People in Need (PIN, "Člověk v tísni" in Czech) is a Czech organization that does relief work and creates development projects around the world. It works in regions that are in crisis. At the same time, it supports human rights and democratic freedom. PIN is a nonprofit and non-governmental organization.
PIN cooperates with many other organizations such as: Alliance 2015, the Czech Forum for Development Cooperation (FoRS), the European Union Monitoring Center (EUMC), UNHCR, UNICEF, and many others.
PIN had a budget of over 13 million of Euro in 2008 and about 500 staff all over the world.). It works or worked in more than 40 countries.
PIN organizes the One World Film Festival each year to show human rights documentaries.
The organization was founded in 1992 by Šimon Pánek and by Jaromír Štětina. Pánek had been a student activist during the Velvet Revolution. Štětina was journalist who wrote about wars.
The Relief and Development Department of PIN helps victims of natural disasters and wars, works against poverty worldwide, and supports universal education. In 2009, the Relief and Development Department was working in eighteen countries in Asia (for example Afghanistan , Cambodia , Sri Lanka ), Africa (e.g. Ethiopia , Angola , Namibia ) and Europe (e. g. Romania , Ukraine, Czech Republic ). Programs focus on education, health care, clean drinking water, hygiene, and support for jobs that can continue for a long time.
People in Need supports people who oppose the government and the develop civil society in countries where the government its power to control many parts of daily life. People in Need also gives the Homo Homini award to a person protected human rights and developed democracy without using violence.
PIN has had programs to fight against poverty and social exclusion in the Czech Republic since 1999. They helped people from poor areas with housing, unemployment, or debt problems. Social Integration Programmes (SIP) started in 2006 and now works in more than 50 cities and towns in the Czech Republic. PIN also offers informative and educational programs in schools to teach about poverty and migration.
People in Need has been active in Chechnya and Ingushetia since 2000. In 2005, the Russian weekly Argumenty i Fakty claimed the organization supports Chechen separatist and terrorists. PIN said it did not. Then, Russia made the organization leave, but PIN was allowed back in 2007.
Ha Jin
Jīn Xuěfēi (simplified Chinese: 金雪飞; traditional Chinese: 金雪飛; born February 15, 1956) is a living Chinese-American writer. He uses the pen name Ha Jin (哈金). "Ha" comes from his favorite city, Harbin. In 1984, he went to America and began to write about China only in English. His work increased international attention to Chinese culture and history.
Ha Jin was born in Liaoning, China. His father was a military officer. Jin joined the People's Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution when he was 13 years old. He began to teach himself about Chinese literature and to learn the high school curriculum at sixteen. He left the army when he was nineteen, as he entered Heilongjiang University. He got his B. A. degree in English studies there. Next, he earned a M.A. degree in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University.
Jin grew up in the chaos of early communist China. He was at Brandeis University when the 1989 Tiananmen incident happened. The way the Chinese government stopped the protest by force was important to Jin. It helped him decide to emigrate to the United States. It also made him choose to write in English "to preserve the integrity of his work." He eventually earned a Ph.D..
Jin sets many of his stories and novels in China in an imaginary place called Muji City. He has won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, "Waiting" (1999). He has received three Pushcart Prizes for fiction and a Kenyon Review Prize. Many of his short stories have appeared in "The Best American Short Stories" anthologies. His collection "Under The Red Flag" (1997) won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. "Ocean of Words" (1996) has been awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award. The novel "War Trash" (2004), set during the Korean War, won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Jin teaches at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He used to teach at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jin was at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, in the fall of 2008. He was a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
This prize is given in the United States. There are several other Pulitzer Prizes. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is for writing by an American author. Usually this writing is about American life. It started as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.
Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.
Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century. He also helped improve short story writing in the 1980s.
Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington. His father was a skilled sawmill worker from Arkansas. He was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother sometimes worked as a waitress and as a clerk in a shop. He had one brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.
Carver studied at local schools in Amery, Wisconsin. In his spare time he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as Sports Afield and Outdoor Life and hunted and fished with friends and family. After graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, aged 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk. She had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. When their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born the next year, Carver was 20. Carver supported his family by working as a janitor, sawmill laborer, delivery man, and library assistant. During their marriage, Maryann worked as a waitress, salesperson, administrative assistant, and high school English teacher.
Carver became interested in writing in California. He had moved there with his family because his mother-in-law had a home in Paradise. Carver attended a creative-writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner. Gardner became his mentor and had a major influence on Carver's life and career. Carver continued his studies first at Chico State University and then at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California, where he studied with Richard Cortez Day. Carver received his B.A. in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for the university literary magazine called Toyon. Carver included some of his own writing under pen names. He later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, for one year. Maryann graduated from San Jose State College in 1970 and taught English at Los Altos High School until 1977.
In the mid-1960s Carver and his family lived in Sacramento. He worked as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. He sat in on classes at what was then Sacramento State College including workshops with poet Dennis Schmitz. Carver and Schmitz soon became friends, and Carver's first book of poems, "Near Klamath", was later written and published with helpful advice from Schmitz.