See It: The Community being helped

Ascending Africa's highest mountain to provide medical supplies for Tanzania!

In the summer of 2008, I will be journeying to Kenya on a study abroad program through Michigan State University. After this program, I'm going to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain at 19,340 feet. I am doing this not only for personal reasons; I am climbing to benefit the people of East Africa.

My project, Kilimanjaro: Climbing to Cure (KCC), seeks to find sponsors and raise $14,000 to send a 40-foot container shipment of medical supplies to support the Gonja Lutheran Hospital. The hospital, a rural medical facility in northern Tanzania near Kilimanjaro, is in dire need of renovation and basic medical supplies. It supports a catchment area of 124,000 people, yet has a mere forty beds and employs only two doctors. None of the money raised will fund my personal costs; all donations go directly towards shipping the medical supplies.

The container shipment may include many types of medical supplies and equipment such as portable x-ray machines, ultrasound machines, operating tables and lamps, surgical kits, autoclaves, caps, gowns, gloves, needles, midwife kits, and palliative care kits, among other things.

See It: The Community being helped

Source: http://www.mountainfund.org

The Facts:

The world's mountains cover about one-fourth of the planet's land surface and are home to 10 percent of its population. They are a sanctuary for an extraordinary web of plant and animal life and a source of water for all of the world's major rivers.

Yet mountain people, the guardians of these valuable mountain resources, are among the world's poorest, hungriest and most marginalized populations. Indeed, many of the more-than-800 million chronically undernourished people in the world today live in mountain areas.

"Eradication of Extreme Poverty" is, in fact, the number-one priority of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals for the world community. Unfortunately, as of 2004 in Nepal for instance, the U.N. has categorized this Goal as "far behind."

In cooperation with our Partner Organizations, The Mountain Fund is dedicated to achieving the Millennium Development Goals at the grassroots level.

The Mountain Fund's Mission:

Our mission is to organize grassroots non-profit and non-governmental organizations from a diversity of disciplines, and to support and coordinate these organizations' efforts to eliminate poverty, its causes and symptoms, in developing mountain communities.