Saturday, June 20, 2009

Eau-Dog

Russell Martin, giant novelty check, Martin's girlfriend Marikym Hervieux and Russell Martin Sr.

If I just gave $600,000 of my hard-earned money* to a charity, I'd want to know what they were doing with it. So I checked out the website of Russell Martin's official cause, One Drop:

WHAT WE DO

The ONE DROP Foundation believes that water access is an fundamental right.

The interdependence of nature and humans means water issues are everyone’s issue. Without water, there is no life on Earth. Water sustains our daily lives, however its distribution and accessibility is not equal around the world. It is therefore our responsibility as human beings to ensure that water is made accessible to everyone, in sufficient quantity and quality, today and tomorrow.

How ONE DROP works

Our capacity to back local partners around the world is measured by the invaluable drops of support from people like you who have chosen to mobilize.

The ONE DROP Foundation—inspired by the creativity of Cirque du Soleil and its longstanding commitment to community involvement—uses circus, visual and multimedia arts along with folklore, popular theatre, music and dance to encourage change in communities.

In addition to raising awareness of water-related issues by entertaining and educating, ONE DROP works side by side with local partners to improve living conditions of disadvantaged communities through access and responsible use of natural resources, especially water.

ONE DROP™ focuses its efforts on two spectrums:

1. Developing countries facing urgent water access problems;
2. Developed countries that have the means to share the wealth, where per-capita water consumption is very high.

That all sounds good (even the circus part — hey, those Cirque performers can do anything), but it's a little vague. Fortunately, the website includes a more concrete example of the foundation's work:

“Tripod” Approach

Our innovative “tripod” approach focuses mainly on young people and women and uses the following three components to fight poverty: (1) Arts and culture to raise awareness, educate and mobilize the population; (2) increase accessibility, responsible management and water conservation; and (3) provide micro-credit loans.

Access to Safe Water for the Communities of the Dry Tropics of Honduras

ONE DROP™ is currently on the ground in the Valle and Francisco Morazan regions of Southern Honduras. Our support for local partners and their efforts is guided by several goals:

  • Improve access to safe water in order to increase the level of health and agricultural output
  • Ensure food security
  • Increase household incomes
  • Raise awareness of water-related issues through multidisciplinary shows and educational and artistic workshops
  • Promote gender equality
  • Develop leadership and mobilize youth so that they become agents of change
  • Build the partners’ capacities

The Access to Safe Water for the Communities of the Dry Tropics of Honduras impacts 1,000 families and will ultimately benefit approximately 15,000 Honduran men, women and children.

Upcoming projects in the South

Thanks to donations made to ONE DROP, we have begun planning similar projects in communities facing water crises and poverty issues in Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

In Martin's press conference, Josh Rawitch mentioned Martin would be visiting a One Drop project in Central America over the winter, as well as holding a fundraiser.

*an amount I totally have just lying around

4 comments:

Trolley Dodger said...

Re: "Eau-Dog"

Well played, sir. Well played.

Orel said...

Merci!

Erin said...

I hope they don't cash that check right away. The press release said Martin is giving that amount of money spread out over the next ten years, so he'd probably be pretty pissed to find it all missing from his bank account Monday morning.

Orel said...

Martin learned from McCourt!