CHOICE was founded in 1982 by Dr. Tim Evans and Dr. James Mayfield and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
CHOICE Humanitarian expeditions work two ways. You connect with villagers. Villagers connect with you. In the process a dynamic emerges that helps push poverty out of our lives.
Expedition volunteers help villagers implement planned improvements. Each village plans specific projects according to their unique needs and priorities. Depending on the needs at the time of the expedition, volunteers could be working on any of a wide range of projects such as classroom construction, community water systems, bio-gas digesters, health clinics, personal hygiene workshops, pit latrines, micro-enterprise training, and other fundamental village needs. Medical and dental services can be added as components to expeditions on request.
CHOICE expedition fees range from $1995 to $2195 per person (family discounts available).
Airfare is not included in CHOICE expedition fees.
Fees include two nights’ hotel accommodations, land transportation, village lodging, village meals, certified leaders, project costs and materials.
CHOICE expeditions are open to the general public. Participants from all backgrounds and ages are welcome. Children as young as 10 and even seniors in their 70’s have participated in CHOICE expeditions. There is no expectation for volunteers to push beyond the limits of their physical capability while helping with projects that require manual labor. Participants will face unique circumstances that will challenge, educate, and enlighten. You will venture along rugged dirt roads – or endure scenic hikes - before arriving at each village. While working and living among these developing communities, you are treated as a welcomed guest, participating in various activities and chores that often reflect the simple things of village life. For your health and safety, seniors over 60 are required to submit a recent EKG. Parents are encouraged to evaluate the maturity level of their children in dealing with new surroundings and a rigorous schedule in the village. Participants should expect the unexpected, maintain a sense of humor, and be prepared to make friends and memories that will last a lifetime.
All CHOICE Humanitarian In-Country Directors are natives of their respective countries. They have deep-seated roots in their communities. In some cases, CHOICE In-Country Directors have experienced extreme poverty in their own lives. Their love of the people they serve gives them the commitment to make the CHOICE Humanitarian model work.
CHOICE helps a village create a community operational platform that clearly defines roles and responsibilities within the community in a way that resources coming into their vision can be properly transformed into sustainable chance. The key is that the community itself is directly responsible for the social, financial and environmental sustainability of the initiative, not the outside partner.
At the ‘District’ Level, CHOICE focuses on ‘clusters’ of self-developing villages. This approach allows us to lever opportunities for many villages at a time rather than one at a time. It organizes an entire district around a unified vision for the area and can literally impact populations of hundreds of thousands. Acting with a single voice, these unified villages can strongly encourage local government to respond to their needs with support to the major infrastructure shortfalls such as roadways, electricity, advanced education and hospitals.
Scaled-up ‘District’ program has many advantages:
- It demonstrates to funding partners, governments, policy makers, and other NGOs, an approach and methodology that provides significant and sustainable results.
- It enables CHOICE to provide a platform for shared best practices leveraging single focused programming into a holistic solution set for the area.
- It is a model for the industry of how collaboration amplifies impact.
Long-Term Sustainable Solutions
Rather than participating in short-term service delivery, we focus on building long-term, sustainable solutions to issues related to extreme poverty.
Whom do we serve? CHOICE promotes personal, community, and district level opportunities for living meaningful and productive lives:
Whom do we serve? CHOICE promotes personal, community, and district level opportunities for living meaningful and productive lives:
- The Poor (rural villagers living in developing countries on approximately $1 - $2 per day). CHOICE assists the poor in moving from lives of perpetual struggle, isolation, and dependency to becoming fully capable of making choices that will improve their quality of life and of taking responsibility for their own development. The village is transformed from dependency to “self-developing.”
- Strategic Partners: Individuals, corporations, NGOs and governments. CHOICE assists individuals, corporations, and governments in bringing about the end of poverty through mutually beneficial programs and an educational curriculum that provides “Inter-Cultural Exchange”. We connect investors* and villagers in meaningful ways, impacting lives on both sides of the equation.
Bishnu Adhikari
http://choicehumanitarian.org/expeditions.php
http://choicehumanitarian.org/about_choice-country_directors.php
http://choicehumanitarian.org/what_we_do-continued.php
http://choicehumanitarian.org/partners.php
http://choicehumanitarian.org/about_choice-board_bios.php
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865627383/Mormon-humanitarian-Bishnu-Adhikari-family-safe-after-Nepal-earthquake.html?pg=all
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