#GivingTuesdayNow - From Local Initiatives to Global Movements
One of the big challenges working at LIN is to convince others to understand why we need an organization like LIN in Vietnamese society. I myself used to struggle finding a way to contribute effectively, and how to make my impact go beyond buying rice bags or dozens of eggs without knowing what will happen later to the person that I wanted to help.
Trust is quite fragile in Vietnam, that means who plays the role of bridging and distributing resources facing more challenges to do their work. Most of us wants to provide things directly to end beneficiaries, witness people's smiles by our own eyes, have good photos of children or poor people to quickly show to the donors, don't take me wrong, nothing wrong with that. However, if no one keeps trying to build a network that can foster trust between people, the foundation for different people to come together, leverage each other's strengths and expertise, we will continue to come short of long term solutions.
Then it becomes clear to me that, even though this isn't an easy task but in the end of the day we are grateful to have many great friends, donors, organizations who understand and believe in our work. Lead The Change, for example, has partnered with LIN in this fundraising campaign through their Give It Back initiative, each mentee will be encouraged to donate to our Covid-19 Response Community Fund to support struggling local nonprofits even before we kicked off the Fund, or EZ Land Vietnam, immediately agreed to donate to help local grass-root organizations overcome this difficult time, and many individuals in the community reached out telling us they wanted to help. Not to mentioned media like The Manager Magazine enthusiastically shared our message of Community Fund to their readers and a few other newspapers and media are also willing to help LIN spread a word to a wider public community. These show us an optimistic sign that many more people are now interested in long-term stories and changes, and we hope this will continue to get more attention and become frequent topics of our discussion going forward. And we will work hard to make sure this happen.
This global crisis reminds us that we are all connected and we need each other, #GivingTuesdayNow is a great opportunity to emphasize human connection and strengthen the communities we belong to and live in! We believe any of us as individuals can take action during this unprecedented time. You can join this meaningful movement by donating to local causes at your community or consider to donate to LIN's Covid-19 Response Community Fund to ensure Vietnamese grass-root nonprofits can survive and carry their missions during and after pandemic.
The diverse groups of beneficiaries from this fund including:
- Providing supports to people whose jobs have been impacted due to COVID-19
- Paying salaries to teachers from disadvantaged youth development programs
- Providing necessary training for communities to cope with the pandemic
- Providing a space to work in 6 months.
This urgent funding will ensure organization with the direst need can survive over the next three to 6 months, and continue to serve their beneficiaries.
Donate to Community Fund here https://bit.ly/2WHHZtV
For more information about Covid-19 Response Community Fund, please read it here