My name is Jared Lambert. I have created this blog to try and create an awareness to the needs of welfare for the people of West Africa. I have lived in parts of West Africa over the years working with different corporations on their humanitarian aid efforts. Through these experiences I have developed a love and admiration for the wonderful but extremely poor people of West Africa. I have focused the majority of my efforts on a group of islands called Cape Verde. Which are made up of 10 islands about 250 miles off the west coast of Africa. Nine of the islands are inhabited and there are a little over 400,000 people scattered among the islands. The islands are very diverse. The capital city is Praia (which is Portuguese for "beach") and about 115,000 people or one-fourth of the population live in Praia. The smaller islands are where the poorest people live. One island, named Fogo, which is basically a volcano in the middle of the island with some villages around the edges. The people on Fogo and the other outlying islands live a very primitive lifestyle. Most of the men on the remote islands rely on fishing to make a living. The average income is about the equivalent of $2 U.S. per day - just barely enough to stay alive. The people of Cape Verde are in desperate need of ways to help improve their employment skills and ways to produce income.

So, the purpose of this blog is not to create an awarness to the need of humanitarian aids, but instead create an awarness of the humanitarian aids that are teaching those in need how to live self sufficiently. While living in Africa I came to a realization that the humanitarian aid given to the people in need were merely helping sustain them on a day to day basis. It was not a solution to the problem. In fact in many instances it only created a dependency on the aid. It was just after this realization that I came home to America and started my own charity that would use its funds to teach them how to gain employment or help them start their own small business. The second part of the funds generated from the Charity would go towards helping them plant Prosupis Trees to add vegetation to the islands and provide them seeds to the knowledge necessary to plant and grow vegetables from their own gardens. The intent is to help them become more self-sufficient and give them some resources and knowledge to better help themselves.

If we could spread the knowledge around that by simply changing the way we give humanitarian aid rather than how much of it we give, we would see a great change sweeping through the world by helping others help themselves. Throughout this blog I will be writing about all the ways others have found to give smarter to the needs of the people in third world countries, and how we all could give in better ways to the humanitarian efforts throughout the world.