Partners of the Americas is a non-profit, non-partisan international grassroots network. We connect volunteer, institutions and communities to serve and to change lives. A network engaging 10,000 volunteers through over 100 chapters each year, Partners is unique in the Americas. We are women, men, youth leaders, teachers, parents, doctors, business owners, students, retirees, carpenters, farmers, Republicans, and Democrats all committed to a more peaceful and prosperous hemisphere.

Through the leadership of our own volunteers, we are embarking on an exciting campaign to raise $150,000 by March 31, 2011. This campaign will help us continue to support the Partners network and empower our chapters and volunteers to help turn their ideas for a more sustainable and prosperous Western Hemisphere into a reality.

Visit the Partners Annual Campaign homepage and get to know your fellow Citizen Philanthropists who are leading our campaign along with you: http://citizeneffect.org/p/partners-annual-campaign

Our community encompasses the width and breadth of the Western Hemisphere. Partners has chapters in 44 states in the United States, most of which are incorporated as their own 501(c) 3 organizations. These chapters are linked in alliance with 53 other chapters throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, forming our core partnerships.

Our partnerships work together to carry out a wide range of activities to improve food supplies, deliver health services, provide job training for young people, protect the region's natural resources and safeguard the rights of women and children.

Each chapter reaches out to its respective community, state or country to leverage in-kind and financial contributions to support its work, often multiplying each dollar invested by another $10 in donated goods and services. In addition, institutional linkages and affiliations - for example, a hospital and medical school through the participation of doctors, the 4-H system through a Partners agronomist, university departments through the involvement of professors and students - help ensure on-going support to projects.

Meet your partner community, and read their messages and profiles.

Statements from Partners volunteers and program participants

Partners gives volunteers life-changing experiences - ones in which they clarify their purpose in life and hone their ability to lead others around a shared vision of a better world. Partners helps people from different countries relate [to one another]. It makes us see that we are not different because in the inside we are all the same. In the end, it is only the walls that divide countries.
- 2008 Venezuela Youth Ambassador

Perhaps the greatest gift that has come from being part of the network of Partners volunteers is that it has given me a profound sense of optimism and faith in humanity. Partners volunteers make up an incredible network of people who want to give something of themselves, to make the world a better place for everyone.
- Alison McKellar, Florida Chapter member and POA Board Member

My decision to begin volunteering was dead on, and was an experience that I have never had and that allowed me to realize that there are so many problems and so many people with needs, who on their own, can not solve them. Colombia is where we, the students, have the biggest opportunity to transform the quality of life within our city. Volunteering is personal growth; it is a feeling of belonging to the city; it is consciousness and it is commitment.
- Melitza Torres, Volunteer in Partners Northern Colombia Chapter's "Best of Barranquilla "Project

Direct Impact of Your Project

Partners helps volunteers connect with their interests and passions. Here are just a few of the projects developed and sustained by Partners:

• Volunteer Hours. 197,489 hours logged by our volunteers in 2008. Each hour has a personal story of impact behind it.
• Over 67,000 direct beneficiaries in 16 countries from Partners programs working in the prevention of child labor and sexual trafficking.
• 424 youth who have participated as Youth Ambassadors and Youth Leaders
• 60,000 seed packets distributed to needy families in Uruguay
• 2,406 students participate in Learning Center classes in the poorest communities of Nicaragua
• Over 9,500 small business in the department of Tolima, Colombia have received microcredit small loans and business training in impoverished areas.
• 4,000 at-risk youth trained in 11 countries to find jobs, learn entrepreneurial skills, or re-enter the formal education system
• Farmer to farmer technical exchanges between the North and South.
• Water purification and micronutrient deficiency projects.
• Migratory bird tracking and environmental education in Elementary schools.
• Book drives and exchanges for English/Spanish language programs.
• Thousands of cultural and educational exchanges with visitors hosted in the homes of Partners volunteers throughout the hemisphere.
• Emergency preparedness training in over 20 countries
• Training programs in Florida for Colombian teachers of deafblind children.