Stand Tall Education Training Center opening week..

The Stand Tall Education organizers .. say  ."Say hello to our new students on opening week at Stand Tall Training Center. Thanks goes to everyone who has supported the realization of STAND TALL TRAINING CENTER (STTC). Together, we have created a beautiful school with great potential for the future. Special thanks to our Ugandan team who has worked tirelessly to get the school off the ground in record time".   Well done Stand Tall !!

News from Haiti

Note from a wonderful doctor (Canadian) who was living in Haiti when the earthquake struck - he took a few days off to re-group but quickly went back to help and has been there ever since:

...Displaced camps still on the rise, 3 months after the event, something is going very wrong here.... Baseline of those people: very poor, no job, no future, no nothing. So: move into a camp, and get free services! However: hello tuberculosis, typhoid, diarrheas,...

Helping the Auckland Refugee Committee: Rose Charities New Zealand

 The chairperson of Rose Charities NZ, Trish Gribben, recently presented a cheque for $1000 to Kafeba Mundele, the chairman of theAuckland Refugee Community Coalition Trust. The money is a seeding grant for the establishment of an independent Trust to help with re- unification of refugees and their families. Under New Zealand law, when visas are granted for a refugee's family members to join him or  her in New Zealand the visas have a time limit.  It is often extremely difficult and heartbreaking for a refugee to try to raise the money for airfares to bring their family person to join them. A trust has been operating for seven years in Wellington and has raised $500,000 to help refugee families re-unite. Sometimes the financial help is in the form of a loan. The Auckland Refugee Family Trust, which is to be launched in June, will raise and loan or grant money to support the refugee reunification. "Nothing is more important for refugee mental health and to help them become established as New Zealand citizens than to have their close family with them,"  said Kafeba Mundele. "You say $1000 is a small step towards our goal, but for us it is huge. Thank you very much."

Terri departs for Haiti to join 5th Rose / American Pediatric Assn / Health Frontier team in Port au Prince

Reg. Nurse. Terri Lubin left Vancouver today to help make up Rose Charities (and partners) 5th pediatric relief team. She took with her for the clinic,  a brand new Minispot Oximeter with two reusable sensors (for the larger and the smaller kids respectively). Terri replaces  R.N.  Linda Warner (B.C's Children's Hospital)  who has been writing a blog (www.bethechangeinhaiti.blogspot.com)  while she was there.   Linda took a glucometer with her foo the clinic.

Offiicial winery of Rose Charities ! Cortes de Cima ...

Of many loyal and generous supporters of Rose Charities, two of the stars are Carrie and Hans Jorgensen who founded, own and run the well known Cortes de Cima Vinyard in Portugal. Rose Charities is truly lucky to have such wonderful friends and ones who produce such wonderful products ! On many occasions Cortes de Cima has greatly helped the success of fund-raises with wine donations, as they will do again in the forthcoming FOTORELIEF Haiti exhibition and photograph sale in New Yord (18th March 2010) in aid of Haiti. Rose Charities owes a big, and continuing thankyou to Carrie and Hans and Cortes de Cima.   www.Cortesdecima.com    We are incredibly grateful.   And to everyone else,  please remember if you buy and drink any of the wonderful Cortes-de-Cima wine.. you are helping Rose Charities too !

General information....

Cortes de Cima, 7690-999 Vidigueira, Portugal
Tel: +351 284 463119 Fax: +351 284 463292
E-mail: wine@cortesdecima.pt Website: www.cortesdecima.pt

The Alentejo has led the way in Portugal’s wine revolution. It’s a region that has enjoyed tremendous success over the last decade, producing red wines in two distinctive styles. On the one hand, there is the traditional Alentejo style, perhaps typified by José Maria da Fonseca’s José de Sousa, the Cartuxa wines from Evora, or JP Vinhos’ Tinto de Anfora. On the other hand, there is the modern, fruit-forward, almost new-world style that has been such a huge commercial success and which has propelled this region forward so fast. Cortes de Cima, owned by Hans and Carrie Jorgensen, falls firmly into the latter bracket, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading wineries of this region.

The Alentejo is huge, with its flat plains covering almost a third of the country. Much of this area is given over to cereal production. It’s also hot, and irrigation is common. In contrast to the northern regions, with their fragmented smallholdings, production is dominated by larger, professional outfits. Cortes de Cima are following in the trail João Portugal Ramos and Esporão, who have mainly concentrated on local grape varieties but who have also been working with Syrah, the only foreign grape to so far to have made much of an inroad into the region. Cortes de Cima’s most celebrated wine, Incognito, is in fact a varietal Syrah.

The great success of the Alentejo has been in making thoroughly modern, concentrated wines that still retain a distinctly Portuguese character, and this is what Cortes de Cima have done very well. There is strong local demand for these wines, their high intrinsic quality, and the ambitions of the producer. As an aside, Cliff Richard fans might like to know that the first vintage of his wine, Vida Nova, was made here

Novel Rose Charities Vietnam income-generation project by the Sia Center for the Blind, Hue.

Projects that aim at being self sufficient are the long term goals of Rose Vietnam. In the province of Hue, we support four Blind Centers through our Laundromat Income Generation Programme. We donated washers, plastic package sealers and towels to these centers to wash and package wet towelettes for the local restaurants.

Wet towelettes are usually provided on long haul air routes to Asia in a small, sealed plastic bag. Many restaurants and hotels in Viet Nam also have these wet towelettes as an additional service to guests for coping with the humidity. It makes more practical sense than a paper tissue which tend to stick to the skin.

Our pilot location is in Phong Dien Village, many thanks to Mr. Phuoc, our Board member, who works on site to ensure that our first site is in full operation mode and Mrs. Tina Nguyen, an online donor from U.S.A. We provided full line of equipments, training and helped them find customers.



Rose Vietnam hopes to expand the Laundromat Programme to the other three sites. All sites are now equipped with washers but we are looking for financial donors in order to purchase the plastic package sealers and more towels. The total start up cost is no more than $600 for each site, including the washer, but such an amount can go a long way. Rose Vietnam is actively seeking funds for this programme.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi from Bill and Jan

We would like to wish our friends in Vietnam a Happy Lunar New Year and good health and happiness during the Year of the Tiger. We are thinking of you all during this time of celebration, especially those who came into our lives through our affiliaton with Rose Charities Vietnam.  With the help of our generous donors Rose Vietnam plans to continue and expand its support for the school for the blind in Hue and the very special children at Be Tho Orphanage.