A growing army of volunteers in the San Francisco Bay Area are determined to make a positive contribution to the situation in Iraq this year.  We are concerned with the plight of the children of Iraq.  They have been sorely deprived the past 20 years as a direct result of the misdirection by Saddam Hussein of the assets and resources of Iraq towards war with its neighbors Iran and Kuwait, and by the indirect result of the UN sanctions placed on Iraq as conditions of the post Gulf War I to force Iraq's compliance with terms of the peace.

 

 We have made a joint commitment to assemble, collect and ship 10,000 health kits and school supply packages to Iraq this coming month of August, 2003 from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Each kit contains a prescribed number of recommended and pre-approved contents.  We have trucks lined up through Church World Services - CWS and personnel on the ground in Jordan and Baghdad to assure the deliveries are made. CWS has an established pipeline into Iraq and is the organization that has already supplied most of the blankets used to today in the hospitals of Iraq.  A $50,000 grant from a very generous Bay Area family, the Schmaiers, is the seed money making this all possible.

   

You can participate in one of three ways.

 

1) Individual:  Go to Longs, CostCo, Office Depot, Staples or any other suitable store and purchase the health kit contents and school supplies yourself and bring them to our Marin collection site (address to be announced) Saturday August 30th or take them directly to any of the three regional picnics on Sunday August 31st.   We will supply the bags for the school supplies. The health kits are contained in 1 gallon Ziploc bags.  

 

2) Group:  Form your own local neighborhood group committed to working together to deliver a number of completed health and school supplies kits by August 31st, following information supplied herein.

 

3) Financial: (donations are fully tax deductible).

Send a check (mark it for the "Iraqi Children's Program") made out to:

•  CWS  (see web site for CWS mailing address)

CWS will make the supplies purchase for you, pack the contents, deliver them on August 31st, and make sure that your group or individual name(s) are represented.  Church World Service's programs shipped $5 million worth of supplies in 2003 to over 80 countries around the world.   CWS has been doing this for 57 years. It is one of the main services CWS provides to congregations that are members of the 36 denominations that work cooperatively through Church World Service.  It is also CWS policy to work independently, as much as possible, from using any military personnel to ship our supplies as this could put CWS international field staff and international partners at risk.  It is part of CWS philosophy that humanitarian assistance needs to be seen as independent from military action. 

Each school supplies and health kit pack costs about $10.00 (including transportation).  

 

It is our hope that other cities and groups around the country will be inspired by our efforts here in the Bay Area and that within a year many other tens and even hundreds of thousands of health kits and school supplies handbags will be delivered to the children of Iraq.