Progress in Zambia’s First Self-Help Website (November 2025) GMP has received good news from Sibusiso Malunga, Director of The Lotus Identity Project. Two significant steps have been taken towards developing a self-help website to improve mental health services, with a particular focus on LBQ women and marginalized communities. (1) a technical expert is now creating a closed platform, accessible only to those who join, allowing for safe and supportive conversation among community members. (2) content development is advancing as a result of insights from staff and activists at a retreat planning session, and reflections from community activities to ensure that content is both informative and grounded in the realities of people we work with.
Working Together for Tikkun Olam
{Adam Koons has moved, with his wife Yukari, to Japan for a few years. Adam devoted his career to emergency humanitarian assistance, providing leadership in outstanding organizations like Save the Children, CARE International, International Relief and Development, USAID, and FEMA. His depth of understanding and experience will be hugely missed by our Global MItzvah Project. In this abridged Kol Kore article written in February, 2012, Adam’s words still speak powerfully for the “humanitarian Imperative” principle of the International Red Cross.}
Shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, my emergency response team from IRD pulled into a parking lot in the destroyed city of East Biloxi, Mississippi. Arriving at the same time was another emergency team wearing bright T-shirts reading Islamic Relief Worldwide Team. Surprised, and thinking there are not many Muslims in Biloxi, I recovered quickly. Why wouldn’t they be here? It was an emergency and they were also specialists from an emergency agency.
This is an example of the universality of humanitarian assistance. Every faith believes in the importance of charity and the human right to survival. Without faith-based humanitarianism the suffering in the world would be tremendously greater. Each emergency organization states in its basic tenets that in some form it follows the code of unbiased aid as described by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent: “Aid is given regardless of the race, creed, or nationality of the recipients and without adverse distinction of any kind. Emergency aid priorities are calculated on the basis of need alone”.
Importantly, there is a strong division between what drives the emergency aid organization and operational politics. Humanitarian organizations do not target or withhold assistance according to the politics of the group or communities in need. Nor do they proselytize or promote their own beliefs or preferences among the aid recipients. I have seen this demonstrated time and again. For example, the large Christian organization, World Vision, works in Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian countries. Islamic Relief works in China, India, and South Africa. The American Jewish World Service works in numerous Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, Indonesia, and Sudan. When my organization, IRD, responded to the Haiti earthquake, some of our funding came from the Union for Reform Judaism.
In faith-based humanitarian activities, our similarities, common interests and beliefs are far more important than our differences, and transcend any differences we might normally apply to a particular faith. The simple message here is, “We are all in this together”.
Adam Koons,
15 Year Member, Global Mitzvah Team
