RETORO x GlobalGiving

OUR ROLE

We at Retoro want to contribute and commit to social issues in our society by not only giving attention and highlighting certain issues both locally and globally, but also make a financial contribution to it and work on creating solutions. With our standpoint of ‘Reframing perspective’, we want to shine light on issues that in our opinion do not get enough attention and deserve to be viewed from a different perspective than how mainstream media portrays it. We as a business understand our positionality in this system and our social responsibility to give back to our community but also to other communities. We find it important to do this in the most small-scale and uplifting way possible. This is why we decided to collaborate with GlobalGiving to stimulate small projects that can uplift their local communities. GlobalGiving is an organization that makes it possible for you to give to community-driven organizations that are working to educate children, preserve our environment, build houses, train women (and men) with job skills, and do hundreds of other amazing things. They also give nonprofits access to the funding, tools, training, and support they need to make our world a better place. In collaboration with them, we plan on funding several social political projects that we think deserve more attention.

RELIEF IN GAZA

We chose to highlight the following project as our first: “Give the gift of life: Water to schools in Gaza. Access to water and specifically drinkwater has become extremely scarce in the Gaza region, making it less and less accessible every year. Gaza’s unsafe drinking water rose from 90% in 2012 to 97% in 2019.

Poor families often have the choice to either drink tap water or purchase safe bottled water as an alternative. Since this is often quite expensive, this is frequently not even possible for most families. This project will provide and maintain a purification and desalination unit that is independent of municipal water and electricity and will target schools with a minimum of 2500 students. 

Installing these self-contained units in schools will significantly reduce the exposure to many health risks associated with contaminated water to students. The public will have access to such water as well. Additionally, when schools are not in session, well water can help ease municipal water shortages as well by pumping extra water to the municipal water line. Lastly, schools are always used as shelters during Israeli attacks on Gaza, these units will be a life-saving source of water to all.

MEDIA MISREPRESENTATION

What bothers us is that these issues only get reported on in western media when it is “Hot” or “relevant” while this is not something that happens just once, but is war that is happening continuously on a day to day basis. Even though we do not want to choose any sides in this particular conflict, we do want to make a statement by supporting these issues because we feel that the palestinian perspective is often misrepresented when it comes to the news reported on the Gaza region. 

To help this we donate €1 per pair of sunglasses to this project.

Check out the official GlobalGiving website for more information and reports regarding the project here

 

(Image retrieved from: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-aqsa-sheikh-jarrah-media-coverage-problematic-glossary )