March 2011
We must work together to achieve a goal as large as our mission to end systemic poverty in the world. Traditionally, charities tended to the immediate needs of people living in poverty. However, experience shows that this system of “handouts” fails to enable people to help themselves for the long term. Now, there are several charities that are creating opportunity in communities and making progress towards alleviating poverty for the long term.
Charities often work on a specific aspect of the community. Aspects off relevance and importance to achieve our mission include: education, infrastructure, water and sanitation, health care, and access to loans and training to start small businesses. A few charities stand out in their ability to work in many aspects of the community, as well as their capability to do this work around the globe.
Work for All works with United Nation’s approved charities that are well established and influential around the world in their work toward ending systemic poverty.
One charity that our organization has been working with for several years and we continue to with is Plan Canada. Plan has programs in 66 countries and their work impacts more than 3.5 million families and their children around the world[1]. We support Plan’s work in impoverished communities to create opportunity and contribute on a monthly basis. Melissa Leonard
[1]www.PlanCanada.ca
About Plan Canada
Originally named “Foster Parents Plan for children in Spain”, Plan was founded in the 1930’s. Now Plan is international and is easily recognized for its contributions and influence around the world.
Plan’s work is linked with the United Nation’s Conventions on the rights of a child:
“Human rights of all children, including the right to: survive, develop to the fullest, be protected from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation, and participate fully in family, cultural and social life[1].
To achieve this Plan works to build communities that provide opportunity. Children need to live in communities that have water infrastructure, education and medicine to reach their potential. Specifically, Plan works in communities to build schools, educate teachers, dig wells, open health clinics, provide vocational training, innovate to improve crop yields, give access to loans to start small business, and much more[1].
Plan is currently doing this work in over 25 000 of the world’s most impoverished communities.
Melissa Leonard
[1]www.PlanCanada.ca
Investologist Prognostication
Jeremy Leonard
“While investors were panicking during the depths of the stock market meltdown in 2008, insiders were buying. They bet on central bankers or the “zoo keepers” as Ted Dixon INK CEO refers to them in this late 2008 BNN TV interview. As events turned out, insiders enjoyed a big payoff.” – Insiders News and Knowledge, www.InkResearch.com
Dear Reader:
With a positive January and the President of the United States in his third term (both traditionally bullish indicators), the market might well continue to soar throughout 2011.
But my Spidy sense has had me sitting on cash, having taken the gains from purchases during the lows of March 2009 to the highs of February 2011 and putting it in my pocket. I am running a few different imaginary portfolios in the background, and will report to you here if/when I pull the trigger and put down my hard earned cash.
Doing nothing, especially sitting on cash, is a very expensive strategy, fraught with errors because everyone knows that “no-one can time the market”. (I have been successful over the last few years, whether based on my analysis or whether blind luck, who is to say).
Doing nothing is a very real option for an investor, and buying and selling “just because” does not stand up to the questions of why to five levels. It usually takes why five times to get to the root of an action, and asking myself why to each of the first four answers is very powerful. Often the urge to buy or sell does not stand up to the simple self-analysis, so then I do nothing.