Tēna Koutou/Greetings, my name is Nicola Sian Frater. Haere Mai/welcome to Live in Love.

​When I was a child a school teacher told us “4/5th of the world live on 1/5th of the world’s resources while 1/5th enjoy 4/5th of the world’s resources.” Of course the proportions are far worse than this now, I was recently told it is more like 1% live on 99% and 99% live on 1%. My childhood heart and mind decided I wanted to change that. So I have always had a concern for these global inequities as well as the inequities within our own communities. I have done a great deal of reading and thinking over the years about the nature of poverty, the human indifference that perpetuates it, and the human suffering it creates.

Let's get personal about this. When we walk down the street and see a rough sleeper lying outside a shop how do we respond? Perhaps we ignore them and walk on as if they don’t exist. Perhaps we would prefer they didn’t. WE may even resent them making our tidy world untidy. Perhaps we want to care but are afraid of what might be expected of us if we were to engage with them.

How would it be if we began with the belief that they have the same inherent human dignity as we do, the same human worth, and simply engaged them in conversation respecting them as our equal? I can tell you how it will be because this is what I always do as I pass a rough sleeper. The first thing is you may be surprised to discover they are indeed your equal. They will almost certainly deeply appreciate you for understanding that.  You may also be surprised to find this respect for their human dignity is the main thing they ask of you. If you have some spare change they will be very grateful. If you do not, you will have made their day by simply respecting them as another human being.
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​​Social media, for all its pitfalls, has the potential to connect people in the world who are relatively wealthy, powerful and privileged with those who are relatively poor and powerless and deprived of their basic needs. Its algorithms do not naturally encourage this. They connect us with people like ourselves. They encourage us to “walk past” those who are poor as if they do not exist.

When I retired I made a decision to accept Facebook friend requests from people in other counties. My adult children and friends were horrified saying one should never accept friend request from people in other countries that one doesn’t already know “in real life”. However I decided befriending people who were poor and powerless, treating them with dignity and respect, was too important to me to take that advice. Before long I became quite overwhelmed with the sheer number of people I was conversing with daily. Sometimes it would take me an entire day to get through them. Finally, I could not accept any more.
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Over the months that followed I received many messages from scammers. I decided, instead of blocking them, to give them the benefit of the doubt until I were sure. This was so educational that soon found I could recognise many scammers in their opening message or after few exchanges. The “red flags” are generally there from the start. However I also learned to my cost that there are others who are far more clever at building trust and heartless in exploiting it. 

​After eliminating the obvious scammers I was left with a small number who I believed to be genuine friends in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan. Some were individuals and families, others were running programmes to help vulnerable women, children, elders and other marginalized people in their own communities and were often doing so with few resources and at great personal cost.

​I wanted to create a mechanism by which people who shared my desire to respond to online requests by individuals and small community initiatives could safely give to such people and projects and know:
  1. That they are genuine and not scammers
  2. That money given will be used for the purpose for which it is given
  3. That these people and projects have good internal financial accountabilities and boundaries.
This website is the result. ​
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