AnnuAl RepoRt foR 2009

Cottonwood Foundation

2009 was a landmark year for Cottonwood Foundation. The foundation awarded 43 grants of $1,000 each to partner organizations worldwide, making a real impact by helping literally thousands of people as well as protecting the

environment. In 2009, the foundation achieved the milestone of awarding more than $500,000 in grants since it was founded in 1992 - something that could not have been forseen when Cottonwood awarded $556.88 in 5 grants its first year!

Income exceeded $49,000 last year, which was a wonderful endorsement of the foundation’s work by donors in this era of economic challenges. This strong continued funding allowed Cottonwood to award a strong slate of grants in 2009, all of which are described in this report.

As an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff, non-grant expenditures for the year were only $2,288.48. Significant in-kind donations of design services and printing (such as this report) have greatly strengthened the foundation, and are deeply appreciated.

Cottonwood’s board has remained an effective team of 11 members, and has worked diligently as liaisons with Cottonwood’s partner organizations in the past year. Each board member is the primary contact for approximately 5 organizations, and the board members seek to provide partner organizations with honest and constructive feedback about possible project ideas, respond to questions, summarize and present submitted applications for grants committee and board review, while balancing their advocacy for their partners with the foundation’s priorities and procedures. This system works well for the partner organizations who have a reliable personal contact, and also allows for in-depth understanding of the organizations by the board liaisons.

Cottonwood’s board selected a group of 57 partners for 2010 – 2011, slightly fewer than the 62 partners who were participating in 2008 – 2009. This reflects the board’s desire to fund a high percentage of partners each year, in the light of current funding assumptions. Several of the partners for the current two-year period are new to Cottonwood, and were invited through board member nominations.

As you read through this report and see the results of your gifts to Cottonwood, please know that your support (as a donor, volunteer, or well-wisher) is what allows the foundation’s work to continue. The photos, stories, and summaries help to show the impact of the foundation’s efforts and your contributions.

Thank you again for all of your generosity, volunteer hours, and moral support for Cottonwood’s work!

Paul Moss, Executive Director

letter from the executive director

Our MissionCottonwood Foundation, a charitable, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization, is dedicated to promoting empowerment of people, protection of the environment, and respect for cultural diversity.

The foundation will focus its funding on committed, grassroots organizations that rely strongly on volunteer efforts, and where foundation support will make a significant difference. At least 90 percent of Cottonwood Foundation’s expenditures will be for grants to other organizations.

Contact informationCottonwood FoundationBox 10803White Bear Lake, MN 55110 USA

Phone: (651) 426-8797Fax: (651) 294-1012e-mail: info@cottonwoodfdn.org

www.cottonwoodfdn.org

• Design donated by Scott Andre

• Annual report printing donated by The Toro Company

Income

Grants and Corporate Giving $5,050.00Income from Investments $2,154.40Private Donations General and Land Fund Donations $40,303.34 Designated for Endowment $1,629.20

Total Income $49,136.94

Non-Grant Expenses

Bank Charges and Broker Fees $542.00Post Office Box $70.00Postage and Mailing Services $591.56Printing $532.61Internet Services and Telephone $482.31 Miscellaneous $70.00

Total Non-Grant Expenses $2,288.48

Charitable Disbursements $43,000.00

Percentage of expenses for grants 94.9%

Assets — December 31, 2009

General Fund $49,228.29 Endowment Fund $43,726.66Land Fund $1,771.24

Total Assets $94,726.19

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Expenditures Income199219931994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009

556 1543.973200 65955000 8774.137500 15195.01

11000 17171.4117250 27948.0817500 24867.0425000 32246.3634000 40502.5133000 50418.2140000 51467.5241000 45997.244000 58551.0849000 52224.1745000 45992.3645000 53959.0148000 54142.6343000 49,136.94

0

12000

24000

36000

48000

60000

1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

ExpendituresIncome

Income and Grants Awarded

Income

Grants

“Dear Cottonwood Foundation,

With your grant of $1,000 Fifty Lanterns International was able to partner with International Health Service for the 3rd year in a row to provide life changing solar lights.

IHS organizes medical teams to provide care in the most remote area of Honduras where medical care is scarce or nonexistent. These areas have no electricity.

Fifty Lanterns was able to provide solar light to the medical teams to use during the mission and then distributed the solar lights to those most in need in the villages at the end of the mission.

This year we provided 150 solar lights to the villages of Pranza and Lasanipura. Both of these villages are in the Eastern remote part of Honduras in the LaMosquitia area. The majority of those receiving the lights were Mosquito Indians. Very little if any government help comes to LaMosquitia. There is virtually no electricity in this area and at present there are not plans on the horizon to provide electricity in the future.

The impact of having solar lights for the women, widows, child-headed households, midwives and teachers is great. With the solar lights they reduce the need for kerosene and candles both of which are difficult and expensive to obtain.

The rechargeable batteries in the solar lights will give them at least 2 years of use. When the batteries are in need of replacing they can be obtained in the nearest large town of Porto Lampira a 6 hour trip by road.

Once again, many thanks to the Cottonwood Foundation for awarding the $1,000 grant to Fifty Lanterns to help us provide life changing, environmentally friendly, renewable light. We are honored.”

—Fifty Lanterns International, USA/Honduras

from a grant recipient

VolunteersBoard of Directors December 2009

Laura Bray, ChairCraig Miller, Vice Chair Prabhakar Karri, TreasurerJamie Ford, SecretaryPaul Moss, Executive DirectorAnnie MathisenTom MeersmanAnne MurrayErik NelsonPatrick WaletzkoCaleb Werth

Other Volunteers 2009

Paul AndreScott AndreGlenn Krocheski-MeyerMiriam MossSidney Moss

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Corporate and Foundation Donors

CA, Inc. - Matching Gifts ProgramClorox Company FoundationCommunity Shares of Minnesota (donor designated funds)FrameWorks InstituteGiveMN.orgGreater Twin Cities United Way (donor designated funds)JustGive.orgMinnesota Returned Peace Corps VolunteersPajWell FoundationPremier BanksU.S. Bancorp FoundationVivian Simkins Lasko FoundationH.E. and Helen R. Warren FoundationWhole Systems Foundation

In-Kind Donors

Eco EducationEdward Jones – Chuck Edson, Investment RepresentativeNew Vision Printing & Graphics, Inc.Premier BanksThe Toro Company

Other in-kind donations of services, supplies, and materials by board members and volunteers.

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Memorials

Gifts were donated in memory of the following individuals in 2009:

Catherine BenkeRichard D. Berkowitz, MDRalph ElliottJean HarrisonBonnie JacobsElaine Marie JohnsonJohn KadingKathy KinzigBruce MacLeodWilliam J. “Bill” MooreMarilynn E. MurphyRuth RhoadsJohn D. RippleGlenn R. Rose

Cottonwood’s grant helped to build 19 wood-conserving stoves for families in Panama.

African Blackwood Conservation Project, USA/Tanzania — to dig a water well and line its walls with brick, purchase an electric underwater pump, and install piping to provide water to ABCP’s Moshi Mpingo tree nursery in Tanzania. The project eliminates the hard labor of hauling water by hand from the nearby river, while providing safe drinking water for the staff and nourishing the nursery’s 10,000–20,000 seedlings.

Association “Green Alternative,” Republic of Georgia — to support establishment of a new kindergarten for children with mental disabilities in Tbilisi. In addition to needed painting and repairs for the classroom, the project funds improvements in energy efficiency (purchase and installation of thermal insulation, compact fluorescent bulbs, motion-activated lighting fixtures) and tree planting in the kindergarten’s garden.

AYAFE: Association of Young Azerbaijani Friends of Europe, Azerbaijan — to organize a working camp in Baku, Azerbaijan, to help clean up pollution and plant trees around a local orphanage and shelter housing 140 children aged 4 to 16. Volunteers, both local and international, educate local residents and raise awareness about waste, littering, and environmental pollution.

Benton Furniture Share, USA — to supply approximately 150 items of needed used furniture and household goods at no cost to low-income elderly individuals and households, primarily in Benton County, Oregon.

Blue Veins, Pakistan — for a three-month volunteer-led training on tailoring,

embroidery, and sewing for 15 internally displaced women from the conflict—stricken Swat Valley of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Each woman that completes the training receives a sewing machine, necessary accessories, and funds to start her own business and help make her and her children self-sufficient.

Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, India — to help expand organic rice production in India by assisting 100 small farmers in Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu to generate more income for their families

through producing organic rice seeds of indigenous paddy varieties, with the grant used for initial purchase of indigenous seeds for seed production, training, and for the partial cost of organic certification.

Centro de Educacion Creativa, Costa Rica— for materials and machining to install a solar water heater at the school, providing over 200 students with hot water for the first time. Also funds materials and welding to construct a needed shelter for the school’s recycling center.

Common Ground Program, Kenya — to establish a Feed the Village Farm in Kitale,

Summaries of 2009 Grants

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Cottonwood’s grant to Fifty Lanterns International supported distribution of solar lights to families in rural Honduras without electricity.

Kenya on two acres of land near a local river (to allow for irrigation for food production year round) which trains local farmers on biointensive farming methods while providing fresh food to orphans and vulnerable children attending Pathfinder Academy as well as for the local community, with the grant used for fencing; vegetable, grain and tree seeds; tools; a water pump and watering pipes; and staff support.

Community Development Centre, India — to follow up on a previous Cottonwood grant to CDC by providing honey bee boxes and training on honey harvesting, processing and marketing to each of 10 low-income tribal families living near the forest in Madhya Pradesh, India, which increases household income while better protecting the environment.

Cultural Survival, USA/Guatemala — to purchase a compact disk duplicating device for making copies of radio programs about environmental protection and other topics in four indigenous languages. Broadcasts on 168 community radio stations reach more than one million listeners in rural Guatemala.

Dos Pueblos: New York — Tipitapa Sister City Project, USA/Nicaragua — to support a potable water project to serve 135 families in Ciudadela San Martin (near Tipitapa,

Nicaragua), a low-income rural community with inadequate supplies of drinking water. Community involvement is centered on local volunteers who provide the labor for installing the water system; this grant helps purchase pipes and other needed materials.

Ecoclub Environmental Nongovernmental Youth Organization, Ukraine — for the “Garbage is a resource!” campaign targeting local schools and the community of Rivne, Ukraine, to address the problem of accumulation of domestic waste through waste collection and alternative utilization of garbage, including purchase of containers

for paper garbage and development of educational materials.

Eco-garden, Kenya — for training 15 Kenyan farmers on organic farming and natural resource management. Funds for tree planting, seeds for organic vegetables and beans, maintenance support for Eco-garden’s demonstration farm, and other organizational costs.

Entebbe District Wildlife Association, Uganda — to expand a local poultry project in Entebbe, Uganda funded by Cottonwood in 2008 to additional homesteads of the Nubian community and to a nearby primary school, which improves household nutrition, generates fertilizer for vegetable gardens, and supplements domestic income, including providing 1,000 chickens of local varieties, poultry feed prepared from local ingredients, feed troughs, disease control, and training.

Fifty Lanterns International, USA/International — to purchase and distribute 20 sturdy LED solar lanterns to low-income families without electricity in rural Honduras.

Friends Service Council Nepal, Nepal — to develop, print and distribute 1,000 copies of training handbooks on community-based

disaster management and community-based health and sanitation management, with the manuals distributed through community NGOs, network members, and social organizations to Nepalese communities that are subject to loss of life from disasters, epidemics, and poor sanitation.

Fund for the Wild Flora and Fauna (FWFF), Bulgaria — to promote small-scale organic farming to local people in Kotel Mountain, Bulgaria. Efforts include creating a one-hectare organic demonstration field, orchard and garden for native crops; collecting seeds of native crops; and mapping local gardens, orchards, and fields where native crops are currently used.

Goriber Asroy, Bangladesh — to start a sustainable beekeeping project for 100 families of Bangladesh’s Bede tribal community in three villages of Kaligonj to raise their income and calorie intake and increase local food growing capacity, with Cottonwood’s $1,000 grant matched by $683.87 from the villagers to purchase 100 beehives, hive stands, bee-keeping equipment, and to support basic bee-keeping training.

Haiti Outreach, USA/Haiti — to support a well-drilling project providing clean water for 410 people in Kajou Won, Haiti, located

Continued on next page

2009 Cottonwood Foundation grants: $43,000

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Cottonwood’s grant to Goriber Asroy supported a community beekeeping project in Bangladesh that supplied 100 beehives to 100 bee farmers, helping families to gain an additional income source as well as helping to save a locally endangered bee species.

in the commune of San Raphael. Previously, the community took its water from a contaminated stream about 3 miles away — more than an hour’s walk in each direction.

Harvest of Hope Self-Help Community Centre, Kenya — to fund the continuation of a project in which Coral Junior and Senior High School students and community members are taught about sustainable agriculture and food production through hands-on experience, as well as providing vocational training, community sensitization workshops for 550 students and 350 community members, setting up 40 nurseries of cabbage, onion, kale, carrots, and tomatoes in 15 villages, tree and vegetable nursery equipment, tools, and transportation to and from the fields.

Health Education Adoption Rehabilitation Development Society (HEARDS), India — to support a community bore well program at Patnam Village, Thavanampalli Mandal, Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh, to provide safe and potable drinking water for about 1,480 low-income villagers (280 families) whose current community water source is highly contaminated and is causing illness, with the grant paying for drilling the new well and purchasing of casing pipe and hand pumps.

Interaccion Para el Desarrollo Sostenible, Bolivia — to improve the life of children and community members in the small, rural community of Chijmuni, Bolivia, through construction of a forest nursery where community members will produce 1,000 plants annually of native species such as the Keñua and the Quiswara to reforest common areas, with the grant used for purchase of seeds, construction of the nursery, training courses, educational materials, and other activities.

International Association for Transformation, Canada/Philippines — to support the Summer Literacy and Theatre Arts Program in 5 remote villages in the Philippines. Thirty senior students provide needed tutoring and educational upgrading for younger students for one month, and use drama and skits to address community problems in open forum. Through the Cottonwood grant, the student teams are provided with food, preparation, educational supplies, transportation, monitoring and evaluation.

grant supporting the purchase of materials and supplies for ongoing operations of tree nurseries, including providing soil and fertilizer; poly bags; nails, netting and wood; and other equipment and supplies.

MADRE, USA/Nicaragua — to provide seeds for organic food crops to 100 indigenous Miskito women and their families in Nicaragua in partnership with Mangki Tangni through the Harvesting Hope project.

Mangrove Action Project, USA/Thailand — for a project in Ban Talae Nok village, Thailand, which suffered severe damage from the 2004 tsunami, in which a fledgling environmental youth group with 22 members ages 7 to 25 implement a community organic vegetable garden for local food production, a village-wide collection program for household compost, a contest for best household garden in the village, and study trips for the youth to learn about organic farming and waste management in the local region.

Nabichakha Women Group, Kenya — to build a water borehole and install a pump to provide clean and safe water for 200 needy children at a primary school in Wacheka Village, Kenya, reducing time and work in fetching water from the river. Funds also pay for an environmental education project in the school.

New Forests Project, USA/Honduras — to purchase and install 10 chlorine

Jeevan Rekha Parishad, India — for the Crab Fattening and Mangrove Plantation Project proposed by the fisher women of Mahinsa Island Village of Chilika Lagoon, Orissa, India, in which two women self help groups consisting of 20 women fisher folk receive training on crab rearing techniques and are provided with cages and small crabs to raise the crabs for sale in the market, and are also provided with mangrove seeds and trained for developing mangrove nurseries with the mangroves planted locally and also sold to the forest department for additional income.

Lambi Fund of Haiti, USA/Haiti — to continue to support the 155 members of Asosyasyon Lafwa Katò Bayonè, a Haitian grassroots organization in a major reforestation project to restore the degraded land in their area with 120,000 fruit and forest trees over two years, with the grant used for the purchase of fruit and forest seeds, two pumps, and materials to build a tree nursery.

Land Empowerment Animals People (LEAP), USA/Malaysia — to fund a portion of the Project Women Empowerment Trees project in Sabah, Borneo, designed and managed by women of the Pitas indigenous community, which focuses on community nurseries and tree planting as a means to empower local women, provide reliable sources of income, and promote sustainable and economic use of the community’s impoverished land, with Cottonwood’s

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Cottonwood’s grant provided organic vegetable seeds to women and families in small commu-nities in Nicaragua, improving local food and economic sufficiency. Photo credit: Britt Willey.

drinking water disinfecting devices in small rural communities in Honduras, as well as training of local personnel in water disinfection, which help to protect residents from waterborne illness.

Norwalk/Nagarote Sister City Project, USA/Nicaragua — to provide scholarships to twenty public-school students from low-income families in Nagarote, Nicaragua. Financial assistance for these “Cottonwood Scholars” covers their uniforms, shoes, books, school supplies, and tutoring for one year.

Outreach Asia, USA/Philippines — to provide a new water system for more than 100 households of Barangay Candatag, Leyte, Philippines who previously had only a shallow well to drink from which only provided contaminated water.

People’s Agricultural Plan for the 21st Century, PAP 21, Philippines — to help nine families of farmer partners of PAP 21 in Hacienda Carmen, Barangay Granada, Bacolod City, who were evicted from their homes, to address the problems of hunger and poverty while rebuilding their lives in a new location through providing them with farm tools and seeds, training in organic agriculture, and other assistance.

Planet Drum Foundation, USA/Ecuador — to continue a six kilometer revegetation project near Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador that is working to stabilize dangerously eroded hillsides, including providing wages for tree planters, water transport, and fencing, with Cottonwood’s grant also supporting a bioregional educational program and field trips for local students of ages 12-15, helping them to learn about their natural environment, do community service projects, and to make sound, ecologically beneficial decisions.

Project Mercy, USA, Mexico — to provide 10 emergency provisional homes to families with land but without housing near Tijuana, Mexico who are in immediate need, through purchase of 20 used large garage doors and 20 used small garage doors, with the temporary homes having a concrete floor, second hand donated exterior doors, and a small recycled window.

Rainforest Information Centre, Australia/India — for a pilot Tree Nurseries in Tribal Communities and Land Restoration through Women project in Kerala, India, in which four small groups of indigenous women

set up nurseries to raise large numbers of seedlings of ecologically suitable local plant species including fruit trees, which can have economic utility, lead to increased local food security, and also provide ecosystem benefits through regenerating degraded land.

Seacology, USA/Indonesia — to help construct storm gutters for the village of Suka Makmur, Palau Banyak, Indonesia which are needed to help prevent flooding in the wet season that currently results in crop damage, disease, road damage, and loss of income, in exchange for which the community has agreed to protect 314 hectares of local hardwood rainforest, mangroves and coral reef as “no-take” preserves for a period of ten years.

Sulaxmi Lok Sansthan, India — to assist people in drought-stricken Behror Block, Alwar District, Rajasthan, India, with water management and local food production, by constructing 5 cement tanks for harvesting rainwater, developing 5 kitchen gardens, creating 5 low-cost vermicomposting beds, and providing training.

Sustainable Harvest International, USA/Panama — to build cleaner-burning, wood conserving stoves for 19 subsistence farming families in the rural communities of Pagua and San Juanito in Cocié province, Panama, that are built with chimneys so that smoke is piped out of the house, with the grant being used for bricks, cement, iron grid, blocks and other necessary materials, and local recipients contributing materials as well.

Trees for the Future, USA/Nepal — to support an agroforestry project in Rupse, Palpa, Nepal involving planting trees on marginal lands susceptible to erosion, incorporating trees into rice and maize crops, increasing fodder production for animals, and demonstrating and training community members on agroforestry techniques, with Cottonwood’s grant used to purchase seeds and tools, training materials, training site development, conducting workshops with area farmers, and related expenditures.

Trees, Water and People, USA/Guatemala — to help expand a fuel-efficient stove program by building an additional 20 Justa stoves for Mayan families in the municipality of Tiquisate, Guatemala who are currently using inefficient and unhealthy open-fire stoves for cooking, with the grant used for purchasing materials for stove construction, including metal griddles, metal chimneys, ceramic tiles, cement blocks, cement, and bricks.

Village Volunteers, USA/Kenya — to support Namunyak Maasai Welfare in forming an Environmental Youth Action Corps in Oronkai, Kenya, including conducting a three-day workshop training a total of 50 youth from Transmara in activism and advocacy for their natural environment, implementing a community cleanup project, and providing solar flashlights and certificates to youth participants upon completion.

White Earth Land Recovery Project, USA (Land Fund) — to help pay off the project’s Callaway property on the White Earth Reservation. There, a community garden focuses on restoring indigenous corn, beans, and squash — “the three sisters” — which will improve food security and resilience for the reservation.

Mother and son helping to build their new fuel-efficient Justa stove in Guatemala through Cottonwood’s grant to Trees, Water & People.

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In their own w

ords

Cottonwood Foundation grant recipients are requested to submit final reports about how funding received has made a difference. Following are sample excerpts in their own words from Cottonwood Foundation’s 2009 grant recipients.

“With support from Cottonwood Foundation we have achieved the following:

100 farmers have been selected from • Kancheepuram and Nagapattinam district covering 100 acres for paddy seed production.

Indigenous paddy seeds have been procured for • the farmers and distributed through the project.

Farmers have cultivated seeds completely • organically and have been registered for organic certification following the Internal Control Systems (ICS for group certification)

Farm registration and field inspections have been • completed and the crop has been harvested.

The paddy seeds after harvest have been stored in • godown [a warehouse] and is ready for processing. For the first time farmers have produced organically cultivated paddy and groundnut seeds which will also be certified by the Government Seed Certification Department and the price that the farmers will get will be 10% more than the regular varieties.

Based on the trainings that have been given for farmers • they have sown paddy seeds in nearly 100 acres for the current season also.

Farmers have been trained and encouraged to take up • the activity of seed production which will fetch them more income than regular grain production.

In addition to this, farmers will get access to good • quality seeds.

A community of farmers in Tamil Nadu have produced • organically certified paddy seeds for the first time.

A good genetic pool of indigenous paddy varieties • conserved by the farmers are now being disseminated to a large community of farmers by cultivating them as seeds.

The seed grant obtained from Cottonwood Foundation has also helped us convince other donors to give us grants for establishing community based facilities for seed processing. This will help the activity become sustainable in the long run.

Thank you very much for your support.”

— Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, India

Farmers in Tamil Nadu province, India, with harvest of organically grown pods of the VRI 2 Groundnut variety, as supported by the Cottonwood grant.

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“The problem this grant was intended to address was the water supply to the Moshi Mpingo Plot, the main nursery for the African Blackwood Conservation Project at Mijongweni Village south of Moshi, Tanzania. Yearly floods have regularly washed out the supply lines and necessitated rebuilding of the water supply system. Upstream pollution from animal and agricultural sources made potability an issue, requiring boiling of the water for human consumption. Labor resources were poorly utilized during the worst times as nursery workers had to manually haul buckets of water to the plot. Decreased river flow due to a severe drought during the past several years also has intensified the problem of supplying an adequate water supply to the plot. This cycle of flood and drought has made a dependable water supply a primary issue in supporting the work of the nursery.

The $1,000.00 Cottonwood Grant has helped finance the construction of a water well, to provide a dependable year-round water supply for the nursery tree seedlings as well as potable water for human consumption. This project is intended to be a long-term solution to the problems described above. Decreased water flow in the river source due to drought and climate change effects which are affecting the upstream mountain sources of the river flow will be mitigated by this permanent well.

The well was hand dug to 20’ depth where the water table was encountered, higher than expected. Bricks were then mortared in place to secure the walls of the well excavation above the water level, and the well deepened to a depth of 40’. Wiring and piping were installed and a submersible electric pump was lowered into the well to pump water.

The installation has been a big success, with the following positive outcomes:

The new water supply will support a doubling of the number of • seedlings in the nursery;

The pump has been set up with the water line and wiring and is being lowered into the well built through this Cottonwood grant to African Blackwood Conservation Project. A concrete cap with metal cover shown on the bottom right will protect the well from any ground level pollution.

nursery attendants will • have their time freed to perform other jobs in support of the nursery instead of spending some of their time carrying water one mile from the river source;

the surrounding • Mijongweni community benefitted from the project with jobs during the construction period, providing income for pay which was noted as being especially helpful with paying school fees for their children;

a long term problem of dependable • water sourcing for the ABCP nursery has now been solved; and,

volunteers were a big help in • contributing their labor to haul water from the river during the construction process.

— African Blackwood Conservation Project, USA/Tanzania

Continued on last page

“We are pleased to submit a project completion report of the project “Economic Opportunity for Internally Displaced Women.”

This project aimed to provide economic opportunity for internally displaced [IDP] women from district Swat [in Northwest Pakistan, location of recent warfare that led to many becoming refugees]. The grant from Cottonwood supported a three-month training of

tailoring, embroidery and sewing to 15 left along IDP women living with the host communities.

After the successful completion of the training the sewing machines along with necessary accessories and cash amount of 5000 [in Pakistani Rupees – approximately $60 US] was given to each trainee to start her own small scale sewing business which she can run from her home. [Total project cost was $1,725 US, with Blue Veins supplying the additional $725 from other sources.]

Funding received from Cottonwood Foundation has made a significant difference to the community and also our organization.

The targeted IDP women were living with the host community which is served by Blue Veins under various projects and it was the demand of the community that Blue Veins or other organizations should do something for the IDP women living with the host communities as these women were unable to get benefit from the Govt or other international aid provided in the IDP Camps. The reason was that majority of these women were without their men who are lost or dead during the army operation or displacement. Because there is very limited trend in women to obtain their National identity Card (NIC) most of these women were not accepted as IDPs by the Govt and also

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by relief agencies. Host communities had given them refuge but these IDP women were economic burden on these poor families and both were looking for support.

Despite the fact that the scale of the implemented project supported by the Cottonwood foundation was small but the impact was huge. We are pleased to report that the Grant from Cottonwood Foundation has made a difference not only in the life of 15 IDP women giving them a chance to earn with self respect but the project also supported the Blue Veins agenda of economic empowerment and the need for the women to learn skill.

Biggest constrain and challenge in the implementation of the project was its scale. There were large number of women who wanted to benefit from the project and wanted to register as beneficiaries.

Indicators of the project success

15 IDP women have received training of cutting, sewing, stitching • & embroidery.

15 IDP women have received a sewing machine & related • accessories.

15 1DP women have received a cash benefit of 5000 to start a small • scale sewing business.

14 out of 15 women has started to earn their bread from the • sewing.

Host community is extending their full support to the left along • IDP women in their small scale business.

Economic burden on the host families is reduced.•

We extend our gratitude to Cottonwood Foundation for providing tremendous support to our project which helped us to achieve the project goal.”

— Blue Veins, Pakistan

Cottonwood’s grant to Ecoclub supported an active school-based campaign to reduce waste and promote recycling in Rivne, Ukraine.

Cottonwood Foundationwww.cottonwoodfdn.org

Box 10803 • White Bear Lake, MN 55110 USA

Phone: (651) 426-8797 • Fax: (651) 294-1012