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Ashinaga is a Japanese foundation headquartered in Tokyo. We provide financial support and emotional care to young people around the world who have lost either one or both parents. With a history of more than 55 years, our support has enabled more than 110,000 orphaned students to gain access to higher education. From 2001, we expanded our activities internationally, with our first office abroad in Uganda. Since then, we have established new offices in Senegal, the US, Brazil, the UK, and France to support the Ashinaga Africa Initiative. The Ashinaga movement began after President and Founder, Yoshiomi Tamai's mother was hit by a car in 1963, putting her in a coma, and she passed away soon after. Tamai and a group of likeminded individuals went on to found the Association for Traffic Accident Orphans in 1967. Through public advocacy, regular media coverage and the development of a street fundraising system, the association was able to set in motion significant improvements in national traffic regulations, as well as support for students bereaved by car accidents across Japan. Over time, the Ashinaga movement extended its financial and emotional support to students who had lost their parents by other causes, including illness, natural disaster, and suicide. The Ashinaga-san system, which involved anonymous donations began in 1979. This was inspired by the Japanese translation of the 1912 Jean Webster novel Daddy-Long-Legs. In 1993, Ashinaga was expanded to include offering residential facilities to enable financially disadvantaged students to attend universities in the more expensive metropolitan areas. Around this time Ashinaga also expanded its summer programs, or tsudoi, at which Ashinaga students could share their experiences amongst peers who had also lost parents. The 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck the Kobe area with a magnitude of 6.9, taking the lives of over 6,400 people and leaving approximately 650 children without parents. Aided by financial support from both Japan and abroad, Ashinaga established its first ever Rainbow House, a care facility for children to alleviate the resultant trauma. March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the northeastern coast of Japan, causing a major tsunami, vast damage to the Tohoku region, and nearly 16,000 deaths. Thousands of children lost their parents as a result. Ashinaga responded immediately, establishing a regional office to aid those students who had lost parents in the catastrophe. With the assistance of donors from across the world, Ashinaga provided emergency grants of over $25,000 each to over 2,000 orphaned students, giving them immediate financial stability in the wake of their loss. Ashinaga also built Rainbow Houses in the hard-hit communities of Sendai City, Rikuzentakata, and Ishinomaki, providing ongoing support to heal the trauma inflicted by the disaster. Over the past 55 years Ashinaga has raised over $1 billion (USD) to enable about 110,000 orphaned students to access higher education in Japan.

Telecoms Sans Frontieres (TSF) was founded in 1998 as the world's first NGO focusing on emergency-response technologies. During humanitarian crises we give affected people the possibility to contact their loved ones and begin to regain control of their lives, as well as we build rapid-response communications centres for local and international responders. Thanks to 20 years of experience in the field, our high-skilled technical team adapts and tweaks existing tools to respond to different crises and beneficiaries' needs in the ever evolving humanitarian context. From its early days, the culture of first emergency response has been core to TSF's identity, but we have grown and evolved as the role of technologies in emergencies has expanded. In parallel to this core activity, we also develop, adapt, and make available innovative and cost-effective solutions to assist migrants, refugees, displaced people and other disadvantaged communities in different areas, including education, healthcare, women's rights and food security. TSF is a member of the United Nations Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (UNETC), a partner of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the US State Department's Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. Since its creation, TSF responded to over 140 crises in more than 70 countries providing communication means to over 20 million people and nearly 1,000 NGOs. Telecoms Sans Frontieres hereby certifies any project presented on GlobalGiving or funds received by GlobalGiving will be under no circumstances used in countries where United States export or sanction laws are in place such as Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, or with individuals or institutions subject to U.S. restrictions.

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