FreeSpirit 2011

FreeSpirit has been steadily busy and gotten off to a great start in 2011. Our network of international volunteer translators has been helping out several organizations so far this year.

Most recently, as described in her trial-by-fire blogposts, one of our interns, Molly, organized and participated in an interpreting session for Solidarité International. Solidarité operates in regions or countries affected by war or natural disaster and focuses on emergency relief in the form of water and sanitation, food security and eventual reconstruction. The conference here outside of Paris dealt with the logistical challenges that come with delivering Solidarité's aid programs and saw project heads from various countries meet in order to develop strategies and share success stories and ongoing challenges.

Solidarité is also developing their literature and communication strategies to get their message out to even more NGOs and government agencies so they can expand their operations and reach more people in need.

FreeSpirit has also done some extensive work for Landmine Monitor, a program providing research and monitoring for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). Landmine Monitor has published extensive data on international contributions; clearing operations; oversight of landmine use and compliance with the mine-ban treaty; casualties and victim assistance; aid donors and recipients; and government transparency.

Due to their reach and the unfortunate reality of landmine use throughout the world, Landmine Monitor needs to have their literature and their studies translated into several languages. Luckily for us, FreeSpirit's network was able to handle their request and get their information out to their international partners as soon as possible in Russian, Spanish and Arabic.

Another recent FreeSpirit partner has been FIRAH, a French-based international foundation of associations dedicated to applied research for persons with disabilities. FIRAH and one of their Italian partners are currently promoting and funding a community-based rehabilitation project in India.

Hopefully we can continue collaborating with these organizations and our other partners in the coming months. We're always interested in learning about not-for-profit groups working for social justice and humanitarian causes that are new to us, so contact us if you know of any who need to reach out in almost any language.

In the coming months we'll also be working on a website dedicated exclusively to Freespirit so people can check in on our latest work and see who our partners are. We want to increase the exposure of the project to as many people as possible.

Send us any ideas if you have them!