BWB Detroit Helps Homeless

Photos by Aylex Hakuai Araque

Nine Months in the Life of Danielle Kaltz

Detroit Packs Up Care Packages for Homeless Neighbors

Danielle Kaltz, aka Doxie, knows well the ups and downs that are part and parcel of helping homeless individuals living in and around MoTown’s impoverished areas.  Since 2008, Doxie has spearheaded a program geared at connecting Detroit’s homeless with the camping gear and food necessary for surviving harsh winters on Detroit’s streets.  The following are snippets of her experiences, her gratitude, and her desire to keep helping her local community.

Thank you, Doxie for all you do!

October 2010

We received a package filled with awesome stuff from a mysterious Pete R. Pan today.  Thank you Pete!  Without people like you this project could not be done!

November 2010

Burners without Borders Detroit is grateful to DAMNED III and Atelier Gothic.  I just opened an amazing email from Anthony and Joseph.  DAMNED III donated over $400 to Burners without Borders Detroit for the Homeless project!!  It is times like this that I really realize that I cannot do what I do without the help of others.  I am always so grateful to each and everyone of those who help and donate for their thoughtfulness.  Thank you!!

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I saw Sydney recently.  Though I remembered him from last year, I couldn’t recall his name.  I didn’t have any gear on me to provide him, but I bought him an orange juice, remembering he preferred juice over warm drinks even in the dead of winter.  As his name had slipped my mind, I reintroduced myself and asked for his name.  When I told him mine, he said he remember me from last year.  We both smiled as we said our goodbyes.

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We just received a donation from William, a man who read an article written on the project in the Hamtramck Review in the fall of 2009.  He hung on to my contact information for twelve months and came now to donate many gloves and sweatshirts to the Homeless Project.  Wow!

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Three cheers to Brian Lewis for the chewy granola bars he donated yesterday.  Chewy is best as so many people who live on the streets do not have teeth.  Funny the things we take for granted.

December 2010

My friend Anthony put me in touch with his friend who does a beer crawl in winter, collecting items for homeless while moving around town.  Anthony expressed interest in donating new coats, hats, and gloves gathered on the crawl to BWB Detroit.  Awesome!  Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Carr!

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Fuzzytek took some awesome pictures of our backpacking event held recently.  Thank you, Fuzzytek!! 

http://photos.fuzzytek.com/Groups/BWB/20101205-BWB-Homeless/14950905_jozre#1116382596_W9MxD

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I received a lovely letter from Teal who helped pack bags last weekend.  Greatly inspired, she will now be donating unclaimed Lost and Found items from her work at the end of each month.  Thank you Teal!

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Another great letter has come our way from one Miss Jessica.  She writes,

“Every time I come together with my friends involved in Burners without Borders, I’m in awe of their giant hearts, seemingly limitless energy, and love of our city. They inspire me to be a better person, and to better the world around me. There was an outpouring of support from the Real Estate agents at my office, when they learned what we were trying to do, they wanted to get involved any way they could. They started bringing me donations the next day! And those donations kept coming!

During the holiday season, many people forget to stop, and give thanks for that which should be most important to them. With all of the shopping and holiday parties, it can be easy to forget. Working on a project such as this has helped me to slow down, and reflect on all of the wonderful people in my life, and experiences I’ve had. I’m happier, more centered person because of the time I’ve been able to spend with this community. I am truly thankful for everything that I have, and blessed by the people that are there to share it with me. But I’m also more aware that there are people who are not as privileged as I am, and will continue to work with Burners without Borders to do what I can to help.”

Thank you, Jessica!

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We were invited to speak at Soup at Spaulding Court, a monthly dinner which costs $5 per person to attend.  During dinner, three unique ideas are presented to the attendees who, at evening’s end, vote to donate the evening’s door collection in support of the project.  To my surprise, the BWB Detroit Homeless project was chosen!  How wonderful!

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The Chilasco in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala school just keeps on building.

In 2010, BWB made a generous donation to Hug It Forward’s “bottle school” project in Chilasco, a small village in Alta Verapaz, one of the poorest states in Guatemala.

Thanks to your support, we were able to complete the two-classroom elementary school ahead of schedule. Over the years to come, hundreds of kids will now have a modern, comfortable, durable school where they can learn, and create change in their lives.

Bottle schools are schools built using soda bottles and other “waste” plastic. Entire communities come together to build bottle schools, empowering themselves to create change in their lives. Community leaders manage the project, mothers and father donate their labor to build the school, and children are involved at all stages. They collect the bottles and stuff them full of trash to make eco-bricks, which are stacked on top of each other, sandwiched in between a ferro-cement shell, to form the school’s walls. In this way, THEY build THEIR school.

The school BWB funded in 2010 was the 3rd bottle school in Guatemala. Since then we have gone from strength to strength and in August 2011 completed the 12th bottle school.

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European Disaster Volunteers (EDV)http://www.edvolunteers.org/, has worked in Haiti for more than 13 months now, and BWB has supported our efforts from the very beginning. Most recently, BWB donated $2,000 to help us address one of the most challenging parts of our work in Haiti: helping the orphanages we support become self-sufficient.

We’re tackling this huge challenge with one of the most vulnerable orphanages we work with, the Foyer d’Orelph Orphanagehttp://www.edvolunteers.org/foyer-d%E2%80%99orelph-orphanage, from two angles. First, we’ll register the orphanage with the Haitian government, allowing them increased access to NGO support. Then we’ll focus on helping the directors of the organisation start a small business which will provide a sustainable income for the orphanage.

To understand why these steps will be so important for the future of the 55 children in the orphanage’s care, we’ll need to start with a little background information.

Children in Haiti face a very uncertain future. The country has the highest infant mortality rate in the western hemisphere. More than 70% of adults live on less than $2 a day and illiteracy stands at more than 50%, leaving those trapped in poverty with few opportunities to better their position. This dire situation leaves many parents unable to care for their children.

Without any kind of social support system, many parents abandon their children at orphanages. Orphanage directors and NGOs agree that having locally led, informal, groups as care-givers for thousands of abandoned Haitian children is not ideal. Everyone agrees that the ultimate goal is to reunify these children with their families and provide support for those families, keeping them together.

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Locust-Motive is a Handcar created by Chop’s Teen Club in Santa Rosa, CA.

Burners Without Borders is proud to have supported Sonoma County Youth  with a $500 grant award toward this successful project.

Locust-Motive was a collaborative art project that included two guest designers/engineers and 9 teen-artists, plus countless volunteers. This handcar was built to be entered and then raced in the Great Handcar Regatta, held in Railroad Square, Santa Rosa. This community event was originally thought of by two individuals who recognized the need to showcase the wide range of artistic abilities in the area.  The basic parameters of each handcar was that they had to be human-propelled, and thus no motors. Chop’s Teen Club located adjacent to the running tracks and with its Art Studio Coordinator, Emily Pugh, a 5-year participant at Burning Man, thus knew the Handcar Regatta as the perfect opportunity to include the creative spirit of teens.

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Dan, with his wife Melissa, created a Caregiver Support Group this year.

BWB is proud to have provided a $200 grant in support  of this program.

Saturday morning: I wake up late, like usual, 11:00 o’clock-ish, having been up until 3:30am, again as usual. My day starts with my morning medications, followed by breakfast (low salt, 20g protein). After performing my morning rituals, I make my way to the computer to check e-mails and to prepare for today’s Caregiver Support Group, which I’ll be facilitating.

The past year has been a whirlwind of fighting to survive, constant learning, building new relationships, and now has become a matter of rebuilding my body, my mind, and my psyche. The support group is an important part of both of those cycles, and I look forward to the day’s call.

Flashing back: In May of 2009, I had just completed a nine-state musical tour of the Western US, when I began to notice swelling in my feet and legs. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my mental state was affected as well. From where I stand now, there are days and weeks of which I have no recollection. In August of ’09 I died from complications of end-stage liver disease. Since then it’s been a battle, first just to survive, and now to thrive.

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Children playing at the orphanage where they live. BWB has donated $3,000 in support of this incredible project.

My name is Andy Chaggar and I’m the Executive Director of a relatively new charity called European Disaster Volunteers (EDV). EDV is a volunteer driven, registered charity that aids disaster affected communities worldwide by providing initial relief and helping them achieve sustainable recovery. Our origins are European but our approach is global – we welcome all volunteers and donors whatever their nationality.

We’re currently based in Haiti where we work closely with another group that has connections to BWB – GrassRoots United (GRU) . In fact, I’m writing this blog from my combined office/bedroom at the GRU base in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

EDV rents space at GRU’s base and we’ve been running partner projects on the ground since June.  One of these is with an orphanage called Hands Togther to Defend the Children (HTDC) which currently cares for 47 children.

Prior to the earthquake the orphanage housed all of its children in a comfortable house.  Sadly the earthquake destroyed the property and also left many of it’s supporters without livelihoods.

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BWB Reno raised the money to purchase this bus so that it could be filled with tools to send to Haiti for  at Grass Roots United’s projects.

The journey of the bus began with an idea from Sean “Jinx” Pace of Asheville, NC. Jinx is an artist and works with BioDiesel and is generally a really cool, interesting guy.  The plan was to have a tool drive, pack the bus as a shipping container and then modify the bus in Haiti as a flat bed and people mover for projects.
We pitched the idea to  the BWB community, knowing that Nathan and the Reno BWB community had thrown an awesome fundraiser for Haiti.   It turns out Kyle Larrain, a Tahoe kid, Heavy Equip worker and Pisco volunteer alumni  worked the fundraiser and then came and spent a month at GRU in June.  Its just such a crazy small world. Read the rest of this entry »

These children peer out the window of their new dome.

BWB is proud to have contributed $800 toward the building of Domes for Orphans in Haiti as a part of BWB’s Grant Program.

Domes for Haiti recently returned from two and a half months in Haiti after successfully completing our first humanitarian effort.  The project was conceived of in late February in response to reports coming out of Haiti about the lack of tangible aid making it to the actual people suffering on the ground there. After five months of working diligently on fundraising and procurement of materials, I finally had raised over $30,000 in cash to match the $30,000 + of in kind donations it took to successfully implement my project. My goal was to build ten pre-fab 17′ geodesic domes at orphanages in Port Au Prince, to house at least 100 kids in a dry place away from all that mud. I hit the ground in Haiti on July 17th, my shipment arriving at the nearby airport the same day. I set up the tent that was to be my home for the next two months at Grassroots United base in Port Au Prince and got acquainted with the notorious Haitian Customs Ordeal that was to last for an entire month of endless paperwork and hoop jumping.

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Hello from Pisco!

To start, I’d introduce myself as a long-time Burner with a mere 3 days with Pisco Sin Fronteras (PSF), so this is coming from a curmudgeonly old it-was-better-last-year Burner who is a wide-eyed gobsmacked Pisco virgin with a fresh optimistic view.

The first thing I’d say is that Burning Man was actually good preparation for Peru and PSF. I’ve only been in the country for a week now, but the friendly cacophony reminds me of life during Burning Man. Take sleeping: On the playa, you overhear drunken neighbours and roaming art cars blasting Johnny Cash. Here it’s three-wheeled “tuck-tuck” taxis, dogs barking, and the Peruvian music blasting at 6 a.m. from the Peruvian guy down the street, but somehow the balance of order and chaos feels just right.

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Kevin (left) and TJ (right) work on improvements on BWB’s Biodiesel System

It is great to work with Kevin and Will. Kevin is from Ireland and Will is from England. I am learning more English and representing California while here. Yesterday we worked all day to perform a titration test on the oil to determine the catalyst needed for our reaction.  I thought finding a flammable liquid pump was a challenge, then Kevin and I were out trying to find a digital scale accurate to a gram and less in a market that sells kitchen supplies and food. We ended up estimating on amounts accurate to a gram with the scale that we have and made four liter size mini-reactions with different amounts of catalysts. Once we had a successful mini-batch we pushed our first batch of biodiesel through in the new methoxide reactor. It got stuck, but Kevin with his gentle giant strength was able to turn the pump through. We let the reactor process for two hours before turning it off and letting it sit for the night. Today I drained the reactants to discover glycerol and a liquid that appears to be Biodiesel. A quick ph test and the golden brown fluid tests right for BIODIESEL!!!

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