Thank you for visiting the 5th Annual Emory MSA Fast-a-Thon fundraising page. 
The Fast-a-Thon has two goals: to raise awareness about an issue that is receiving little media attention and to raise money for that cause.  To raise awareness, we ask participants to fast for one day from sunrise to sunset in order to experience the fast and to spread the word about the event.  This year's cause is a group of minority Muslims from Myanmar called the Rohingya who were persecuted and exiled by the government in 1991.  The 250,000 Rohingya who were displaced have mostly been moved back to a UN-designated part of Myanmar called Rakhine, but more than 20,000 remain as refugees in Bangladesh.  These ordinary people are denied the right of citizenship in both countries and are severely mistreated. Doctors Without Borders has teams stationed in both Rakhine, Myanmar and at the refugee camps in Bangladesh to help alleviate their situation by providing healthcare and other amenities. 

The fundraising efforts for the 2008 Emory Fast-a-Thon are aimed at helping the Myanmar refugees.  In past years, recipients of Fast-a-Thon donations included Darfur in, Niger and Pakistan in 2005, and Lebanon through UNICEF in 2006.  Last year, donations were used to help Atlanta's homeless through Project Downtown; with more than 300 participants and over $6,000 in donations, it was the most successful Fast-a-Thon in the Atlanta area.  This year, all collected donations will be sent through Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to the Rohingya refugees.

Since majority of the collected funds come from private donations by students and individual families, we need your help!  Donating through this Doctors Without Borders-sponsored site is simple, fast and totally secure.  Checks payable to Doctors Without Borders are also appreciated and should be mailed to Taslima Choudhury at P.O. Box 121533, Atlanta, GA 30322.  Keep in mind that your donations are tax-deductible.  Many thanks for your support-- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

For more information on the Rohingya people, please visit the Doctors Without Borders site.  Also, please feel free to contact Taslima Choudhury (Taslima.Choudhury@Emory.edu) with any questions or concerns.

 With much appreciation,

'08 Fast-a-Thon Chairs