A Cause Worth Your Cash

Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 11:27 pm

GAIA Vaccine Foundation, which stands for Global Alliance to Immunize against HIV and AIDS, is the organization that put me up while I was in Bamako in January. It was their clinic where Eduardo and Teresa painted the mural.

The founder, Annie DeGroot, is the most driven person I’ve ever met and her organization is among the most legitimate I’ve ever encountered. In addition to building and running the health clinic, GAIA is involved with HIV vaccine research in both Bamako, Mali and Providence, Rhode Island.

The organization is having its most difficult fundraising year ever and they are having a very hard time finding funding for three Brown University students to work in Annie’s Providence lab this year and then travel to Mali this summer. The research and work GAIA is involved with has the opportunity to benefit every person on the planet who is HIV positive and eventually everyone on earth. They need to raise $12,000. Annie is matching every donation dollar for dollar.

If you can donate some cash that would be amazing. I’ve given $50, but I’m sure they wouldn’t turn away donations of $5, $10, or $25. Thanks very much. The link to donate is below and I’ve also pasted Annie’s recent email.

GAIA Donation Page

GAIA Homepage

Here is the excerpt from Annie’s email

Please meet Julie Caplow, Sharon  Makava, and Lauren Pischel. These three young women would like to intern in my lab this summer (at EpiVax, where we’re still working on the GAIA Vaccine) and then go to Mali to work in the field. They will intern for free at the lab, but they need funds to travel. Their project is described in the attachment to this email.
We tried to fund them through the ARRA (Obama stimulus package) but they missed the cutoff. We’ve tried to fund them through Brown but Brown chose not to fund them. These are some of the greatest young women you’ll ever meet – - they volunteered for World AIDS day at Brown, they organized free HIV testing days, they’ve written grants and worked hard to get the funds to travel, but no luck, and time is running out. . .  and GAIA is experiencing one of the most difficult years ever for fundraising.
Will you send a check to GAIA to support their work in Mali? I will match every dollar you send. We need to raise $12,000. Can you give $500? $1,000? $100? I hope you can.
Here’s the address to send donations if you don’t want to use the web: 
GAIA Vaccine Foundation
146 Clifford Street
Providence, RI 02903
GAIA Is a 501c3
_________
Thanks for helping if you can. Spread the word.
Dan

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Mali Project

One Response to “A Cause Worth Your Cash”

  1. Annie De Groot says:
    May 23, 2009 at 6:16 am

    We have a campaign on now at http://www.globalgiving.com/projects/hiv-and-tb-care-at-the-village-level-in-mali/

    trying to raise at least $3000 (or $50 each from 60 donors!) to become a permanent fixture on the global giving site. please give us a hand!

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