Basic needs

Your Working Gift will help someone meet basic needs such as water, sanitation, and shelter, as a first step in working toward a better life.  ICA works directly with communities to understand the nature of the challenges within each place, and help communities articulate their experiences and create plans to address important challenges. This includes helping communities become stewards for water resources, build and access safe housing, and improve sanitation.

Education

Help to ensure that every child goes to school.  ICA works with communities to ensure that education is valued for both girls and boys, provide clothes and supplies for children to be able to attend school, and help schools and communities design the programs that best serve their children.

Sustainable livelihoods

Your Working Gift will help someone to earn a sustainable living.  ICA works with people to identify barriers to their employment or entrepreneurship, and help them gain access to a sustainable livelihood, in order to improve their living conditions, access health care, and care for their families.

Governance and rights

Your Working Gift will support a community to take an active role in decision-making and ensure the rights of all women, men, and children.

Civil society

Civil society organizations are essential to maintaining open societies.  Your Working Gift will help ICA to train professionals in the skills needed to work effectively in the civil society sector.

Women

Your Working Gift will help a woman to become self-reliant.  Women are among the most vulnerable people, often with limited access to education and exposed to violence. ICA engages women as active participants in their communities and provides resources to help women achieve their goals.

Children and Youth

Your Working Gift helps a child to stay healthy, get an education, and live in safe conditions.  ICA works with communities to ensure that girls and boys have what they need to go to school and grow into healthy adults.  ICA also recognizes the importance of young people in their communities, and supports youth through programs that empower them to play an active role in community life.  

Elders

Elders are an integral yet often forgotten part of every community.  Your Working Gift will support elders’ continued participation in their communities, as well programs to help elders receive the care they need.

Indigenous Peoples

Your Working Gift supports Indigenous Peoples to play leadership roles in their own communities and protects their rights through advocacy and awareness activities.

Conservation

Help develop solutions to conserve our resources and use energy efficiently.  Your gift will support ICAs working to reduce their ecological footprint and model clean technology.

Health

A Working Gift to improve people’s health makes a contribution to the backbone of communities.  ICA works to prevent illnesses; train community members, health workers, and government officials in home-based care; and promote access to life-saving medicines.

HIV and AIDS

Your Working Gift brings awareness, prevention, and care to communities affected by the HIV and AIDS pandemic.  ICA has developed highly-effective approaches for community mobilization in prevention, home-based care, and youth training.  Your Working Gift supports children orphaned by AIDS, provides condoms for awareness programs, trains youth as community leaders, and contributes to economic activities such as micro-credit clubs helping people living with HIV to move out of poverty and away from violence.  

Agriculture and Food Security

Your Working Gift will help communities produce the food they need without destroying the environment. ICA works with communities to integrate principles of environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity, in order to ensure both environmental protection and food security. Demonstration farms and training also serve as practical tools for transferring methods and technologies.

Conflict and Reconciliation

ICA works in a number of countries plagued by violent conflict, or working to recover from and reconcile past traumas.  ICA supports and advocates for the basic human rights of peoples caught in the midst of larger struggles. Your Working Gift will help communities in conflict chart their own paths toward resolution, and support efforts to maintain lasting peace in post-conflict societies.