Sunday, April 7th is World Health Day, celebrating the anniversary of the foundation of the World Health Organization in 1948. It is a day to bring attention to the significant global health issues that impact people all over the world, and a day to donate to a project through Jolkona, that will improve the health of individuals, and of a community.

This year’s theme of World Health Day is cardiovascular disease (CVD), and high blood pressure.  CVD (including high blood pressure, stroke, heart failure) is the leading causes of death and disability world wide, representing 30% of global deaths (17.3 million people). In fact, as cause of death, it is far more common in developed countries than it is in undeveloped countries. So this year, in honor of World Health Day, we are asking you to think locally by taking action to reduce your own risk for CVD, whilst also acting globally by working to alleviate health concerns that under-empowered people face, such as malnutrition and poor sanitation.

You can be sure to lower your risk of CVD and other related non-communicable diseases by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Here are some key ways to protect heart health.

• Avoid excessive tobacco use, physical inactivity, and an unhealthy diet.
• 30 minutes of physical activity every day of the week.
• Eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables, as well as limiting the amount of salt to less than a teaspoon a day.

Find out more about CVD at the WHO

While you take steps to improve your health, remember that CVD is a global epidemic, and disproportionately affects the developing world.

• 80% of people who die from non-communicable diseases live in low or middle-income countries.
• Low birth weight, folate deficiency, infections and poor nutrition are risk factors for non-communicable diseases that significantly impact people in developing countries.
• People in developing countries are usually unable to access the resources needed to effectively diagnose and treat their disease.
• The lifestyle changes associates with industrialization and urbanization, such as a sedentary lifestyle, and increased alcohol and tobacco use increase the risk of CVD in developing countries.
• Premature deaths due to CVD reduce the GDP of low and middle-income countries by as much as 6.8%, resulting in a heavy burden on rapid economic development*

*Statistics taken from WHO’s CVD Factsheet

While maintaining a healthy heart is certainly important, you can also impact global health by donating to a project that benefits under-empowered communities who face pressing health crises due to malnutrition or disease.

• Donate $100 through the Mali Health Organizing Project to provide a year of high-impact health care for 10 people living in slum neighborhoods in Mali. Your donation enrolls families in a comprehensive healthcare program through a local clinic. The program provides home visits to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases quickly and effectively, educating communities about healthcare, and reducing child mortality.
• Donate $40 through Friends of Orphans, to provide a month’s worth of fresh seasonal produce for an orphan in Mexico. The children receive a balanced diet, which aids in physical development, and prevent micronutrient deficiencies.
• Donate $260 through the Pardada Pardadi Educational Society to build a hygienic and environmentally friendly toilet in the poorest parts of rural India. This allows people, especially women, to perform bodily functions in safety and privacy, while reducing contact with waste, which causes 80% of preventable disease in rural communities.

Spend April 7th making the world a little bit healthier. Make changes to your lifestyle to prevent cardiovascular disease, and lengthen your life, and reach out to a community that faces a pressing health crisis. Think locally and act globally on World Health Day.

Spread awareness about global health via social media: like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and re-pin our pins on Pinterest.

July 9^th saw the start of our Give Health matching campaign designed to coincide with July’s Global Health month here in Seattle.  The match was a generous $3500 and finished fully funded!

We want to thank everyone who participated: the sponsors, the donors, the volunteers, and also S4SC for throwing us a great party and showing us how to socialize for social change!

The final amount raised was:

$9569!

And here’s the impact you’ve made:

• 2 prosthetics provided in Bangladesh
• 49 children saved from diarrhea in India
• 4 booklets about improved mental health distributed in Japan
• 12 children received complete dental care in Bolivia
• 12 participants in Kenyan soccer tournament sponsored
• 60 children fed for a week in Uganda
• 2 families of 6 people fed for three weeks in Somalia
• 20 people received healthcare in Mali
• 2 dogs vaccinated in Nepal
• 8 weeks of medical supplies provide in Bangladesh
• 2 homes fumigated in Bolivia
• 10 children received complete dental care in Bolivia
• 4 weeks of health screenings provided in Bangladesh
• 70 health kits provided in Somalia
• 2 children’s dental visit sponsored in Bolivia
• 4 water construction tools provided in Kenya
• 20 people received oral rehydration salts in Somalia
• 2 children received vitamins and medicine in Sierra Leone
• 2 children’s medical needs supported in Cambodia
• 2 malnourished children saved in Nepal
• 2 weeks of care provided for a mother and her baby in Guatemala
• 2 bags of seeds provided in Nicaragua
• 2 children sponsored for a dental visit in Bolivia
• 7 women health workers supported in Peru

Thank you everyone!

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest and keep up to date with all we’re doing and the impact you are making.

On Thursday of last week, a group of passionate individuals got together in a trendy building on Lenora and 1st to celebrate Jolkona and make their impact. That’s right, Socializing for Social Change‘s (S4SC) event benefitting Jolkona was a great success! Here’s the story of how the night went, and in true Jolkona fashion, a report of the impact the event had.

Volunteers from Jolkona and S4SC assembled at Maker’s Space at 4:00 to get ready for the event. They prepared food, put out the raffle station, hooked up the sound system, and set up two projectors; one highlighting different Global Health facts and Jolkona projects, the other broadcasting any tweets featuring #S4SC live. At 6:00, guests started arriving.

They were greeted at the door, and given a nametag featuring their twitter handle and the project they donated to with their ticket. They then got food, drinks, and raffle tickets; a chance to win one out of four fabulous prizes. At 7:30, S4SC founder Antonio Smith officially welcomed everyone who attended, and introduced our very own Nadia Khawaja, who gave guests the rundown on Jolkona. At 8:30, the raffle tickets were drawn, and everyone received swag bags filled with great prizes. By 9:30, the event was over, and volunteers helped return the space to the neat order it was in before.

I felt that the evening was very successful; S4SC created a lively atmosphere and a great forum to talk about Jolkona and giving. This kind of event is a great way to attract the vibrant and young community that Jolkona loves. Seeing the twitter wall live, and hearing about the potential amount of publicity for Jolkona, showed me yet again that each and every one of us, each drop of water counts towards making a difference.

The Impact:

-The hashtag #S4SC potentially garnered 30,000 impressions the night of the event!

-80 Event tickets were sold, meaning:

-10 youth will be sponsored to attend the Kick It with Kenya soccer/leadership conference.

-23 children will receive diarrhea treatment in Kolkata, India.

-8 Women will receive training to be community health promoters in rural Peru.

-56 Raffle tickets were bought; and Jolkona received a total of $1,100 for Global Health, finishing our Give Health matching campaign!

A huge thank you from all of us at Jolkona to Socializing for Social Change! Their work and partnership is what made this amazing and fun event possible.

See the total impact our Give Health Campaign had. If this event sounded fun, get ready for Corks N’ Forks on October 4th! Read more Jolkona on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Editors Note: This post was written by the one and only Chi Do!

I grew up in Vietnam, where I witnessed first-hand the inequalities of the health care delivery system in third world countries. Access to medical care was only for the more privileged, smaller sector of the population. If you were poor and lived hundred miles from the city, disease would almost be a death sentence. My childhood dream was cultivated from this knowledge. I wanted to become a medical doctor who would bridge that gap, bringing health care to the poorest of the poor, and to the most remote areas of the country.

That childhood dream took a back seat when my family immigrated to America and as I worked hard to build up a new life, aiming for the American dream. In 2006, the University of Washington, my alma mater, started a new tradition called the Common Book, in which every first-year has to read the same book prior to attending their first college quarter. The first book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World” by Tracy Kidder captured my heart. It reminded me of that childhood dream I once had – the dream to bring health access to all. I started seeking for opportunities to get involved and found the Jolkona Foundation. The idea that a small donation makes a large impact speaks so much to me. Everybody can be a philanthropist. Everybody can help make life better for another person, whether they are right next to you, or half the world away.

A couple months ago, I was in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the middle of the largest urban slum in the country. There was a small building nestled in the corner, away from all the noises of daily life. It served as the slum’s clinic sponsored by Distressed Children & Infants International (DCI). While we were there, a middle-aged woman came in carrying an infant on her arms while a young girl walked shyly behind her. I came to find out the baby was born to this young girl, who was barely 17 years old. She was married when she was 13. The older woman was the baby’s grandma. They came to seek medical care for the baby boy who had a common cold. Hearing their story, my heart flew to them. Many young girls in developing countries today have never had the opportunity for education, never known anything else beyond the 4×4 wall of their family house in the slum, and have often entered motherhood and faced too many maternal health problems at such a young age.

I am proud to be volunteering for Jolkona, to spread the word, to cultivate philanthropy within my social circles, and to lend a helping hand. I do all this with the hope that more young girls and women around the world are given the health care and educational opportunities they deserve. I urge every one of you to do the same, to seek the passion that speaks to your heart. And if it is to share or to serve the underprivileged, join us!

During the month of July, your donation to any Global Health project will be matched. Consider donating to the slum clinic in Dhaka that I mentioned above. With $50, you can provide medical supplies for the whole clinic or cover the cost of a general practitioner, both for an entire week. For the majority of people living in the slum, this is the only place they can go for medical care. In addition, join us tonight at Maker’s Space, where Socializing for Social Change is hosting an event benefiting Jolkona. To attend, you must make a $10 donation to one of three health-related projects!

Inspired? Find more Jolkona on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Read more about Jolkona’s visit to the DCI Clinic here!

Global health has never been more important. In our increasingly globalized society, where one can travel to the other side of the world in mere hours, improving quality and access to health not only benefits others but also ourselves. New medical breakthroughs protect millions of people from debilitating diseases and prevent even more from contracting them. But without access to these services, millions fall between the cracks.

In my own experience, access to health services is a major concern in all parts of the world. The United States, despite its status as a Western industrialized country, has significant problems providing healthcare to its own population. Over 50 million people are uninsured and cannot effectively access services without making a large financial commitment. I currently work at a hospital clinic and every day I face situations where patients feel overwhelmed by skyrocketing medical bills. Some of our cancer patients in particular must significantly downsize their lives to afford care. These problems similarly plague the Indian healthcare system, where hospital accessibility and quality varies with socioeconomic status. My father once fell ill during a visit and though his every need was met promptly, it was expensive and likely more than most Indians could afford.

Jolkona’s GiveHealth Campaign, connects people to many amazing projects that aim to close this gap. I helped support women health workers in Peru run by our partner, Awamaki, which provide health services to people in the remotest regions of the country. During my travels in South American with fellow Jolkona volunteers last winter, I observed first-hand how difficult life can be in rural areas. Through this organization, many villagers can gain access to medication and educational opportunities to improve their lives. Make sure to check out what other remarkable projects you can support and this month only, DOUBLE your impact!

You can also support women health workers in Peru by attending the #S4SC event this Thursday July 26th @ 6pm and choosing to donate your ticket fee of $10 to the Awamaki project.

Stay in touch with Jolkona and the impact your donations are making on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Imagine a woman working at a marketplace in the US . She needs to use the restroom, so she walks three minutes around the corner, grumbles about the line that has formed, but then uses the toilet and gets back to work.

Now imagine that woman living in the Shivaji Nagar slum in Mumbai. She has held it all day to avoid this moment, but she desperately needs to go. She walks 20 minutes just to reach the nearest women’s restroom to find it filthy, stained, and disgustingly odorous. After she finishes, the male attendant asks her to pay. “But I only urinated,” she protests. “How should I know?” he replies, still barring her exit. She hands over four rupees, about 1/6th of her daily earnings, and then is allowed to leave.

The above scenario happens daily for thousands of women in India as highlighted by these two New York Times articles. The lack of access to improved sanitation is a huge problem in India. In New Delhi alone, the national capital, there are 1,534 men’s toilets to just 132 for women. The situation is so dire that often women purposefully don’t drink water just so that they will not have to use the restroom, leading to further health problems than poor sanitation. Worldwide, around 2.6 billion people (36% of the world’s population) do not have access to improved sanitation facilities, and access is not increasing at the rate it needs to in order to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) deadline of 23% in 2015.

While this data seems grim, in reality this lack of progress can be attributed to aid not going to the right places.

• Drinking water and Sanitation often get lumped together into one aid category, but aid is often allotted to the first and not the second. By 2015, access to drinkable water will have far surpassed the MDG target.
• Furthermore, as reported by the 2012 GLAAS Report, “only half of development aid for sanitation and drinking-water is targeted to the MDG regions of sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and South-eastern Asia where 70% of the global unserved live.”
• Lastly, most of this aid is directed to urban areas, but urban residents represent less than 1/3 of people lacking improved sanitation.

While building toilets might be less attractive than building wells, improved sanitation has an enormous benefit to the people who have access to it. It reduces disease, child mortality, and helps practically all the MDGs. It increases dignity within a community, can help raise education, end the poverty cycle, and even increase GDP.

For example: Improved Sanitation addresses the Gender Equality MDG in many ways. More toilets increases women’s mobility, dignity, and ability to work, and lessens incidences of assault or rape. In addition, the 2012 GLAAS Report that showed that improved sanitation in schools lead to better attendance. For example, if schools worked to improve menstrual hygiene they could encourage girls who often miss class when menstruating to attend. This in turn helps close the education gap.

What is Jolkona doing about it?

We’re running the Give Health matching campaign, and Jolkona has three projects (Project 67, Project 76, and Project 95) that address the sanitation situation. Two of them build sustainable latrines in rural Southern Asia, and the other builds either temporary or permanent latrines in Haiti. If you support one of these projects, you will receive a photo of the latrine you provided, and information about the family you are supporting. Donate this month and make double the impact!

Keep up with us and the Give Health Campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Also check out the #S4SC Event!

Charts from: WHO and UNICEF (2010) Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water; 2010 update. Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. [http://www.unicef.org/media/files/JMP-2010Final.pdf]

When we start talking about Global Health, there’s always the risk of creating an impression of generality. We can easily succumb to the idea of a vast plethora of ‘worldwide issues’ clumped together, one indistinguishable from the other. Needless to say, this is not the reality. So this month, Seattle’s Global Health month, Jolkona is bringing the Global to the personal. Today we’re thrilled to launch the Give Health matching campaign. By donating to any one of our Global Health projects we’ll directly show you the impact your donation makes in the lives of those the project supports. Even better: we’ll match your donation, double the impact, double your proof. The match will be up to $3,500, which has been generously provided by a group of anonymous donors.

What is Global Health?

Global health refers to health problems that transcend national borders or have global political and economic impact. This includes not just problems such as infectious and insect-borne diseases which can spread from one country to another, but also health problems that are of such magnitude that they have a global political and economic impact, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and malaria.

Why Global Health?

Because health is one of central foundations of a good and just society - and we passionately believe that. Because Global Health indirectly and directly impacts all of us: the spread of a crippling disease in another country, while confined to its borders, can still have major economic and political repercussions in your country. Furthermore, an uncontrolled disease that transcends a country’s borders obviously has the potential to wreak havoc on a truly global.

But we care most about Global Health because we know what it means be in good health and, more importantly, because we know what it means to have the support of healthcare facilities and medications when we are not. The tragedy is that there are billions of people worldwide who do not have access to the most basic healthcare. It is devastatingly unjust – almost unthinkable to us – that a mother should lose her child because of something as mundane as diarrhea.

Bring the Global to the Personal

During this campaign we want to show you that you can make a difference by showing you how you make a difference. So give to any one of our 30+ Global Health projects and we’ll match your donation, whilst you see double the proof of impact. For example, give $10 to save a child in India from diarrhea, we’ll donate an additional $10, and we’ll send you copies of both the discharge certificates for the children whose treatment you provided. You are the person who makes the difference, and you see the difference made in the person’s life. This is how we’re making Global Health a personal issue.

Go to our campaign page to view our Global Health projects. Find one you care about. Donate.

Giving Health, socializing for change

As part of the campaign, our friends at Socializing 4 Social Change (S4SC) are throwing us a party to help draw awareness to three of our Global Health projects. The evening will be replete with giveaways, music, food and drinks, as well as a silent auction. Buy a ticket for the event and the full amount will go to one of the three projects of your choice. The event is on the evening of July 26 and you can get your tickets here. At $10 a pop, how could you not?

Give Health and make Global Health a personal issue.

Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

As we’re now getting into Global Health Month (a.k.a. July) I thought I would get everyone excited about our matching campaign starting on Monday! But you may be thinking ‘Global Health is such a huge topic, how can I make a difference?’ Well, we at Jolkona will tell you ‘One drop of water at a time.’

Speaking of drops of water, increasing access to sanitation and drinking water is a major solution that addresses 7 out of the 8 Millennium Development Goals. While we’ve made great progress in this area, much more still needs to be done. Jolkona has multiple projects that further this solution, such as this one.

This infographic provides a snapshot of how far we’ve come, and how the situation stands right now.

If you’re interested in supporting solutions such as this one, get excited for our upcoming matching campaign and Global Health Month!

You can learn more about the campaign and keep up with us and all that’s going on at Jolkona on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

In 1962 Seattle hosted the World Fair at its brand-new and futuristic Seattle Center. It was an event that essentially put the city on the modern map, giving it world-wide recognition. Back in April this now iconic heart of the city started celebrating its 50 year anniversary. As part of its Next 50 festivities, the Seattle Center is running a six month-long celebration, with each month focusing on different areas of regional leadership and development. The month of July is Global Health – and we at Jolkona are very excited about that, as you might expect!

Bringing awareness to – and tackling – Global Health issues is something we’re deeply passionate about. So to participate in that celebration we’ll be announcing a new matching campaign. The campaign will kick off on July 9th and run until the end of the month.

A matching campaign?

You heard that right, folks, it is a matching campaign! As always, that means you’ll have the chance to double your impact. The match will apply to any of our Global Health projects. In a nutshell: we’ll double your donation and you’ll see double the proof of impact.

As part of the campaign, our friends at Socializing 4 Social Change (S4SC) are throwing us a party to help draw awareness to three of our Global Health projects. The evening will be replete with giveaways, music, food and drinks, as well as a silent auction. Buy a ticket for the event and the full amount will go to one of the three projects of your choice. The event is on the evening of July 26 and you can get your tickets here. At $10 a pop, how could you not?

I want to make a difference!

So if you’re passionate about Global Health, then get involved. If you know nothing about Global Health, still get involved. If you want to join us in building a new generation of philanthropists, changing the world one drop of water – one person -at a time, then get involved.

Sit tight for much more info about the campaign coming soon!

You can keep up with us and all that’s going on at Jolkona on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I’m so excited to announce the “Give Health” matching campaign with Jolkona starting today. As a recent graduate student of Public Health, I truly understand the importance, the cost-effectiveness, and the need for public health projects around the world. Thanks to the generous support of an anonymous group of donors also passionate about the importance of public health, any donation you make to one of our public health projects this month, until we reach $7,000, will be matched by this grant so that you can DOUBLE your impact! If you don’t already know why supporting public health is so important I want to share a few insights.

What is global health?

Global health refers to health problems that transcend national borders or have a global political and economic impact. This includes problems such as infectious and insect-borne diseases that can spread from one country to another, but also other health problems that are of such magnitude that they have a global political and economic impact such as HIV/AIDS epidemic. Read the rest of this entry »