Raed Jarrar has an interesting idea. If you’ve ever wished you could help Iraqis deal with the aftermath of sanctions and the invasion as well as the ongoing occupation, this looks like a good way:
One of the last international NGOs, CARE, stopped their work in Iraq after their director was kidnapped yesterday. I used to see her all the time in the NGOs meetings in Baghdad.
Poor woman.I have much to say about international NGOs and their work in Iraq, about their projects and their expenses, and about their international staff inside the country. But I prefer to postpone this some weeks until this kidnapping thing ends, peacefully as I hope.
With the withdrawal of most of the foreign humanitarian organizations from Iraq, and the incapability of the Iraqi “government” of funding itself much less funding local groups or organizations, the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is getting more serious.
Meanwhile, the U.S. army is planning to attack something around 20 cities and towns that are not under the control of the occupation authority.
“The Jarrars” (i.e. me and my family), decided to start a small individual humanitarian campaign for a month (maybe we’ll extend it) for buying basic things like some medical stuff, food, blankets, and other necessities and send them directly to hospitals in the most affected cities and towns. We will try our best to work under the supervision of one of the few functioning NGOs in Iraq (e.g. Occupation Watch, or others) to give more transparency to this small campaign, but over all the working plan is as follows:
*Money will be donated through PAYPAL to my account, (Jarrar_raed@hotmail.com), and will be reported on my blog frequently.
*My brother Majid will collect the money from Victoria in Canada and wire it to me in Jordan through my bank account.
*I will buy everything from Jordan, and publish the receipts on my blog.
*Then I will send things to my family in Baghdad, where they will send it in turn to hospitals depending on the priority and accessibility of the towns and cities.
*We will get official papers from the hospitals to insure they received the certain amount of supplements; we will publish them on our blogs too.
*We’ll publish a financial break down at the end of the month (end of Nov.)You can send money from your credit cards too; even small amounts of money can do much in Iraq.
Today I received the first donation from a person in Japan called Tomoko. He sent 10,000 JPY.
Hit Raed’s Donation Button!