Donate to our appeal

Can you help us keep our life-changing projects open by giving a gift today?

We urgently need your help. As a result of falling house prices, we have experienced an unexpected shortfall in income from the gifts people generously leave us in their Wills. This means that despite the generosity of our supporters, we must raise £65,000 by 31 March 2010 (the end of our financial year) in order to keep all our established projects open.

And at one of our smallest projects, these challenges really couldn’t have come at a worse time.

During the recent conflict in South Sudan, tens of thousands of people flocked to Yambio, an isolated city on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. This once green and fertile land was inundated with families and orphans who, fearing for their lives, were forced to flee their homes and head for Yambio’s displacement camps. In a region ravaged by conflict, it was seen as the last ‘safe’ place left to go.

But overcrowding in Yambio has led to a severe shortage of food, and with no usable equipment, machinery or seeds, there is little chance of growing anything to eat. Worse still, people in the camps are at a high risk of preventable illnesses like malaria and diarrhoea.

Y Care International is helping the orphans, children and families who have been hit hardest by the conflict. We provide the essentials they need, including food, mosquito nets and blankets. For many orphans and children, this project is often their only chance for survival.

And this is why we are asking if you will give a gift to keep this and our many other life-saving projects running, ensuring we can continue helping young people like Mariam.

Thirteen-year-old Mariam tragically lost both parents when she was only three – her mother to HIV/AIDS and then her father in the violent civil war. Now Mariam lives alone with an elderly woman who took her in when she had nowhere to go. Mariam couldn’t afford to go to school and she spent her days washing clothes, cooking and collecting water. But thanks to the YMCA, Mariam is now attending the free school which is part of our project and has been given a mosquito net to protect her from life-threatening diseases like malaria.

But we are not sure how we can keep our project open and continue to help Mariam and other orphans like her.

Unfortunately, this is not the only project that is at risk of closure or cutbacks.

The funding shortfall we’re facing means that we will also be forced to significantly scale back the work of our project in the slum community of Ankazomanga, Madagascar – one which helps young people in the poorest communities to get the training they need to find employment.

In Sudan, Madagascar and 20 other countries around the world, our projects help many thousands of children and young people to rebuild their lives when violent conflict, natural disaster and poverty tear them apart. So please, give whatever you can to help us raise the £65,000 we need.

We need to act quickly, because whilst we try to make up this shortfall in funding, the situation in Yambio is becoming more desperate, with more displaced people arriving every day.

£10.50 could help pay for a month’s worth of nutritious meals and education for a child in a deprived area of Sudan like Yambio.

£169 could help us keep our Yambio project running for a week.

Read more information about our Yambio project

If you would like to make a donation, please fill in the form below. Alternatively, you can ring our fundraising team on: 020 7549 3175.