#KickStarter Project Feature: Between The Border- Thailand & Burma

SOOO ... a superly duperly awesome human being that I grew up with has this rad project he is raising money for on Kickstarter. Nerds ... meet Arthur.

Arthur is crazy stupid smart, and crazy stupid nerdy ... plus you can prolly write it off for tax purposes for 2010 if you donate in the next 24 hours. =) =) =)

I need your help to get back to the Thailand-Burma border and continue documenting the humanitarian crisis there. Civil war, along with abysmal poverty, has made health care and education largely unavailable to thousands of Burmese villagers and refugees on both sides of the border. Lack of funding and supplies leaves many clinics, schools, and orphanages unable to provide adequate care.

I’m going back to find the ones most in need, and tell each of their stories with a photo essay. I’ll include the photo story in a ‘case profile,’ which will detail each institution’s needs in terms of human and physical resources. The ‘case profiles’ will be freely distributed to local aid organizations that can provide them with what’s needed.

But that’s just the first step: I’m going to also recruit and work with a local photographer to continue this work. The idea is to empower local people, who have much better access than foreigners, to tell these stories themselves - in that spirit, I’ll be giving my extra camera gear and laptop to the recruited individual.

In April 2011, I'll be launching a non-profit that will allow people to donate directly and transparently to all the institutions documented in this project, among others.

WHAT IS THE MONEY FOR?

Your support will cover the living expenses for both myself and the recruited photographer during this two-month project, which will start in February.

WHY BURMA?

The UN rates Burma as the most corrupt country in the world. Not surprisingly, Burma's military dictatorship gives its people little in the way of health care and education. These services are basically non-existent in the rural areas along the Thailand border, where there's huge rates of AIDS, tuberculosis, and drug-resistant malaria. Twenty percent of children here die before age 5.

To make matters worse, Burma's military has created an orphan and refugee crisis with the war of attrition it's waging against ethnic minority groups living on the Thai border - many have called this genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Click here to view the project on Kickstarter & donate

Best of luck Arthur!! Hope this helps!

xoxo #nerdsunite

Update on Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 1:21PM by Talk Nerdy To Me Lover

BTW: It's not tax deductible yet ... but either way, awesome cause and an awesome dude! Best of luck!