Oxfam100: Each member counts

Oxfam100 is a critical three-year opportunity for 100 of our most loyal donors to help expand three key programs that benefit hundreds of thousands of people working to build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities. Members of the Oxfam100 pledge $5000/year for three years.

We’re turning to you at a time of great urgency. A drought and food crisis are now affecting more than 18 million people in West Africa—a disaster that has followed frighteningly close to a similar one that hit East Africa last year, ensnaring 13 million others. Global food prices are spiraling upward,severely straining household budgets. Insufficient agricultural investment in developing countries and changing weather patterns have left countless farmers struggling to earn a living. And natural disasters worldwide now average between 400 and 500 a year.

“These investments will help people increase their agricultural productivity and expertise; save and invest in the future; and plan ways to keep themselves and their neighbors safe when disaster strikes,” says Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. “These are all strategic steps essential for ensuring the well-being of the people we support.”

Read the Oxfam 100 brochure. Join the Oxfam100

Within Oxfam100, each member counts. Your individual commitment of $5,000 or more for each of three years is essential to the success of the entire initiative. As a member of Oxfam 100, you will strengthen and expand the following programs:

Supporting small farmers

Needed: $500,000

The confluence of challenges that small farmers face demands that we be vigilant in our efforts to support them.

With your help we can invest in:

• innovations in simple technology, such as weeders for rice farmers
• irrigation networks, such as a gravity-fed system in the Peruvian highlands
• expanded market opportunities, like those we are developing with organic cotton growers in Mali
• crop insurance for farmers when droughts or other unfavorable weather conditions occur

Saving for Change

Needed: $500,000

Our Saving for Change program has helped more than 500,000 people—most of them women—gain access to credit through a simple system: a circle of neighbors who save and lend together. The program is based on the idea that no one is too poor to save, and that community-based lending creates natural accountability.

With your help we can invest in:

• expanding Saving for Change into new countries
• business and leadership training to help women run microeconomic projects
• agricultural training for women to improve food security in their communities
• business and leadership training to help women run microeconomic projects

Saving lives

Needed: $500,000

Together with our local partners, we are well positioned to meet the new challenges facing rapid humanitarian response, but readiness and response require a great deal of resources.

With your help we can invest in:

• our capacity to respond quickly to cataclysmic events
• water and hygiene programs for displaced people and public health training to limit the spread of disease
• cash-for-work, grant, and loan programs to help people restore their income in the wake of disasters
• organizing and training disaster preparedness teams to minimize risk for the most vulnerable communities

Mail in this form to join Oxfam100. Your commitment as one of the first 100 supporters can have an extraordinary impact on the lives of the people and communities we serve. For more information regarding Oxfam100, please contact Cynthia Hellmann at 617-728-25162 or chellmann@oxfamamerica.org.