceful demonstration in the USA. It was adopted in Canada in 1980 and is now observed in at least 141 countries.

EMAS Canada: (Education, Medical Aid, and Services) is a Christian organization based in Burlington, Ontario.  It nurtures locally-initiated programs in poorer countries with healthcare services, equipment, and education. It was founded in 1948.

Fauna and Flora International formed in Cambridge, UK, in 1903 by British naturalists and US statesmen in Africa to integrate biodiversity with human need. Queen Elizabeth is its patron and Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands its president.

Friends of the Earth: In 1969, an oilman and founder of Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), Robert Anderson (1917- 2017) gave David Bower (1917-2000) $200,000 to found Friends of the Earth as an anti-nuclear group, going international in 1971, now with groups in 75 countries defending the environment, biodiversity, and human rights.  Its secretariat is based in Amsterdam.

Friends of Nature, formed in 1994, is China’s oldest environmental non-government organization. It attracted world prominence and support when it wrote to UK prime minister Tony Blair to stop illegal trade of Tibetan antelope fur. He answered the next day pledging prompt support. This prompted a surge of people joining the project and donating funds.

Project Aware is a growing global association of scuba divers working to protect and clean up the oceans. It was formed in California in 1989 and has offices in the UK and Australia.

Conservation International was founded in Virginia, USA, in 1987. It has 1,000 employees and over 2,000 partners in 30 countries. It works with corporations to protect the environment such as supporting 23 Pacific Island nations to form Pacific Oceanscope to manage 15 million square miles of ocean and helping McDonald’s implement sustainable agriculture in Central America.

Global Witness, founded in London in 1993, works worldwide to break the links among the exploitation of natural resources, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human-rights abuses. This includes the 448 activists killed defending resources from exploiters between 2002 and 2013. GW investigates individuals and companies and reports to governments on how best to protect resources for the benefit of all including the demise of warring factions.

Green Cross International with headquarters in Geneva was founded in 1993 by Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev in Kyoto. It now has offices in 31 countries including Canada and the USA. One of its issues is to promote clean water and sanitation as a human right.

Mountain Institute was founded in 1972 in West Virginia to conserve the world’s mountain ecosystems and help mountain communities.

Planned Parenthood, much needed in a dangerously overpopulated world, was founded in 1916 with HQ in New York. Margaret and Ethel Sanger and Fania Mindell were all arrested after opening their first clinic in Brownsville which brought them national support. It now has 159 affiliates in 12 countries. It is the largest single provider of reproductive health services in the USA. Its 2014 report revealed it performed over 4 million clinical services, including 324,000 abortions which it claims would have been unnecessary if every  woman had birth control access. It remains both thanked and persecuted.

Plant a Tree Today Foundation, founded in 2005 in the UK by Andrew Steel to combat deforestation, now has chapters worldwide. They, with 200 volunteers, planted 7,000 trees on Earth Day 2018 here in Colorado to add to the 320,000 they planted in California.

Rainforest Alliance was founded in New York in 1897 to work with companies and indigenous people to conserve forests the burning of which provides 15% of world carbon dioxide emissions.

Red Cross and Red Crescent International (and Red Crystal for those who object to religious implications).

     I owe a great debt to the Red Cross for feeding me during my 800 days as a POW in Germany.

    With HQ in Geneva, the Red Cross was founded in 1863 to protect victims of war and has since earned 3 Nobel Peace Prizes (1917, 1944, 1963). During WWII it was forced to curtail its attacks on Nazi genocide in order to facilitate its shipment of millions of food parcels to POW camps in German-occupied Europe. Yet, in March 1945, it did get Nazi permission to visit concentration camps. Louis Haefliger, on his own, saved 60,000 lives by alerting US troops to rush their advance to take Mauthausen that was about to be razed.

     In 1859 Swiss businessman, Henri Dunant (1828-1910), went to Italy to meet Napoleon III but got caught up in the Battle of Solfereno where, in one day, 40,000 were killed or wounded. He was appalled at the lack of care for the wounded who were left on the field, suffering terribly after the French-Sardinian victory over the Austrian army. He dropped his business plans in French-controlled Algeria to organize help, then wrote his book , AMemory of Solferno, and went on to organize voluntary national relief organizations. He neglected his business which went bankrupt, but he pioneered the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions that governed conduct during times of war, He became a recipient of the 1917 Nobel Peace Prize.

     In 1990 the UN General Assembly granted the Red Cross observer status, the first to a private organization.

     Over 500 Red Cross staff have been killed while helping others, In 2017, of the 294 aid workers killed, 45 were Red Cross.

Salvation Army was founded in London by General William and Catherine Booth in 1865 as a protestant movement based on the Bible. It now works in 128 countries running charity shops, shelters for the homeless,  disaster relief, and humanitarian aid to developing countries. As it banned smoking, illicit drugs, and alcohol it was attacked by pub owners who organized mobs. It has 1,151.000 members.

Sierra Club was founded in San Francisco in 1892 by John Muir to Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet, it now has 3 million members. During David Bower’s 1933-60 tenure as CEO it prevented the flooding by dams of the Grand Canyon. Active in Canada since 1963. Sierra Club Canada became a national organization with headquarters in Ottawa and chapters all across Canada on 1992.

Union of Concerned Scientists was founded in 1969 by faculty and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. It has a membership of over 200,000. It formed to divert military research towards environmental and social problems, calling for a ban on nuclear testing and weapons in space. In 1992 it sponsored World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity signed by 1700 scientists including the majority of Nobel prize winners in science. It supports renewable energy, vehicle emissions reductions, home appliance efficiencies, and curbing deforestation. It has accused the US government of dozens of political interferences with science.

Veterinarians Without Borders, formed on 2003 is an international organization to assist the health of animals, people and environments. It provides veterinary training and equipment to developing countries and has North American offices in Ottawa and Davis, California. Its projects have included: insects as food and feed, eliminating rabies in Guatemala, and reindeer husbandry in Mongolia.

Water Ambassador Canada argues that water must be protected as it is Canada’s most valued asset. Over 2 billion people in the world lack clean water and sanitation services. There are more cell phones than toilets. With shrinking aquifers the US wants to import Canadian water, considering it a continental asset.

WILD Foundation was founded in 1974 in Boulder, Colorado, by South African Ian Player, who had worked to save the white rhino, to inspire a world that protects at least half of all nature on earth. He started out by taking mixed groups on 5-day hikes into the African wilderness. WILD has now worked on scores of field projects in dozens of countries.

Wildlife Fund: the world’s leading conservation organization had famous founders in Switzerland in 1961: Philip Mountbatten, German-Dutch Prince Bernard, Sir Peter Scott, Julian Huxley, Guy Mountfort, and Godfrey Rockefeller. It now has over 6 million members with 1.2 million in the United States. It works in 100 countries.

350.org: Founded in New York in 2007 is a growing international organization supporting grass roots actions that fight climate change.

World Land Trust was founded in 1989 in Suffolk, UK to conserve plants, animals, and communities in areas of risk. It funds the purchase of large tracts of land, starting in Belize, to preserve them. It helps with tree planting and the reduction of CO2 emissions. Its patrons include Sir David Attenborough.

Wounded Warrior Project was founded in 2003 in Roanoke, Virginia, by John Melia who had been wounded in a helicopter in Somalia in 1992. As of August 2003 they had distributed to wounded veterans 17,000 backpacks filed with comfort items. WWP headquarters were moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in 2006, and it went on to promote long term care via compensation, education, health care, insurance, housing, and employment.

                                                                                                                                    Ye Olde Scribe