Hello and thank you for visiting my fundraising page! 

In January 2012, I'll be headed for Uganda with an NGO called Restless Development (formerly Students Partnership Worldwide). Having spent the past year studying gender and development, I'm really excited to put some of what I've learned into practice, especially because I’ve found an organization whose methods are sustainable and grounded in best practices, and whose vision is so in line with my own.

Known as the youth-led development agency, Restless Development implements community-level programs aimed at sustainably addressing the root causes of poverty. I’ll be working in a rural community with four other youth educators from various regions of Uganda to develop a reproductive and sexual health peer education program.

Like many vision-driven organizations, Restless Development has a very small budget but continues to achieve incredible outcomes. As I prepare for my departure, I'm writing to friends and family like yourself to raise awareness about the excellent work Restless Development does, and also to ask for your generous support in helping me raise funds on behalf of the organization and my host community. Your donation will help support grassroots, youth-led programming in some of the world's poorest communities.

The past two decades have been tumultuous in Uganda, with persistent armed conflict and insurgency disrupting the lives of over four million civilians; and yet the country is frequently referenced as an emergent success story in the battle against HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda’s declining incidence of new infections is in large part attributable to innovative reproductive and sexual health programming implemented by NGOs like Restless Development. Flexible, creative and culturally sensitive interventions have reached not only formal health personnel, but also nontraditional healers, young people and key target groups such as sex workers and soldiers.

Restless Development is a registered not-for-profit in the US (EIN 04-3561445) and a registered charity in the UK (No. 1127488), and all donations are tax deductible. Please note that Restless Development is still going through their name change in the US, and is therefore currently registered under their old name “SPW USA”. The simplest method for donating is online through this website, which will issue a virtual receipt for U.S. taxpayers.

UK taxpayers can alternatively donate through the following website: .
http://www.justgiving.com/Sarah-Gold1.

If it’s more convenient for you to mail a check, please make checks payable to “Students Partnership Worldwide”. Please note that Restless Development’s International Finance Team processes their US income on a monthly basis, so it may take 4+ weeks to process a receipt for donations made by check. Checks can be sent to the following address, and should include a note as to whether you require a receipt, and that your donation is in support of Sarah Gold’s international placement in Uganda:

Students Partnership Worldwide
1776 I Street, NW, 9th Floor
Washington, DC 20006

To find out more about the really fantastic work that Restless Development does, check out their website: http://www.restlessdevelopment.org, and please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much for your support!

With Love,
Sarah