Aura's Drawing

Aura’s House is a grassroots online project that raises funds for housing, health, income generation, and education projects for needy children in developing countries.

It was originally created to raise $4500 to build a safe, sturdy brick home for Aura Hernandez and her family in Guatemala. Since our goal was met in November of 2004, we decided to launch other small projects that bring big changes to the lives of families in developing countries.

$68,239 raised to date for needy families. View our stats.

See Aura’s family’s NEW HOME!

See their old house.

We’ve been working in conjunction with the top rated US charitable organization, Children International since February of 2003. 100% of proceeds go to our projects. All persons working at Aura’s House do so on a strictly volunteer basis only.

In addition to CI, we have also worked with Kenya Kids in Need, a California 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the Galilee School as well as Child Focus Fund, an Illinois 501(c)(3) organization that helped us with our Ghana Project. Aura’s House, KKIN, and CFF are all 100% volunteer organizations. 100% of the money donated goes to each project.

We pledge to update donors on our progress with weekly updates to the website and via our quarterly newsletters. All projects on the Aura’s House site are 100% US tax deductible. After donating, your official tax deduction receipt from Children International will be mailed to you within a few weeks.

About the Site’s Authors

Kristen Palana is an Associate Professor of Communication at The American University of Rome in Rome, Italy. She is Aura’s sponsor through Children International. Kristen is currently working with Aura’s House Partners, Anastasia Yecke of Miami, FL., Mike Epler of Simi Valley, CA., Christina Sidoti of Rutherford, NJ., Heather LaBonte of Bristol, UK., and Courtenay Honeycutt of Indianapolis, ID. and our Small Project Fundraisers. Other interested volunteers, donors, alumni, and students from William Paterson University of New Jersey and The American University of Rome also participate in keeping the site going.

Kristen has a proven record of volunteering in developing countries. Feel free to check out photos from her volunteer experiences in India (2000) and Tanzania (2005) through Cross Cultural Solutions.

This Site’s History

This site originally began in February 2003 when Kristen was learning PHP programming and adding dynamic content to websites. She decided to create this site that combined her two biggest interests; art/multimedia and helping people in developing countries. The site has changed a lot since then, both in design and function. After waiting over a year for all the required permissions, finally on June 30, 2004 the site was ready to launch. In January of 2009 the site entered its current form as a Wordpress hosted site that is Web 2.0 compliant.

Credits

Volunteers at the site are students and faculty from the William Paterson University of New Jersey, students and faculty from The American University of Rome, and Children international representatives and interested people from all over the world. Join us! Names listed below are past and current volunteers.

I prefer to donate offline.