Post syndicated from Bronies for Good.

Are you a musician? Then we have one important appeal to make before we jump into the reports: We are already collaborating with a number of the greats of the fandom, but we know that there are more of you out there. If it is within your ability to contribute a track of original music to our upcoming charity album “A Beautiful Heart,” then this is your opportunity to let inspiration meet generosity. Each donation will already have 100% efficiency—thanks to Betterplace and Your Siblings—but your song will move many people to donate in the first place and thus multiply the effect!

More information about how to contribute to the album can be found on our dedicated page. (We extended the submission period until July 7, 2013.)

The following is mostly a summary of Your Siblings’ report as it relates to the projects we all have supported through Seeds of Kindness.

Our first Seeds of Kindness fundraiser launched by funding within just a few days the remaining €7,214 (about $9,370) for the medical clinic of Childneed Africa in Uganda. The construction work had already started at that point, and today ...

In June 2011, Namutebi, a young woman living in Nansana, a dilapidated suburb of Kampala, suspected that there was an abandoned child in the house next door. She reported her concerns to the local council and the police. They initiated an investigation, but nobody was able to get a hold of the neighbor who was supposed to live there. What the investigation uncovered, though, was that there was a toddler that had been left behind in the house without care for now two months: Mark. When he was found, he was malnourished and sick.

During the process, Namutebi came across Mark’s mother, who was hiding since her crime had been exposed. She reported her to the police, who arrested her.

Since there was no known relative to take Mark in—his mother didn’t know who his father was—the police forwarded the child to Another Hope Children’s Ministries for the period of the trial. After Mark’s mother was sentenced, he stayed at AHCM for good.

Following up on the case later on, AHCM found out that Mark’s mum had been released on court bond, and then disappeared. The judge issued a warrant of arrest, which ...

In late 2012, the second Seeds of Kindness fundraiser finished what the first had begun: The last of our projects, four at the time, was fully financed. All the while we had been transferring the donations batch by batch to the projects, so that they could already start the construction work.

Once the projects had taken shape, Ben of Your Siblings visited them to survey their progress, inquire about possible problems, and discuss prospective future projects. Our strategy of personally befriending the project organizers to ensure that they are reliable and committed to the cause had proved effective. One of the organizers was not as responsive as we would have hoped (more about that below), but the majority excelled in both counts.

Naturally, the often extensive endeavors faced problems along the way, which we will explain below and soon proceed to solve. Due to the positive experiences with our three main partners, however, we will continue our cooperation with them and are looking forward to supporting their future projects.

The Medical Clinic in Uganda

As we reported earlier, the building is finished and equipped. Unfortunately, government formalities are still retarding the progress, so that Mawanda Johnbosco of Childneed Africa, the ...

No one knows how old exactly Aisha is, but she was about two or three years old when she was brought to Another Hope by a local police officer. Aisha’s parents separated in April 2011. The father left the family, taking Aisha’s older sibling with him to an unknown destination, so she stayed behind with only her mother Mbabazi. After a few days Mbabazi took Aisha to her neighbor Margaret, who makes her living by attending to children during the day while their parents are at work. That morning was the last time Aisha saw her mother. She never came back.

Parents in trouble deserting their children are a common occurrence not only in Uganda. Often hopeless, they leave their kids with friends, neighbors or sometimes even strangers. They make them believe they’ll be back soon, but then pack up their belongings and leave their whole life behind to start over somewhere else. All too often the police even finds toddlers dumped in gullies or on the garbage dump.

Efforts to trace for Aisha’s father or her relatives have failed since nobody knows any of them or the exact former place of residence of the family ...

Charles was born on the 21st of May 2010 in Kyoga village in Uganda. Charles’s parents were cohabiting and had four children, Ritah, Olivia, Yvonne, and Charles. Unfortunately the siblings are now separated. Their father is a casual laborer who survives on daily income raised from loading sand on trucks. The mother was a housewife. Charles was severely battered by his mother, tortured, and denied food. Luckily the neighbors saw this and took the matter to the police. Charles’s mother was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

The probation officer first put the children under the custody of a friend of their father to look after them now that their mother had been sent to prison. This lady could not cater for the children for long. They were too many and yet she was not working. The support she was receiving from Charles’s father was only occasional, given the nature of his job. Sometimes the children could go hungry for days. Charles was malnourished and his condition was very poor compared to his other siblings. Because of the critical condition he was in, he was brought to Another Hope so that he could receive proper ...

Post syndicated from Bronies for Good.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the culturally-conditioned beholder, or that it comes from within as the individual undertakes acts of kindness and reciprocity. Well, abstract definitions aside, having a beautiful heart is certainly something worth sharing with others. And what is one way of sharing said beauty? Of course, through the art of music!

We are therefore pleased to announce the third installment of our Seeds of Kindness charity album campaign: A Beautiful Heart!

If you are a musician and you’d like to find out how to be a part of the album, then please check out the guidelines for submission on our Seeds of Kindness 3 pages. You can also hit up this My Little Remix thread for more discussion on the album guidelines.

In the past, Seeds of Kindness has raised over $90,000 for charity projects in Uganda, Burundi, and Tanzania from people like you! Continuing on with this wonderful legacy, we are proud to announce that the proceeds from Seeds of Kindness 3 will go to our wonderful partner in charity, Your Siblings! If you have yet to learn of who this amazingly altruistic group ...

Post syndicated from Bronies for Good.

The event is now over,
but you can still donate to the Kallisti II fundraiser.

Do you want to mingle with the crème de la crème of pony art? Do you want to pose your questions to your favorite voice actor or writer and hang on every word that they speak?

Then imagine a Saturday that starts with Just For Sidekicks and then blossoms again only a few hours later when we launch

Kallisti II: A 24-hour multiartist charity livestream with prominent guests

on January 26, 3 p.m. EST (8 p.m. UTC)

with over a dozen artists, friends, and prominent guests, among them Tara Strong, Andrea Libman, Anneli Heed, and M.A. Larson!

Bookmark the unified viewer page here!

In parallel to the livestream, we’ll launch an eBay auction for a Canni plushie by Siora. Read below for more information.

The Guests

• Andrea Libman (voice of Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie) at about 3 p.m. EST on Saturday
• Anneli Heed (voice of the Swedish Spitfire, among others) on Saturday at 5 p.m. EST
• M.A. Larson (writer of Sonic Rainboom, The Cutie Mark Chronicles, The Return of Harmony ...

Post syndicated from Bronies for Good.

If you have ever donated to Seeds of Kindness or Seeds of Kindness 2 or supported the fundraisers in any other way, this press release addresses you personally. (If not, here is your chance to do so now.)

But before we jump in, are you following @BroniesForGood and @YourSiblings on Twitter yet? If not, please kindly fix that—and then there are also those ShortyAwards going on…

Engineers Without Borders: Water and Sanitation Project Funded

We have reached another milestone! The Engineers Without Borders project that seeks to establish proper fresh water supply for an orphanage and school in Manya, Uganda, and also to improve their sanitary situation has been fully financed thanks to your donations.

As announced previously, the next project aims to raise money for a large number of rainwater harvesting tanks in the Karagwe District in Tanzania.

So please continue your support!

Safe Project: Thank You from the Children in Uganda

So what is that awesome header picture up there? It’s a thank-you gift from the children who will soon be able to move into their new orphanage building, the building you funded! As our donors and supporters of the ...

The NGO Another Hope, who we have been fundraising for especially through the Seeds of Kindness fundraisers by Bronies for Good, is building a children’s home—the Safe Project—to provide more than fifty orphans with education, food, and the safety of a new family. They have had long experience in this sector, after having run an orphanage for more than half a decade. This building of a new home marks not the launch but an expansion of the project, an expansion that will also make them independent of the rent they currently pay for the orphanage.

To further support their endeavor, Another Hope was planning to run a chicken farm to sell eggs, and use the returns to balance the running expenses of their humanitarian work. There has been miscommunication about this, so let us clarify: The project we are currently fundraising for and that you have almost completely funded is the building of the children’s home, the new and larger building that will serve as a new home for the orphans. Funding the chicken farm would have been the next step, but so far all donations go towards the orphanage building.

The economic situation in Uganda ...

On December 9, the members of the Your Siblings e. V. had again the chance to convene for this year’s general meeting.

The minutes (unfortunately German only) can be found here.