Press Release: World Fest Benefit

Contact: Danielle Loustau-Williams FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Telephone: 1-347-414-4505

Email: fdlouwill@gmail.com

WORLD FEST BENEFIT – HOSTED BY THREE LOCAL NONPROFITS WITH WORLDWIDE CAUSES

Pittsburgh, PA – March 28, 2010 – Anzar Exchange, Cry America and Confere Inservitus are teaming up to host one great fundraiser on April 11, 2010 at Shadow Lounge in East Liberty, from 6pm to 10pm featuring performances by:

Steel City Bhangra

Open Circle

Ibeji Drum Ensemble

Latin American Cultural Union

Salsa Ritmo Dance

DJ Pandemic Pete Spynda and

Bollywood DJ Adambhai

Moroccan cuisine will also be served. The cover charge of the entire event is $10 in advance and $12 at the door.

The objective of the benefit is to celebrate the notion that groups need to work together past differences in religious background, ethnicity, culture and race in order to address some of the major problems that are affecting the global community. In order to promote this objective we are highlighting performances and cultures from around the globe, particularly in the areas that our groups are most concerned with.

The proceeds will go to benefit Confere Inservitus, a startup nonprofit that is fighting human trafficking in Latin America and Anzar Exchange, a startup nonprofit that is planting trees to fight desertification in Morocco. Cry America will be engaging in outreach and recruiting for volunteers.

Each participating group is made up of University of Pittsburgh current and past undergraduate and graduate students.

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To purchase tickets go to www.anzarexchange.com.

For more information about the event or the organizations, contact fdllouwill@gmail.com for Anzar Exchange, macgregor.adam@gmail.com for Cry America or cayhap@confereinservitus.org for Confere Inservitus.

Contact: Danielle Loustau-Williams FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Telephone: 1-347-414-4505
Email: fdlouwill@gmail.com



PITTSBURGH CUP, CHARITY SOCCER TOURNAMENT HOSTED BY SIGMA PHI EPSILON

Pittsburgh, PA – March 18, 2010 – On Saturday March 20 starting at 10:00 am, Sigma Phi Epsilon and non-profit, Anzar Exchange will be hosting an all day soccer tournament on the intramural fields outside the Cost Center. Twenty teams have signed up representing student groups of various sorts. The tournament will be 6 V 6 with a single elimination. The championship game will be played around 5:00. Winners will receive a basket of donated goods from local Oakland businesses including certificates from Dave & Andy’s Homemade Ice Cream, Joe Mama’s, Chipotle, Five Guys, K&T’s Fish and Chicken, Puccini Hair Salon, Supercuts and t-shirts from the Pitt Shop.

This is the second run for this Charity Soccer Tournament that is playing off of the upcoming World Cup by requiring each team to represent a country. The first tournament took place last fall. Organizers intend to do a tournament every semester, making it better and more successful every time.

The proceeds are going to support a local non-profit, Anzar Exchange that was started by Pitt graduate alumni. Currently, it is run by a mix of graduate students and undergraduate students. Their objectives are to promote cross-cultural understanding and sustainable development. Their current project is planting trees in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco where the desert and climate are taking a toll on the lifestyle rendering the land more and more uninhabitable. Since much of the world is affected by desertification including some of the poorest regions of Africa and the Middle East, Anzar Exchange seeks to come up with a model for addressing the issues that can be copied elsewhere. The particular funds developed from this event will go towards purchasing trees and educating villagers on the effects of environmental degradation.

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For more information about the event, contact zjh3@pitt.edu or acb39@pitt.edu. For information about the organization, please visit the website, www.anzarexchange.com, or contact fdlouwill@gmail.com

PASA Conference

I recently attended the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s (PASA) 19th annual Farming for the Future Conference in State College, PA. Over the course of the three days I had the opportunity to hear a great deal about many exciting possibilities in the field of agriculture. There were sessions about edible forest gardening, integrating various animals into agricultural landscapes, composting, crop diversification, and building structures with natural materials. Many of these topics are relevant to the work that Anzar Exchange has and will be doing in Morocco. For instance, Morocco has one of the oldest food forests in the world and we hope to implement a similar design this coming summer. We will also be working on a soil building regime which will include composting and the use of some animals. Finally, while building whole structures is unlikely, the use of local, natural materials in our projects is an important element of any Anzar Exchange project.

This was my second PASA conference and I have been looking forward to it for the whole year. It is an excellent opportunity to meet with others who have been developing new ways of farming and living in a more sustainable way. The conference featured Michael Reynolds, designer of the Earthship, and Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted, as well as dozens of workshops. What has surprised me at each of the conferences I have attended is that the most beneficial way for us to interact with the environment moving forward is to look to the past. Growing and storing food in a decentralized way, maintaining a complete nutrient cycle through composting, and preserving genetic diversity in both plants and animals are all old ideas, but they represent our best way hope for a prosperous future. PASA’s executive director Brian Snyder summed things up this way – while our farms may be small, our ideas are not.

New semester

We're gearing for an action-packed semester. Tarik is currently in Morocco, creating a partnership with a few other NGOs that are doing similar work. He is also coordinating a tree planting of 2000 trees, which are to be donated by the government ministry on water and forests. Needless to say, dealing with bureaucracy is never a simple procedure, particularly in a developing country, but he's hoping to get things sorted out before he comes home on February 1st. The last project he is simultaneously working on is building a nursery on the school grounds that will be run by the partnership he is creating. They are hoping to provide themselves with a source of trees in addition to operating as a centralized location for awareness and information dissemination.

Back in the U.S. we've got a team of 6 interns that are currently laying out their respective tasks. We are working together to create a program, do the background research, fundraise, write an evaluation study and then go over to Morocco and implement it. There is much to be done and we've got a really good team so far. This is a new model that we're trying out and so far, things are looking really good. Everyone has their goals and projects that they hope to accomplish. You will be hearing about all of them in the months to come.

Danielle

End of the semester - Zach

In my first semester with Anzar Exchange, I was afforded the opportunity to perform many tasks that I have never attempted before, while utilizing my educational background. I wrote two permaculture policy briefs on specific techniques that could be employed in the Middle Atlas Mountain region of Morocco. Writing these briefs, as it was a new experience for me, helped me to sharpen my research and writing skills, while giving me the chance to learn more about permaculture and the importance of sustainability in environmental conservation. During this fall semester, I was able to organize and run a charity soccer tournament. The event, although small, was successful in creating funds, raising awareness, and providing the necessary information to run a second and improved charity soccer tournament. Toward the end of the semester, the groundwork for creating a project to be executed in Morocco was laid out with the help of Danielle, the other interns, and myself. I look forward to the tasks to be completed in the spring and I will strive to continue the good work that was done over the course of the fall semester.

Thank you,
Zach High

December 14, 2009

The semester is winding down, and another month has gone by with Anzar Exchange. The main event that I had been working towards, The Interfaith Day of Celebration, was held on November 21st in the Lower Lounge of the University of Pittsburgh's William Pitt Union.

After finalizing speakers, which was more trouble than we thought it would be, and getting everything else settled, the event approached fast! The speakers that were involved were Aaron Weil, the executive director of Hillel University Center, Imam Abdulsamih from the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, and Christen Wurschmidt, a graduate student at the University studying Christianity. We also had performances by The VoKols and Pitt's Women's Choral Ensemble.

We had a good turnout at the event. The room was full, and people seemed to give positive reviews of the program. There was interest in Anzar, as well as the other participating groups, and what other events we were planning to have in the future.

Although sometimes a stressful process, planning and executing this event was good experience in working with multiple groups and the University bureaucratic processes.

In other news, I will be returning to work with Anzar next semester in a more fundraising capacity to raise money for the summer projects planned in Morocco! I am very excited and we have some interesting things planned for fundraisers, so stay tuned!

Barbara Ballard

Intern 2009 - Zach High

My name is Zachary High and I am interning with Anzar Exchange for the 2009-2010 school year. I am a senior at the University of Pittsburgh, majoring in Sociology, Political Science, and History. I plan on attending graduate school for Sociology next year. I am originally from Lancaster, Pa.

In looking for an internship over the spring and summer of this year, I was in search of a position in which I was able to participate and contribute in a way that did not involve sitting behind a desk filing papers or staring into a computer screen. I became interested in Anzar Exchange after learning about their dedication to making a difference both here in the United States and also across the Atlantic in Morocco. Both aspects of Anzar's mission, being cross-cultural understanding and creating a better environment for Moroccans, sparked great interest in me as a student of Sociology, Political Science, and History. I hope not just to learn from this internship, but also to make a difference and assist Anzar Exchange in their mission.