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This is a caring place for anyone facing a hardship to ask for help from our fellow humankind. Each month we will highlight individuals or families who need assistance for donations to be made by the people who want to help them.

Requests can be made for any kind of need including air travel, car replacement, car repair, children’s needs, clothing, a computer, crop planting, day care, dental work, education, electricity bill, employment, funeral, furniture, groceries, home repair, housing, legal assistance, an overwhelming medical or utility bill, a wedding or really anything.

Cash donations are made to our organization. Physical donation of goods or discussions of employment opportunities are made by contacting the person directly.

Apply for Help or
Nominate Someone Who Needs Help.

Or click here to contact this person directly to send goods, or discuss an employment opportunity.

During Saddam Hussein’s regime, Nazar Joodi was arrested and accused of exchanging foreign currency. His right hand was cut off during his imprisonment. After Saddam’s fall, Joodi was brought to America to have a prosthetic hand fitted for him. Soon after he was brought to Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and White House and shown as a graphic example that invading the country and ousting Hussein had been the right thing to do.

In 2006, Iraqi insurgents accused Joodi of being an American sympathizer and threatened his life. Joodi, his wife and four children went into hiding in Iraq and finally arrived as refugees in the United States in March 2008. Fast-forward since then and Nazar's life is heart breaking.

The family receives Medicaid, and food stamps, and really has no other means on which to survive. They have placed themselves on a list to be placed in a homeless shelter.

Nazar's pants are clearly too big for him as evidence of the weight he has lost from stress. His wife said bluntly that they both have considered suicide, and their children are not oblivious to the profound problems they face.

Mr. Joodi is now mocked in Iraq as a “friend of Bush” who has nothing in the United States and will be killed if he returns to Iraq.

The family needs a minivan donated to them; Mr. Joodi needs a job anywhere in the Washington, DC metropolitan area; and they need immediate donations to help them through their difficult time.

He is clearly highly intelligent, can speak but is not fluent in English and can only use his left hand but necessity remains the mother of invention. There has to be work that Nazar can do. If there is any job for Nazar that come to mind, please contact him. Mr. Joodi is also seeking donations to pay their rent and feed themselves.

Nazar and the two eldest daughters Shayma and Furqan, aged 16, can all work and have their green cards. As legal residents, they are very hard workers and eager to work.

This is a family in deep need with no remaining options.

Or click here to contact this person directly to send goods, or discuss an employment opportunity.

The Jackfruit Project pairs resources in India and the U.S. to support the girl children of the Snehi Bhavan home.

Fourteen girls live in the loving home of founders Matthew and Sajini, along with the couple's own son, in Melukavu, a small town near Kottayamin the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Prior to the founding of this project in 2007, Sajini and Matthew relied on Matthew's laborer's wages and local donations of food to keep the home running.

But they are unable to continue supporting such a large group single-handedly. As the girls grow older, they are in need of support and mentoring beyond what they receive at the home.

Paula Buck, professor at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, is the president and founder of the Jackfruit project. When Paula Buck first visited Snehi Bhavan the girls were without the most basic of needs, but since that time life has become better for them.

There still is a tremendous need for resources; the girls are dalits ortribals and come from abusive backgrounds, a number of them have mothers in the sex trade.

The girls need food and shelter and an education that will provide them with independence and self-esteem. Dalit is a self-designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as low caste or untouchables (outcastes). While the caste system has been abolished under the Indian constitution, there is still discrimination and prejudice against Dalits in South Asia.

The short term goals are:

1) to provide each girl with a healthy diet, including fruit and vegetables

2) to ensure the ongoing education of each girl by covering school fees

3) to offer the older girls extracurricular classes focussed on buildingself esteem and confidence

4) to provide each young woman with a mentor who will help her explore possibilities for her future

5) to improve the physical facility of the home, which is, at present, quite primitive.

The long term project is the purchase of two acres of rubber trees to enable Snehi Bhavan to become self-sustaining after just one year of production.

Or click here to contact this person directly to send goods, or discuss an employment opportunity.

She should be crying. Her home just burned down, she has no insurance to cover the damage, her children had no clothes to wear to school on Tuesday and just about everything she owned is sooty and charred.

But Elizabeth Garcia is not the type to weep when facing the challenge of her life.

Rather, she wandered through her scorched home looking for things to salvage — a toothbrush, some sponges, a picture of the Madonna that was untouched by the flames. And she began to figure out how to make a new life on a meager income, little savings and no roof over her head.

“We will find a way,” she said. “We have to.”

Garcia, 39, cleaned office buildings and houses, sometimes until 4 a.m., so that her daughters would have a backyard, a swimming pool and a place they called home.

She finally paid off her home in the 700 block of Brink Avenue about a year ago, free and clear. But, like so many whose lives were undone by the economy, Garcia’s cleaning service began losing customers until she had to get a second job at a warehouse.

She was also forced to make difficult financial decisions. To save money, she dropped her homeowner’s insurance.

Early Monday, as she was packing boxes at the Bealls warehouse, a fire started in the laundry room of her home and quickly spread.

Everyone in the home, including her two daughters, escaped safely. But the home was gutted.

Source and complete story: http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091007/article/910079985

Or click here to contact this person directly to send goods, or discuss an employment opportunity.

Hello there! I am a young woman living in a half-way house outside of Boston. I found myself here because I am an alcoholic-addict and have struggled with addiction problems since I was 12 years old. I am now 29, and my disease has slowly progressed from alcohol to pot, to pills, to cocaine, and back around to alcohol abuse.

My past mistakes and bad choices have caused me to lose everything! Since I have fallen into addiction and depression, I lost my life in a flash...my apartment, my long-term boyfriend, my family's respect and trust, my career, and my dignity.

I came from a good family, went to college and got a Bachelors, yet I still became an addict anyway. This is an actual disease, not a moral defect, and I am working to become the beautfiul person I know I can be. I have so much potential and dream of opening my own architecture firm one day.

I have been in treatment for addiction for 4 months now and I am growing leaps and bounds as a person. It is truly amazing to see myself realizing the potential that I always knew is inside of me!

My next step is to graduate from my half-way house and integrate into the "real" world again, this time on two solid feet. I would greatly benefit if there is a sympathetic soul out there who could help me afford sober housing/apartment fee's, or could help secure employment in the Boston area doing what I am passionate about.

I have another chance at life, and I am going to live it to the fullest! Thank you for reading, and God Bless!

~Rachel D.