Human Rainbow
How to help
Direct Action
Are you tired about having charities asking you for money and you don't have a clue where it will be spent. Perhaps some fund raising director on some nice salary or perhaps some very expensive office space. Well here is a different way to help and that is to get involved directly. Email us and we will give you addresses of people who would really appreciate if you sent them a few pens, a dictionary or a football.
We have been buying these dictionaries in The Works for £1 each, often their whole stock, ten at a time and strangely we never get asked why.
Roberto is someone that we met in the city of Sancti-Spritus. We were just looking for photo opportunities and he appeared wanting to practise his English. His older son, also called Roberto, had noticed us but was too shy too talk to us. Roberto speaks French and Italian as well. He took us back to Carmen, his ex-wife's house. Carmen still feeds him three times a day! There we met real cuban people, the ones that suffer because of the unfair trade blockade and the ones that do not have access to the dollar economy. In this simple house we drank some of the best coffee that we had ever tasted. When we returned to the UK we started to send parcels to Roberto and one of them contained a football. Here is a letter that he sent us on receiving a football and you can see what a difference it made to the whole neighbourhood.
Papers and magazines are always appreciated by people trying to learn a foreign language. Everyone either buys a newspaper or picks up a free one and plenty of individuals buy magazines. So instead of recycling them all, send a few to teachers and students who need the material.
Sports equipment is often in short supply in many of the world's poorer schools. If you can send a ball to a child somewhere in the world. We can't imagine what it is to grow up without playing with a ball, can you, but there are plenty of kids out there who do. So buy a ball, preferably from an independent retailer, that way you are also helping your local shops and community.
These materials can be hard to find or in many cases expensive to buy. In Cuba we were allowed to visit a specialist sports school in Santa Clara. We carried as much as we could in our backpacks and when we handed over our small supplies of pens we had to do it to the director, the highest ranking member of the communist party, the head of English, who didn't have even a single dictionary to teach with and Pepito, the sports teacher that had taken us there.
Word and letter games can be very useful in teaching languages. We believe that games are very important in helping people to learn another language. We haven't got any feedback on these yet so we are hoping that some teachers will contact us to confirm.
Novels can help foreign language students. Second hand books in charity shops are very cheap and if you buy some of these and send them abroad you will not only be helping a UK charity but you will be spreading culture, learning and knowledge.
Send these items yourself or help us to send more. These are some of the parcels that we sent recently. What we intend to do is put on to the web site what we send and how much it costs. You can send parcels and packets yourselves. As we are not as yet registered as a charity we would prefer that you do this rather than send cash. GET INVOLVED! There are a lot of human beings out there who would like your help so reach out to them.