The following are selected highlights from among IOCC's projects.
KOSOVO
The most isolated enclaves of Kosovo recently received school repairs and new computers and books through IOCC. “We chose to target schools because we believe that if you provide for the youth, families will have a greater incentive to stay in Kosovo,” said IOCC Serbia Program Manager Nenad Prelevic. A new matching grant program through the John G. Rangos Sr. Family Charitable Foundation will allow IOCC to do even more for schools, as well as to create income generating projects. IOCC has worked closely with the Visoki Decani Monastery to help families returning to Kosovo from central Serbia, as well as helping the monastery’s winery expand its wine-making capacity. Since 1993, IOCC’s Kosovo programs have assisted families by encouraging greater interethnic cooperation.
HOLY LAND
Horeya lives in a two-room stone house with her husband and five children in the northern West Bank region of Qalqilia. Her husband is unemployed, so Horeya used to sell produce by the side of the road to feed her family, but it wasn’t enough. Today, however, IOCC is teaching Horeya, and hundreds of Qalqilia families, to create house gardens, build water cisterns, and cultivate bee hives. The $440,000 program, funded by the European Union, helps those families cut off from farmlands and water supplies by the West Bank Barrier. Horeya is now waiting for her first harvest of tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, and beans. Whatever the family does not use can be sold at the market for extra income. In addition, Horeya will be able to pass on the gardening and bee keeping skills to her children.
ETHIOPIA
Haftum lost both parents to AIDS and went to live with his grandmother, who could not support him. But through start-up capital from IOCC, she was able to purchase three sheep whose offspring can be sold to support herself and Haftum. “I am too old to start a new business,” says Kerose, “but the sheep are manageable.” IOCC has been on the frontlines of battling HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia since 2004 through a partnership with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. More than 7 million Ethiopians have received prevention training and more than 22,000 individuals living with AIDS, and children who have been orphaned by the disease, have received food, clothing, and start-up funds for small businesses. In 2008, IOCC significantly expanded its program through an $8 million grant from the U.S. government.
GREECE
IOCC’s relief to Greek farmers continues to help thousands to sustain their farms in the wake of last year’s devastating wildfires. Through a $1.6 million grant by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, as well as thousands of donations from individuals, IOCC has provided emergency animal feed to more than 3,100 Peloponnese farmers. The wildfires destroyed more than 500,000 acres of forests and pasture lands. Farmers had no way to sustain their flocks – for some, their only source of income. IOCC is also helping Greek farmers find a permanent solution to the problem of feeding their livestock by distributing 80 tons of forage seed so that farmers can regrow burnt pasturelands.
For information about other countries where people have been served through IOCC, please use the drop-down box:
