Social Justice

In countries where resources are scarce, the most vulnerable people will quickly fall through the cracks. As we work with nonprofits to help them achieve their missions, many of them choose to reach out to these people, providing much-needed services to—and advocating on behalf of—people with disabilities, people with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses, orphans and street children, the homeless, Roma, substance abusers, prisoners, and juvenile offenders, among others.

Our nonprofit partners are also helping these groups move out of the shadows and into the consciousness of the mainstream—often in very innovative ways. In Ukraine, when Martin Club found that politicians did not respond to photographs presented to them of street children, they instead arranged personal meetings between politicians and street children, including a fishing trip. This changed the politicians' approach altogether, resulting in the issue of street children being included in many party platforms. Last winter, when bitterly cold temperatures were killing homeless people throughout Eastern Europe, the nonprofit group, Oselya, set up a camp of tents for homeless people. They also invited in television stations to interview the residents—in a few cases, relatives saw their family members interviewed on television and came to bring them home.

Tangible Results

• The Volyn Youth Rights Protection Association in Ukraine has successfully worked with the courts to help young people get probation or community service rather than imprisonment. They have also helped many imprisoned teens find employment on release. At the national level, the Ukraine Center for Common Ground has worked with the Supreme Court to advocate for restorative justice and mediation among juvenile offenders and their victims as a way of promoting rehabilitation over primarily punitive measures.
• Martin Club lobbied over several years to get schools to admit street children, and today provides rehabilitation services to the children to help them adjust to returning to school. Sprout of Mercy addressed the enormous problem of orphaned and abandoned children by promoting foster care as an alternative to the underfunded and overcrowded orphanage system, and providing trainings for children to help them adapt to their new families.
• In Macedonia, we have worked with several Roma (formerly called Gypsy) organizations and communities to help them overcome extreme poverty, lack of education, discrimination, and poor living conditions. Today, we are helping two Roma-staffed nonprofits, one that advocates on behalf of Roma people, and another that provides support to other nonprofits in the area.