Press contacts:  Jesse Thorn, splangy@splangycom; Earl Mardle, earl.mardle@kn.com.au Dear friends, We at Jhai wish you peace, joy, luck, and accomplishment in 2006!  Erwin Schrödinger once said, ‘For eternally and always there is only ***now***, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end. ‘   Indeed.  This moment is what we have.  And it is never the last minute.  It is always just ‘this minute’.  I am a combat veteran.  This has taken me nearly 40 years to learn … and I am still learning it. I share it with you, now, as a gift.  Here’s what we’ve done, our goals, and a request.  I list many of you who have gone many extra miles for Jhai at the end of this note.  THANK YOU! 2005 Accomplishments with our friends The Jhai Lao Coffee Farmers Association got Fair Trade certification for their coffee. The teachers and students at Pakse High School in Southern Laos put together an FM satellite radio production studio with Jhai and Equal Access. Window Rock United School District, the Navajo Nation and the village of Saw Mill, are completing six months of field testing of the v1.6 Jhai PC and communication system.  Luckily we have had no crashes of the PCs.  We have had a problem with weather effecting the antennas on the community building and we think we now have a solution for this.  The machines are well used. Datamation Foundation, the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in India and Jhai have begun steps to implement in two sets of villages a sophisticated SUSTAINABLE integrated development program that includes the new Indian PC.   The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC – government of India) is as I write developing a new low-power, rugged PC based roughly on the Jhai PC with our help.   Its target price is $200. We established ongoing relations with major ngo’s in China and Brazil and a major governmental organization in South Africa for potential implementations in coming years.  We are discussion with many others. We have revamped our vision and our goals to embrace the requests for our help from around the world, but especially this year in India with Mission 2007, of which we are a member.  We have begun the task of setting up Jhai Tech, a consulting and development organization affiliated with Jhai Foundation. 2006 Goals  Get field tests of our technology and methods up and running in India with our partners, including the field testing of the new Indian PC, our sustainability and business methods proven in Laos since 2000, and our partners’ village buy-in methods, by Spring 2006.  As  part of this, Extensively document these field tests with our partners with an eye towards developing new tools for others who wish to do similar work, including web, print and video tools, by Summer 2006. Begin to provide these tools by Winter 2006. Help clients in two other countries explore similar development as in Mission 2007 in India by Winter 2006, including the coffee regions in Laos. Help the Jhai Coffee Farmers Association get Organic certification early 2007. Help Pakse high school and Lao government radio provide content and FM satellite radio to remote villages in rural Laos by Winter 2007. Supporting Jhai – it is not the last minute! There are four ways to help Jhai even this late in the year.  Buy Jhai coffee at http://www.jhaicoffee.com/ Send a donation via paypal at http://www.jhai.org/donations.htm Mail a check dated in 2005 as a US tax-deductible donations for 2005 to Jhai Foundation, 921 France Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112 USA.  I will acknowledge this donation as soon as I return from India and Laos in late January. Volunteer with us in San Francisco for clerical, professional or technical duties.  Jhai’s over-all goal in 2006 and beyond is to use and to teach the reconciliation means of development.  What I mean by this is that we hope to show everyone ways to work with people in developing regions that are both respectful and truly effective, because poorer folks own them and can make money from them.  We will do this on the ground and through communication and cooperation with you.  Stay tuned.  The ride is just beginning … today. I do nothing alone.  Please forgive me if  I miss your name.  I want to express my heart-felt gratitude to these consultants, staff, volunteers, and other friends that have helped Jhai this year: Will Tomlinson, Ariya Dengkayaphichith, Vorasone Dengkayaphichith, the crew at Thanksgiving Coffee, its CEO, Paul Katzeff, Alan Odom and his crew at InterAmerican Coffee, and the Jhai Coffee Farmers Association’s president, Mr. Numila, and  all the families in the cooperative we trust and that trust us.   Thipphavanh Thammachith and Vorasone, all the teachers and students at Pakse High School, and partners at Equal Access, especially Michael Bosse .   Chris Larsen, Rex Vance and the crew at the Technical Division of the Window Rock United School District, Stan Osborne, Jim Stockford, Gerard Cerchio, Eduardo Cervantes, Alex Rudis, Jim Forster (Cisco volunteer) and Christine Ye, who have built on the fine work of Lee Felsenstein, Bob Marsh, Steve Okay, Mark Summers, Anousak Souphavanh, Vorasone again, and 75 others volunteering or working for Jhai Foundation to develop the Jhai PC… and with great gratitude and fond regard for Dr. Ramakrishnan and Dr. Ravi of  CDAC.  On the social side of the Jhai PC and communication system project we have been helped greatly by Dr. John Sherry (volunteer from Intel), Janine Firpo, Dr. Ed Gaible, Earl Mardle, Chetan and Sarita Sharma (Datamation), Drs. Senthil and Swaminathan (MS Swaminathan Research Foundation), Dr. Marco Figueiredo, Glenda Wildschudt, Noam Chomsky, Tamara Colby,  the Rev. Philip Wickeri, Tish Momirov, Ruth Sherer, Leesy and John Elliott and the people at Amity Foundation in China, as well as other board members Jim Ketola, Bounthanh Phommasathit, Debra Darlington, Jesse Thorn and Stan Osborne.  I know these lists are very incomplete.  If you see some name missing, please tell me and I’ll make amends.  And please forgive me any mistakes. I need a lot of help on the social side of everything and I am particularly grateful to my family, the guys in my combat vets rap group, St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Episcopal Church, and Veterans for Peace and the people who help me stay sober in more ways than one. Finally and certainly equally importantly I appreciate all the financial support Jhai has gotten from YOU and from Flora Foundation, Cisco Foundation, Intel, World Bank (IFC)/Soros Foundations IDEAS fund, the Canadian, Swedish, and US governments ($2500 in local grant from US Embassy in Lao PDR, significant gifts from IDRC and SIDA), the Boulder Community Foundation, Mara Foundation, and hundreds of small and large donations from individuals like you.  These individual donations still make up a very large amount of our income.  Last year once again – with your help – we have been able to do all we do for about $200,000.  This is considerable bang for the buck.  We’ll grow a bit next year, but we never intend to become huge.  We’d rather partner and consult and I’ll write more about that next time. Happy New Year!  Thanks for your continuing help and support.  I am blessed to travel to India on Saturday where I will meet Wade Sanders and many friends and colleagues.  I go to Laos with a friend from Atlantic Philanthropies on January 15.  I’ll report again after that trip. Yours, in Peace, Lee Lee Thorn Chair, Jhai Foundation 350 Townsend St., Ste. 309 San Francisco, CA 94112 USA 1 415 344 0360 (v/fx) 1 415 420 2870 (mobile) lee@jhai.org          www.jhai.org

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