International Needs, the charity to which Danny Morris, former EFI regional sales director for Northern Europe, recently moved as national director, has launched an appeal for support in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Nepal. The charity has also been chosen by Intec Printing Solutions as its charity of choice for 2015.
The charity focuses on community development and on children and families in communities where there is extreme need. These families and communities have either faced persecution (i.e. refugee status), or they have suffered severe crises such as a natural disaster or extreme poverty.
Its team in Kathmandu runs training for women in a vocational centre to help them and their families in the villages they come from. It also has many sponsored children in Nepal, where it supports their schooling. Following the 25 April earthquake, Danny Morris said that many of these women and children remain unaccounted for. ‘Our centre was damaged by the quake but still stands, and the team there are working to relieve the misery in the best way they can.’
The charity has just launched an appeal via its website. ‘Our appeal is to provide immediate relief for shelters and food and water, focusing on the villages that are destroyed and the community around our centre,’ he added.
Intec has been supporting the charity in building a maternity hospital in Burkina Faso, where official mortality figures show that 560 women die in every 100,000 births. In rural areas where there is no access to clean hospitals, it is thought this figure is much higher.
Other projects addressed by International Needs include building 13 schools in Ghana, and a secondary school for an AIDs-ravaged community in Uganda.
Mr Morris said: ‘Intec have been great in taking up a corporate social responsibility programme with us. I would love to get other potential sponsors in the print industry to help us fund the project and join Intec to get this moving. We need to develop new relationships with companies, trusts and individuals who could support us by either volunteering in our projects, helping us to fundraise, or matching funds and using these stories as an industry, showing that it is willing to give back.’
Intec said that every consumable purchased from it will generate a donation towards the charity.
