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Project: Human

To allow those who deserve it to achieve it.

What We Are All About:

Project: Human, in short, is an organization devoted to the betterment of humanity. We are


uniquely student-driven and student-run, and our members are everything. Everyone has a voice
in Project: Human, and everyone has something to contribute. This is an organization with true
passion, and a true desire to bring about change in the world around us today.

Our aim is, rather than to pursue temporary "feel-good" acts of “charity” that last only a short
period of time and fail to accomplish any actual betterment of humanity in the long run, to create
self-propagating and self-sustaining efforts of aid with the everlasting goal of making the future
all that much better.

In other words, our philosophy may be summed up simply by the Chinese proverb which goes,
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime”. We aim not to carry out narrow-minded tasks such as food drives, which may feed a
person today, but will ultimately leave them to starve all the same tomorrow, but rather to
implement sustainable methods of permanently combating poverty, deficiencies in education,
and other prevalent atrocities facing our world today.

Presently, Project: Human emphasizes issues such as education, poverty, and self-dependent
entrepreneurship, and plans to reach out on both a local and global scale. However, this by no
means all that Project: Human is confined to, and we intend to address all issues that our
members find to be a pressing concern of humanity in any respect or aspect.
Actions include the advocacy, financial support and backing of microcredit and microfinance,
support on a direct basis for those in direct communal need, raising of awareness of global issues
such as educational deficiency and genocide around the world, providing counsel to those in
need, and more.

Activities range from the dissemination of information to organizing community drives to


building awareness on certain issues to funding projects supporting the independence of the poor
and homeless on both local and global scales, to more. We are flexible and intend to mold to fit
our current agenda at hand as is seen fit.

So long as the resources are available, they will be used by Project: Human in as efficient and
renewable a manner as possible. Resources will not be used for a one time purpose with no
compensation, but rather as a sort of investment, with a planned return greater than what was
invested, therefore enabling an eventually independently expandable program, with constant
investment and return.

If there is any issue that someone is passionate about and willing to support that concerns
humanity in any form, Project: Human will ensure that that someone is heard, and that their
actions are felt. From a cure for AIDS to an end to civil war in Sri Lanka, anything and
everything concerns the Project.

Central Aims and Goals:

To raise awareness of issues regarding humanity and society in the world today through the
dissemination of knowledge.
To directly impact and effect these issues through immediate action and tangible aid.

About Microfinance:

As Project: Human begins, a significant portion of our focus will be devoted to microfinance,
which is the provision of financial services and aid to poor and low-income people who find
themselves unable to obtain credit. As these poor have little or no cash income, and therefore
unable to provide collateral or backing faith for credit, these people are unable to build a credit
history, and therefore conventional credit is almost always denied to them. Microfinance
endeavors to help these people by allowing them loans. Organizations such as Kiva, the Grameen
Foundation, and MicroPlace serve as middlemen between investors and clients, as these top-level
organizations, who are generally not-for-profit (with the exception of MicroPlace, which was
founded by E-Bay), direct money retrieved from investors and distribute it to ground-level
microfinance organizations, which then in turn relay the money to those in need. These people in
need are in turn responsible for acting innovatively, for in order to obtain a loan, they must have
a concrete plan and proposal for a small-scale enterprise which they will fund with their loan,
and this proposal must be presented and approved by the organizations distributing the loans
before the loan will be approved.
In shorter words, microfinance allows those who are willing to work themselves out of poverty
the opportunity to do so. This requires hard work, perseverance, and entrepreneurship, and thus
those who succeed (generally over 90%) truly deserve their success. This method of distributing
money has been proven to be far more effective than flat donations, and most often those who
find themselves in poverty are not in poverty by bad choice, but rather by bad fortune. Once
given the opportunity to set themselves free, the vast majority of the poor quickly capitalize on
this opportunity and do indeed manage to escape the vicious cycle of destitution.

For example of microfinance, one person in a rural village may have an idea for selling coal to
his community by directly delivering it to households. In order to do this, however, he must first
have enough funds to buy an ample supply of initial coal to distribute, deliver, and sell. Under
normal circumstances, he would be unable to do this, as he has no means of obtaining money.
Under a system of microfinance, however, he is able to obtain a small loan of say, $500, in order
to begin his enterprise. First, he will propose his idea to the microfinance organization, at which
point the organization will publicize his loan, and investors will contribute small donations to
help reach that aim of $500. With 25 people donating $20 each, the man will be able to begin his
business and begin selling coal. Within a set period of time, such as six months, the man will
slowly pay back his loan in increments, and each of the 25 initial investors will regain their
invested $20.

As stated earlier, this method of combating poverty is incredibly successful, as most people in
such a situation are willing to work very hard to escape the situation. Success rates are
overwhelmingly high, and lost investments are, though present, virtually negligible in the long
run.

Moreover, microfinance not only benefits the direct recipient of the loan, but his entire
community, as once he is able to attain a general degree of prosperity, the effects of that
prosperity will be experienced throughout his entire local community, as he will be able to
support his family, provide education to his children, and provide an economy for his residence
in whole. As one testimony puts it, "Several years ago two friends of mine were speaking with a
group of 40 clients at a micro-bank in South Asia. Through the translator, they asked the 40
women what impact the bank had had on the husbands of the non-borrowers; not their husbands,
but the husbands of women who are not with the bank. The clients said, 'Before we took our
loans, our husbands were day-labourers, working for others whenever they could find work.
When we took our loans our husbands stopped being day-labourers and worked with us - bicycle
rickshaw, husking rice, growing garlic on leased land. This caused a shortage of day-labourers in
this area, so the husbands of the non-borrowers who were day-laborers – their wages went up.'
That was the impact of this bank on the husbands of the non-borrowers." - Sam Daley-Harris,
Microcredit Summit Campaign, Director

Using microfinance as one of our primary tools to combat poverty, we are also ensuring our own
security as well, as, instead of donating all our money to a greater charity and never seeing any
of it again, investing in microfinance promises a return, which will allow us to recover all the
money we invest, and reuse it again for other purposes, often at a gain with interest. This
promises that the money and means we accumulate will never decrease through our support of
such causes, and will only serve to continually increase, allowing us to expand our aims, extend
our organization, and take on even more initiatives. Hence, having microfinance as our initial
grounding point (though once more not by far all we plan to do with Project: Human once it has
reached a point of financial independence and stability) is ideal.

More can be read about microfinance on these websites:


http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance/
http://www.microfinancegateway.org/section/faq
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what_we_do/microfinance_in_action/

What We Have Done and Plan to Do and How to Contribute:

This is a very broad category, and will by no means encompass anywhere near the entirety of
Project: Human’s endeavors.

A few things are as follows:

Blackout Hour was a great success in Spring 2009, with the entire school participating and
almost all lights electric devices turned off, saving a significant amount of energy and preventing
much carbon from being released into the atmosphere.

T-shirts have been acquired in bulk and are being distributed. This serves as both a method for
raising funds as well as a wonderful way to get the word out about Project: Human.

There are many plans for this upcoming year, including a Poverty Walk, a Hunger Banquet,
Humanitarian Film Nights, Educational Care Packages for the Underprivileged, and much more.
We grow with every step we take.

Writing. Writing is at the heart of Project: Human. We are already in possession of a fair amount
of literature, but this is nowhere near what we plan to do with our publications. Our goal is to
cover all of our concerns and allow for a maximal spread of awareness of our cause, and this can
only be accomplished through media. If you love to write, your help would be wonderful.

Art. Art, like writing, is something big. We can never have enough art. We already have some
very impressive things, thanks to some very passionate lovers of humanity, but more is always
better. If you can draw, paint, color, anything – don’t hesitate to let us know.

We are looking into more capital and resource raising ventures. Again, all ideas and suggestions
are welcome. Many of these ventures will aim to be activity based (such as painting a mural or
organizing a competition of some sort), so as to avoid tedious and overdone generic methods of
fundraising such as candy selling. Once again, the idea behind Project: Human is that once we
reach financial stability, we are no longer perpetually dependent on fundraising for survival. Any
funds accumulated from that point forth will only serve to complement our already stable base.

We have acquired the rights to ProjectHuman.org and ChangeHumanity.org. A stable website is


in place, and much is planned to come.
Networking, branching out. We have already established contacts with a number of other
organizations, including a public relations representative of House Majority Leader
Representative Tom Cross, a “Humanitarian Army” at Hinsdale Central, and Ridge High
School’s IHS (International Humanitarianism for Students) in New Jersey. There has also been
noted interest at Plainfield Central and South, as well as from graduates who are already in
college. We’re always looking for new relations and contacts, so here too, if you have contacts in
other schools who would be interested in creating a similar organization such as ours and
working in collaboration, feel free to bring the idea up and see if something can’t be worked out.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or comments, feel free to contribute. Ideas on anything,
for anything, are always welcome.

Officers of Project: Human:

Mr. Stafford
PNHS Sponsor, Operational Design Administrator
Ben Yu
Captain of General Operations
Anthony Margotta
Captain of Internal Transactions and Relations
Austin Stone
Captain of Recruitment and Dissemination of Information
Kevin Wilson
Captain of Integration and Project Execution
Justin Hish
Captain of Public Relations and Networking
Kailey Luzbetak
Captain of Sponsorship and Capital Acquisition
Sarah Strom
Captain of Secretarial Concerns and Community Mobilization
Parth Thakkar
Captain of Administration and Membership
Kyle Deininger
Captain of General Communications

Contact Information:

Website: ProjectHuman.org | ChangeHumanity.org (mirror)


Facebook: Facebook.com/group.php?gid=40958450953
Email: intenex@gmail.com | astaffor@psd202.org

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