5.11.2005 ET

(CSRwire) BETHESDA, MD - The non-profit Calvert Foundation is working with Dr. Patrick Mendis, a former U.S. diplomat who was born in Sri Lanka, to set up a "personal foundation" to funnel aid through the relief organization Sarvodaya in the wake of the recent tsunami. This is a powerful illustration of how the donor-advised fund service known as the Calvert Giving Fund can provide an individual with a direct means by which to deal with a humanitarian crisis in a distant corner of the world.

Dr. Mendis said: "I was watching the unfolding tragedy of the tsunami on CNN while spending Christmas vacation with my family in the Desert Mount Island in northern Maine. When we returned home from Christmas vacation to Washington, D.C., we decided to get personally involved in helping tsunami victims by raising funds for Sarvodaya in my homeland."

Sarvodaya is one of the world largest self-help volunteer "Shramadana" (sharing of labor) movements in the world. The organization has worked for almost 50 years with the poorest of poor in over 15,000 villages that covers nearly one-half of the population of 20 million people in Sri Lanka. Sarvodaya's founding leader, Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, is an internationally decorated figure who also is known as the "Gandhi of Sri Lanka."

Dr. Mendis turned for help to Calvert Giving Fund, which is the only donor-advised fund service that provides for international grants (as opposed to a strictly U.S. 501c3 nonprofit focus) while allowing investors to put idle capital in their Fund into a platform that is 100 percent focused on socially responsible investing and community development investing. This enables donors to blend the positive impact of socially responsible investment with strategic and informed giving. A Calvert Giving Fund allows an individual or group to set up a donor-advised fund by making one simple tax-deductible contribution of $5,000 or more to Calvert Foundation. Grants can then be made to any designated charity over time, at the discretion of the donor, while the interest compounds tax-free.

In collaboration with Calvert Giving Fund, Dr. Mendis set up The Tsunami Leaders Caring "TLC" Foundation to develop a new circle of youth leaders who are committed to Sarvodaya and social responsibility. Through his Calvert Giving Fund, Dr. Mendis is receiving donations in the U.S. and is using the funds to give "Leadership Awards," to help emerging young leaders in Sri Lanka. The TLC Foundation's leadership awards can be used for learning English, developing new skills, and on-the-job training with a mentor.

"We need socially conscious leaders in every aspect of human life to make our world a little bit better place than we found it," said Dr. Mendis, who teaches MBA courses in international trade policy and global management at the UMUC Graduate School of Management & Technology at the University of Maryland.

To raise funds, Dr. Mendis mobilized his friends and supporters at the U.S. State Department, University of Maryland, and his "adopted" home state of Minnesota, where he was an AFS high school exchange scholar in the late 1970s. While in Minnesota, Mendis graduated from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where he also taught international relations for seven years. Dr. Mendis then actively engaged in philanthropy when he was the founding chairman of the Asian Pacific Endowment for Community Development at The Saint Paul Foundation in the early 1990s.

As a 12-year farm boy, Dr. Mendis grew up with 13 water buffalos in a three-acre rice field and worked at a Sarvodaya "Shramadana" camp. He found an inspiration in the Sarvodaya's Buddhist and Gandhian philosophy in action and its charismatic leader, Dr. Ariyaratne, whom he now calls "Ayya," (older brother). A Christian by birth, Dr. Mendis sees Sarvodaya philosophy as one that transcends and encompasses all religious and spiritual traditions in his native multi-ethnic society that dates back to more than a 2,500-year recorded history.

ABOUT SARVODAYA
Sarvodaya (www.sarvodaya.org) is a Sri Lankan organization developed around a set of coherent philosophical tenets drawn from Buddhism and Gandhian thought. It has been operational for almost 50 years. Today Sarvodaya is Sri Lanka's largest and most broadly embedded people's organization, with a network covering 15,000 villages, 34 district offices, over 100,000 youth, and the country's largest micro-credit organization with a cumulative loan portfolio of over one billion Sri Lankan Rupees.

ABOUT THE CALVERT FOUNDATION
The Calvert Foundation (www.CalvertFoundation.org) focuses on a simple goal: to help end poverty through investment. An independent 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Calvert Foundation's broader objective is to create "community investment" as allocation in every investor's portfolio. The Calvert Foundation serves as a facility for individuals and institutions seeking to place capital to finance affordable homes, fund small and micro businesses and to make available essential community services. Launched with the support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and The Ford Foundation, Calvert Foundation works to provide investment capital to local partner non-profits that use common sense and compassion to help people in disadvantaged communities to work themselves out of poverty. 

Calvert Foundation makes available a wide range of innovative financial instruments, Web-based information services and philanthropic products including the Calvert Community Investment Note, the Community Investment Profile Database, and the Calvert Giving Fund, the Socially Responsible Donor Advised Fund. Calvert Foundation is a separate entity from Calvert Group Ltd. and its products should not be confused with any Calvert Group-sponsored investment product.

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