At the end of 2011, Deseret News named its best articles in six categories, one of which was care for the poor and needy.  This is a review of those best articles.

#10 — Turning Skills into Jobs

This article explains the charitable works of a non-profit organization called Global Artisans.  The organization helps skilled refugees open their own businesses using their unique skills.  The non-profit was founded by Ze Min Xiao, refugee services liaison for Salt Lake County in 2009.

In collaboration with the Utah Refugee Coalition and American Express, Xiao started Global Artisans to help refugees to put those skills to good use. On Thursdays and Saturdays, people from all over the world — Tibet, Iraq, Bhutan, Burma, Eretria — gather to knit, weave or sew together. To make their skills more applicable in an American market, Global Artisans offers business, finance and computer classes.  [Read more...]

#9 — Keeping Families Intact

This article profiles the House of Hope, a residential rehabilitation facility.  House of Hope is a government funded non-profit organization. Ten years ago the facility pioneered a family-centered approach to substance abuse treatment.   This is often the last hope for addicted mothers and their children, who begin by residing at the facility and then report on an out-patient basis.  Funding cuts have put the programs in danger.

The children manifest many problems due to the drug use of their parents.  Some are physically impaired because their mothers used drugs during their pregnancies.  Others are behaviorally impaired because their lives have been chaotic and insecure.  (Read more…)

#8 — Pennies for Change

The internet is transforming the way people make charitable donations.  While there are websites for large, well-known charities, the ease of building one’s own blog, website, or social media venue has enabled people to establish charities that work through very, very small donations.  As a result, nonprofits are beginning to rely less on the rich.

Using social media members of the Millennial generation who are movers but not spenders are able to mount their own charitable campaigns.  (Read more…)

#7 — It Takes a Village

Humanitarian projects that are mounted in third-world countries fare better when they have local leadership on site.  In the early 1980s, James B. Mayfield trekked from village to village in Indonesia, tracking down projects planned and paid for by the World Bank and USAID.   He found that over 80% of charitable projects had failed and fallen into disrepair and disuse.  The people were waiting for the Americans to come back and fix everything.  Mayfield decided to come up with a new idea —  he founded CHOICE Humanitarian, a Utah-based nonprofit that builds schools, water systems and micro-enterprise programs in Africa, Latin America and Asia, he would insist: “The local people will lead the way.”  (Read more…)

#6 — The Children Left Behind

More than 5,100 children are in the foster care system because their parents have been detained or deported.

Twenty-two percent of the 397,000 illegal immigrants deported in 2011 were parents to U.S.-citizen children, compared to just 8 percent from 1998 to 2007. If deportations continue on trend, the ARC estimates the country will add 15,000 immigrant children to the foster care roles over the next five years.

Immigration policies and laws are built around the assumption that families will, and should, be reunited, but this is very complicated.  (Read more…)

#5 — Hurting Charity

Obama and Congress are considering cutting back on tax deductions for charitable donations.  Many charities worry donors will give less and needy people will go without.   Because of the U.S. recession, donations are already down, and funding cuts have also hurt charities.

“People are struggling and donations are hard to come by,” said Steve Taylor, vice president of public policy at United Way Worldwide. “It’s the people at the bottom of the economic spectrum who were already hurt the most by the recession and, if these plans go through, they’ll be the ones to suffer again.” (Read more…)

#4 — A Judge Who Made a Difference

Judges who are compassionate enough to listen to the accused, have an effect on their future behavior.

A judge’s disposition — whether respectful and caring or mean and disinterested — may make the difference between a trip back to prison and an addiction-free life for a drug offender.

In a study of 101 drug courts across the country, NPC Research discovered courts where the judge spends an average of three minutes or more speaking with each offender were more than twice as successful at keeping participants from reoffending. The reduction in recidivism increased as one-on-one time with the judge increased.  (Read more…)

#3 — Seeds of Hope

Cindy Packard and her  husband founded the nonprofit Care for Life, which has brought her back to Mozambique many times.

In the villages where Care for Life works, the death rate has dropped from an average of 22 deaths every six months to five. The percentage of people with adequate housing is up from less than half to an average of 85. Thirty percent more children attend school. Employment statistics have more than doubled. Adult literacy rates have increased from 50 to 77 percent. More than that, though, Care for Life seems to have discovered a formula for inspiring hope among the destitute and giving them tools to help themselves.   (Read more…)

#2 — Water and Hope

This article profiles humanitarian aid work performed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often erroneously called the Mormon Church, in Seamay, Guatemala.  In rural areas of Guatemala, clean water was scarce and almost half of all students failed the first grade.

…the coffee industry, once the backbone of Guatemala’s economy, had essentially collapsed in the mid-1990s when, due to deregulation and free trade, factory farms in places like Brazil and Vietnam flooded the global market with cheap beans, resulting in the loss of half a million jobs in Guatemala. Seamay had been hit particularly hard.  (Read more…)

#1 — Stolen Innocence

The slave trade is alive and well in the United States of America, but some people are trying to stop it.

With job descriptions ranging in scope from prostitute to waiter to maid, more than 150,000 people in the United States are living in slavery, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Because of a deep-seated perception that slavery is a Third World issue, states have had a hard time getting the ball rolling on anti-trafficking initiatives.  (Read more…)

The Deseret News — Best Articles of 2011

Giff and Wendy Nielsen have been married for 33 years. They have six children and nine grandchildren. They have lived in Houston for thirty years starting when the Houston Oilers drafted Giff in May 1978. He played quarterback for the team for six years before retiring in May 1984 to join the Channel 11 News anchor team.

The WON Heart Foundation, founded by the Nielsen family has served the Houston community and the world. The mission of this family foundation is to find ways to make the world a stronger, safer, more peaceful place…one heart at a time. The Nielsen family firmly believes that there has never been a greater need for traditional family values and open- hearted generosity to help in healing a troubled world. Some of The Won Heart Foundation successes include raising money to help bridge the gap of the latch-key kid revolution, and hosting a charity golf tournament, which has raised nearly five million dollars for the past 21 years funding the building of Houston area parks and a YMCA after-school program.

Giff is on the executive board of the Boy Scouts of America, Sam Houston Area Council. He has been inducted into the BYU Hall of Fame, the Utah Hall of Fame and into the College Football Hall of Fame.

The most important career accomplishment either of them has is their family. The world needs strong families with loving connections and a desire to reach out and share with communities.

For official Mormon news and information about current Church humanitarian projects visit the newsroom for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Inadvertently called by friends of other faiths as the “Mormon Church”)

The Relief Society, the largest women’s organization in the world, was created as a vehicle for Mormon women and  interested friends of other faiths, to reach out in relieving the suffering and respond to urgent needs that present in the world.

In Riverside, California, over 100 women, Mormons and Muslims, engaged in conversation and made quilts for Project Linus–an initiative to provide blankets  to children of trauma. The second joint service effort proved fruitful for both recipients and participants.

As Cindy Marinez, writer for Press Enterprise, records:

They sat shoulder to shoulder, Muslim women next to Mormon women, hunched over bright fabric as they learned to quilt.

As the conversations grew comfortable, the women discovered their religions, and their lives, had many common threads.

Their worship, community service, husbands and children, good schools, safe neighborhoods — and the list went on for the more than 100 who met Saturday morning at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Riverside.

Many of the Muslim women–unveiled in this setting of all women, originally came from Pakistan but have established residence in the United States.

Bina Majeed, speaking on behalf of the Muslim women, indicated there was common ground; their religion teaches them “humanity” towards all.  Aisha, of the group, also remarked on the similarities of those who otherwise have some distintly different beliefs:

“We start asking how many kids they’ve got,” Mateen said. “We laugh and we all have the same problems.”

“You’d be surprised how universal getting a teenager to clean his room is,” many of the women said with a knowing smile.

This is not a unique experience among Latter-day Saints.  Mormons join hands in worldwide service partnerships with  Catholic Relief organizations, Islamic charities, and other religious and charitable foundations.

For official Mormon news and information about current Church humanitarian projects visit the newsroom for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Inadvertently called by friends of other faiths as the “Mormon Church”)