Don’t forget the animals
Typhoon Haiyan is the second-deadliest Philippine typhoon on record, killing at least 3,982 people in that country alone. The cyclone caused catastrophic destruction in the central Philippines, particularly on Samar Island and Leyte. According to UN officials, about 11 million people have been affected and many have been left homeless.
People were not prepared for the magnitude of a typhoon that has devastated parts of the Philippines.
The Philippines and international armed forces and aid agencies are struggling to get help to devastated areas due to the extent of the destruction, which has left 4 million people displaced.
WSPA works for the animals
While the world rallies to support the victims of this disaster, WSPA is on the ground helping the forgotten victims – the animals.
Thousands of animals have likely been affected by the devastating typhoon in the Philippines. WSPA staff is on the ground working with local governments to meet the needs of animals and their owners and to give help where it is needed most.
Animals are an important part of the family in the Philippines and are vital to the survival of urban and rural communities. Without your urgent help, local families might lose the animals that they rely on for their livelihood and survival. By protecting animals suffering as a result of Typhoon Haiyan, you’re also helping an entire society to recover and heal.
Supporting WSPA
Phoenix Rising For Children (PRFC) is an accredited out-of-home or foster care provider based in Sydney, N.S.W, Australia. PRFC was founded in 2001 to provide quality foster care to children and young people across Sydney, including contemporary, quality, family-based foster care and effective and specialist support services to children and young people and their families. PRFC operates ethically, effectively and empathically with a view to achieving quality outcomes and a satisfying working environment, and as such we support such organisations as WSPA as they encompass similar ideals.
Have you considered fostering a young one? PRFC undertakes regular planning and evaluation and has a focus on personal development and training. If you would like to become a foster carer and join our team providing effective and meaningful care to children and young people, please contact us!
We also provide family contact services, and these specialize in contact supervision for children in out of home care with their parents and other significant family members.
We can be reached at mail@phoenixrising.org.au
Learn more about our foster care agency in NSW at www.phoenixrising.org.au
How can we help?
There is an inextricable link between animals and human welfare. The shocking number of human casualties estimated makes us well aware that animals will desperately need our help.
By making your urgent donation today, you will not only be helping these animals, you’ll also be helping the communities who care for them and rely on them for their survival.
Funds raised for this appeal will support animals affected by this disaster. If the funds raised exceed WSPA’s needs, your gift will go to our general Disaster Management work.
Help the animal victims of Typhoon Haiyan by donating now.
https://wspa.thankyou4caring.org/DST1113E2W
Refugees and migrants deserve their basic human rights.
What are human rights?
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.
Refugees and migrants
A refugee is a person who has fled from their own country due to human rights abuses they have suffered there because of who they are or what they believe in, and whose own government cannot or will not protect them. As a result, they have been forced to seek international protection.
Migrants move from one country to another usually to find work, although there may be other reasons for migrating such as to join family members. Some move voluntarily, while others are forced to leave because of economic hardship or other problems.
What’s happening in Australia?
Despite the establishment of a federal human rights committee to consider all new bills before Parliament, laws were passed restricting the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Northern Territory and reintroducing a policy of offshore processing where asylum-seekers arriving by boat are sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea. Asylum-seekers who arrive by boat are now either processed offshore or have fewer rights in Australia.
What’s happening overseas?
In recent years, European countries have stepped up border control measures in an attempt to prevent migrants and asylum-seekers from reaching Europe. Some of these measures have resulted in or contributed to serious human rights violations. European countries have forced people back to countries where the risk of human rights abuses, including torture and arbitrary detention, was already well known.
There has also been a growing trend of “criminalization” of irregular migration in Europe. Some countries have introduced criminal penalties for irregular stay or entry. Some also punish people who help irregular migrants.
What does Amnesty International do?
Amnesty International works to protect the human rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants through focused research, national and regional campaigning and high-level lobbying. They also support individuals facing forcible return to a risk of human rights abuses in other countries through legal interventions, international and national pressure and solidarity actions.
Amnesty International is campaigning to ensure that:
- People are treated with dignity at the borders. Their rights must be respected during border control and return operations, including the right to claim asylum.
- The right to liberty of migrants and asylum-seekers is respected. Immigration detention must only be as a measure of last resort and children must no longer be detained for the purpose of migration control.
- People on the move no longer suffer abuse because of their migration status. Those who are abused or exploited must have effective access to justice.
§ http://www.amnesty.org/en/refugees-and-migrants
Supporting Amnesty International
The Wishing Well was established in 2010 to offer children in out-of-home care, such as foster care and residential care, a range of healing and treatment options usually not accessible as a free therapy in mainstream health.
The Wishing Well raises funds to enable children and young people to access developmentally-appropriate and trauma-informed treatments shown to be highly effective in dealing with severe trauma and neglect. These therapies respond to the unique needs of each child and young person.
The Wishing Well is a not-for-profit incorporated charity organisation, established and managed by people seeking to improve outcomes for children and young people in out-of-home care and their families.
The Wishing Well operates ethically, effectively and empathically with a view to achieving quality outcomes and a satisfying working environment, and as such we support such organisations as Amnesty International as they encompass similar ideals.
The Wishing Well gratefully receives donations, funding and resources through bequests, corporate partnerships, fundraising events, grants, online donations and other fund raising activities. Please see our website for more information:
How you can help
Support Amnesty International’s campaign by taking action now:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/italy-migration-control
Sign the petitions available from Amnesty International:
Justice for Liz
How Kenyan police have handled the brutal gang rape of a Busia County schoolgirl has sparked popular outrage and prompted many to question the effectiveness of Kenya’s laws in deterring sexual assault.
The assault and the consequences
The 16 year old girl, only identified as Liz, was walking home from her grandfather’s funeral when a group of six men beat and raped her. They later dumped the bleeding and unconscious teenager in a sewage ditch. She later developed a fistula, causing her to leak stool and urine, due to the brutal nature of the repeated raping. She is also now confined to a wheelchair because of an injury to her spinal cord as a result of the men throwing her into the 20-foot pit.
After surviving a night in the ditch, Liz was rescued by local residents and later identified three of her alleged rapists. Police responded by ordering the three men to cut grass around the police station, and later set them free.
Liz did everything right. She screamed for help during her attack but though her neighbours heard, nobody helped her. She reported her attack to the police promptly and identified her attackers. She went to the police before she went to hospital, and the police stupidly asked her to go and shower before she went to the hospital. Yet, three months after her attack, Liz was in hospital struggling with the psychological and physical trauma of her attack, while her attackers remained free.
The Avaaz campaign for Liz
Liz’s horror story has sent shockwaves through Kenya and now politicians and the police are under pressure to respond. But women’s groups in Kenya say nothing will truly change unless the government is put under the global spotlight. They are calling on us urgently to help ensure justice is done and that Liz’s nightmare marks a turning-point in Kenya’s rape epidemic.
The Avaaz campaign has already generated more than one million signatures – that is more than one million voices demanding justice for Liz. The petition is directed at Kenya’s Inspector General of Police and calls on him “to deliver justice for Liz including the immediate arrest and prosecution of her rapists and full disciplinary action for the police officers who dismally failed to handle her case.”
Supporting Avaaz
The Wishing Well was established in 2010 to offer children in out-of-home care, such as foster care and residential care, a range of healing and treatment options usually not accessible as a free therapy in mainstream health.
The Wishing Well raises funds to enable children and young people to access developmentally-appropriate and trauma-informed treatments shown to be highly effective in dealing with severe trauma and neglect. These therapies respond to the unique needs of each child and young person.
The Wishing Well is a not-for-profit incorporated charity organisation, established and managed by people seeking to improve outcomes for children and young people in out-of-home care and their families.
The Wishing Well operates ethically, effectively and empathically with a view to achieving quality outcomes and a satisfying working environment, and as such we support such organisations as Avaaz as they encompass similar ideals.
The Wishing Well gratefully receives donations, funding and resources through bequests, corporate partnerships, fundraising events, grants, online donations and other fund raising activities. Please see our website for more information:
How can we help?
Nobody has been brought to justice — not the rapists, and not the police. We can help change that. Sign now to get justice for Liz and help make sure no girl anywhere suffers this violence:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/justice_for_liz_loc/
Liz is a pseudonym given by the news outlet that broke her story and has since been widely used.
Help Save the Taiji Dolphins
The Dolphin Drive Hunt
Dolphins and pilot whales are being slaughtered by the thousands in a small fishing village in Japan.
The dolphin drive hunt in Taiji, Japan, takes place every year from September to April. According to the Japanese Fisheries Research Agency, 1,623 dolphins were caught in Wakayama Prefecture in 2007 for human consumption or resale to dolphinariums, and most of these were caught at Taiji.
The annual dolphin hunt provides income for local residents, but has received international criticism for both the alleged cruelty of the dolphin killing and the high mercury levels of the dolphin meat.
The Cove documentary
A film titled The Cove was secretly recorded over five years with high-tech video and sound equipment in Taiji. This full-length documentary was funded by billionaire James H. Clark and shows controversial dolphin killing techniques and discusses high mercury levels in Taiji dolphin meat.
Since the release of the film, a larger number of activists, mainly non-Japanese, have visited Taiji to protest or film the dolphin hunts. The activists observe and monitor the hunting throughout the hunting season from September until it ends in April. The Taiji fishermen responded by constructing an elaborate structure of tarps to better conceal the drive-hunting activities in and around the cove. Activists report that they have been harassed when trying to document the hunts by local supporters of the dolphin fishermen.
Dolphin slaughter in Taiji cruel methods
Fishermen hold large poles underwater and bang them with hammers to create a wall of sound that disorientates the animals and causes them to swim toward the shore. Here, mothers and babies are separated by ropes, some dolphins are tied to boats, some become injured or break their pectoral fins in the watery panic, and some die from stress or exhaustion.
The reasons given by officials are varied. Some say the dolphins and whales are killed for their meat; meat tainted with high levels of mercury and served to Japanese school children. Others say the ‘hunt’ is a form of ‘pest control’ insisting the dolphins are competition for the fishing industry. The killings have also been directly linked to the lucrative trade in dolphins for the marine park industry. Investigators have reported seeing dolphin trainers assisting fishermen in herding the dolphins in order to choose those deemed suitable for a life in an aquarium.
Save the dolphins
Whatever the reasons given, there is no excuse for such extreme cruelty.
The Labor party and the Liberal party are refusing to condemn this brutal slaughter, and so it is up to us to speak up for the dolphins in Japan.
Supporting Animals Australia
The Wishing Well was established in 2010 to offer children in out-of-home care, such as foster care and residential care, a range of healing and treatment options usually not accessible as a free therapy in mainstream health.
The Wishing Well raises funds to enable children and young people to access developmentally-appropriate and trauma-informed treatments shown to be highly effective in dealing with severe trauma and neglect. These therapies respond to the unique needs of each child and young person.
The Wishing Well is a not-for-profit incorporated charity organisation, established and managed by people seeking to improve outcomes for children and young people in out-of-home care and their families.
The Wishing Well operates ethically, effectively and empathically with a view to achieving quality outcomes and a satisfying working environment, and as such we support such organisations as Animals Australia as they encompass similar ideals.
The Wishing Well gratefully receives donations, funding and resources through bequests, corporate partnerships, fundraising events, grants, online donations and other fund raising activities. Please see our website for more information:
What can we do?
Let the Japan Tourism Agency know that you will not be visiting a country that has such blatant disregard for life. The beauty and culture of Japan is only strengthened by its amazing wildlife and this should be promoted not destroyed:
http://www.animalsaustralia.org/take_action/Ban-Taiji-Dolphin-Hunt
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