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			 **   THE GEM MESSENGER   **
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						     Volume 4, Number 01
						     January 7, 1994
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Lend-A-Hand Program
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The AGU has introduced a program to assist scientists in countries with
currency restrictions or low exchange rates to become members of the AGU
and to receive journals.  This program is called Lend-A-Hand.  If you
donate $80 or more to this program, you become a supporting member, in
the same way as if you had made a non-targeted donation.  Since a number
of us already make non-targeted supporting member donations, it would 
seem reasonable to put this money to use sending memberships (which
include subscriptions to EOS and Physics Today) at $20 to our less
fortunate colleagues or even to send them journal subscriptions.  One
of the problems I see with this program is to distribute optimally the 
available donations which first involves identifying the most needy.


I would like to propose a solution to this problem and get your reaction
to it before I proceed further.  I propose that GEM act as a clearing
house for the Lend-A-Hand program in the discipline of magnetospheric 
physics.  We would obtain from the AGU a list of the presently supported 
scientists, we would solicit (one page) statements of need from our
colleagues in "developing" countries.  The GEM coordinators then, with
the advice of the GEM community, would attempt to match the most needy
colleagues with the available donations.  Each donor would know who he or
she is supporting and each donee would know who is providing the support.

If you have comments, either pro or con, on this idea or if you have
any suggestions on how to best carry out such a program, please let me 
know at your earliest opportunity.


                                                     C. T. Russell  


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  Happy New Year to all our colleagues in the GEM community.
                                       - Guan Le and C. T. Russell
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