Our 2021 Year in Review
Over the past two years we, along with so many others, have been dealing with the ramifications associated with the coronavirus on the world’s poor. With schools closed along with much of the infrastructure that serves the world, millions were left without any means to earn their daily wages and acquire food for themselves and their families. Because of your kindness, we have been able to help many women, children, and families survive amidst this pandemic, and with your ongoing support, we will continue this work in the coming year, ensuring that those in extreme poverty who need our help receive it.
We thank you for your generous support during this difficult time. Below please find some of what we have achieved together this past year. The Forgotten International operates entirely on donations, so your gifts make all of our work possible.
Tom Nazario
President & Founder
A Breeze of Hope Foundation (Bolivia)
A Breeze of Hope Foundation provides free legal, social, and psychological services to child victims of sexual violence and encourages healthy and comprehensive childhood development. All this is done in safe surroundings where the children can grow and play away from those who have victimized them. This organization strives for a world where all children grow up in loving and nurturing environments. They serve both boys and girls ages 3 to 12. Last year TFI continued supporting their work with these vulnerable children.
Cambodian Community Dream Organization (Cambodia)
Cambodian Community Dream Organization meets the needs of rural villages by building water wells and latrines, as well as providing supplemental education to local schools through preschool, English language, and computer classes. They serve the children at their schools a nutritious breakfast every school day and teach them important hygiene practices that can save their lives. Last year TFI helped fund three new preschool programs at three rural schools that serve very poor families outside the city of Siem Reap.
Kaziba Orphanage (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Kaziba Orphanage houses anywhere from 40 to 60 children under the age of eight who come from families affected by war and poverty and provides them with food, medical care, and a safe place to live until they can be adopted. TFI’s work in the DRC began in 2021 when we agreed to assist one of our Board Members, Jilma Meneses, to bring the Kaziba Orphanage into our programmatic work. Last year TFI gave them funding to continue to provide food, medical services, and education to these children.
Notre Dame Clinic (Ghana)
Notre Dame Clinic has a maternity ward that assists with some 200 births each year. Throughout the world many women die each year in child birth, mostly in Africa. Without organizations like the Notre Dame Clinic, the number of deaths would be much higher. In addition, the clinic also emphasizes education, teaching women safe and healthy practices to use before and after the birth of their children. In 2021, they were able to continue to save lives amidst the pandemic, and TFI helped them in their mission by giving them the funds needed to build their first fully-equipped operating room.
Orthopedic Training Centre (Ghana)
Orthopedic Training Centre works to enable the physically disabled, particularly children, to achieve independent and productive lives. This is very important work, for throughout the developing world, those who are physically disabled are often forgotten by the state and left to fend for themselves. Over 6,000 people a year, mainly children, are helped at the Centre or receive the help they need from their mobile orthopedic unit, which tours the country on a regular basis. Last year TFI continued to support an orphan we sponsor there.
VARAS (Ghana)
VARAS seeks sustainable solutions for rural communities to survive and thrive by working to bridge the development gap that exists between rural and urban areas of the country. They do so by providing professional skills training for rural women, which these women can then turn into businesses or employment opportunities that will serve them and their families well into the future. They also work with rural schools to help expand their educational offerings. Last year TFI gave them funding to support the construction of a school and factory where women learn sewing and, for the first time, can support themselves and their children, often in their own businesses.
KEATS (India)
KEATS works to foster healthy living environments for those they serve, strengthening access to education and programs that help individuals and families build stable livelihoods. TFI partnered with KEATS in 2021 through one of our Board members, Bobba Venkatadri, who has been rebuilding a high school in his childhood community. TFI helped to complete this project. The new Zilla Parishad High School is scheduled to open in June of 2022.
Shanti Bhavan (India)
Shanti Bhavan provides children from backgrounds of generational poverty with a safe living and learning environment. This private boarding school does everything that one might find at a school for India’s rich, but for the children of the extreme poor, successfully ending the cycle of poverty for their students. Last year TFI funded college scholarships for two young women, as well as the renovation of the school’s girls’ dormitory. These projects were sponsored by our Board member Diane Brandenburg, who is pictured here with our first scholarship recipient, Thulasi Priya Ramesh.
Sirjana Institute (India)
Sirjana Institute runs vocational training workshops in skills such as sewing, beauty services, and jewelry-making for women living in impoverished communities, offering hope for the future for women who would otherwise have little autonomy or dreams of breaking out of poverty. In 2021 TFI helped support their students in an effort to acquire basic needs, since the pandemic closed their workshop.
Tabitha Enabling Academy (India)
Tabitha Enabling Academy provides education and support to children with disabilities in one of the most remote regions of India. They also bring disability awareness to the community so that families seek assistance early in their child’s development. TFI supports this work because many countries in the developing world often have no laws that help or protect these children nor schools that address their educational needs. Last year TFI covered the salaries of their teachers, as well as helped them attain needed Covid supplies.
St. Vincent's of Kibera (Kenya)
St. Vincent’s Children of Kibera helps the most vulnerable children in one of the world’s largest slums in Nairobi through their Nursery and Rescue Center for abandoned children. The Center is also place where children are sure to get their (often) only meal of the day, as well as school supplies, scholarship money for school fees, and even funds to pay for some medical services when needed. Last year TFI helped pay for the continued education and nutritional support of the children and families they serve.
WAVE Children's Foundation (Kenya)
WAVE Children’s Foundation aims to ensure that all the children they serve, who are growing up without families, have access to education and a safe home. In addition to a school, they provide the children they serve with housing, nutritional meals, and medical support. Last year TFI gave them funding to support their principal school in Nairobi, Kenya, where some of the poorest children in that city work hard on their studies in the hope for a better future and life.
La Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia (Peru)
La Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia started as a safe place for street children to sleep but, over the years, expanded into a large school, orphanage, and medical clinic for over 1,000 children who work hard every day in the hope for a better future. TFI has been supporting this orphanage for many years, for they receive little help from the government and more children always end up at their doorstep. Last year TFI helped improve the infrastructure of the school, feed the children, and pay for needed Covid supplies.
Hogar de la Esperanza "Mama Victoria" (Peru)
Hogar de la Esperanza “Mama Victoria” houses women who have escaped domestic violence in order to keep them and their children safe from further abuse. This small center and residential housing facility also has a classroom for the children of the families who live there. Although there have been some staff who worked outside the center to help create an income stream for the facility, Covid-19 has made that difficult. Hence, last year, TFI continued to support these mothers and their children during this difficult time.
Project PEARLS (The Philippines)
Project PEARLS helps those living in Manila’s largest slum to have a better life. In doing so, they provide the children with PEARLS – Peace, Education, Aspiration, Respect, Love, and Smiles – through a program of education, empowerment, nutrition, and healthcare. They serve about 400 families at three different facilities, all with the purpose of keeping families healthy and together while working to lift them out of poverty. Last year TFI funded a special Christmas package and a feeding program for their children who have nothing.
Angels Care School and Medical Clinic (Uganda)
Angels Care School and Medical Clinic is located in a refugee settlement for some 120,000 inhabitants and cares for those escaping conflict from neighboring countries. This school and clinic serves some of their most vulnerable people and offers them a safe place to rebuild their lives. Over the years, we have helped them provide their residents with clean water, an education for their children, and a new medical clinic through our Dr. Eugene P. Mohan Medical Assistance Fund. Last year TFI continued support of our medical clinic, as well as to helped to improve the school at this camp and the education that the children receive there.
Daystar Ministries (Uganda)
Daystar Ministries is a program through which we met Dr. Irene Ganiriza, who dreamed of building a clinic to serve the widows, orphans, and a community in need of medical care in a rural area of the country of Uganda where she grew up as a child. We provided Daystar with the funding needed to start her clinic, and now they have beds for patients, equipment to diagnose illnesses, and, soon, all they will need to immunize children.
Rona Foundation (Uganda)
Rona Foundation provides job training and support to rural widows, and cares for the educational needs, healthcare, and emotional wellbeing of orphaned children. Few people in the world find themselves in greater need than already impoverished women who have lost their husbands in countries that provide them with no rights to inherit or acquire property on their own. This not only keeps them in poverty, but their children as well. Rona Foundation is trying to break this cycle. Last year TFI oversaw the completion a small school on their land to educate their orphans, as well as helped the widows and grandmothers who have been left without support.
Arizona Oncology (USA)
Arizona Oncology is one of the largest cancer treatment centers in the state, with over 60 oncology physicians working in 24 offices throughout Arizona. It is an organization dedicated to providing compassionate care to its patients. Last year TFI made an exception to our regular grantmaking to help pay for the care of a cancer patient who was very much in need of financial assistance.
The Tibet Fund (USA)
The Tibet Fund provides services to preserve the distinct culture and national identity of the Tibetan people, offering funding for services related to health care, education, refugee rehabilitation, religious and cultural preservation, elder care, and community and economic development for more than 140,000 Tibetan refugees around the world. Last year TFI gave them funding for general support of their work.
TFI's Bridge Fund (USA)
TFI’s Bridge Fund is a program we started in 2020, and is one of our newest grantmaking programs through which we were able to make 13 separate grants last year to individuals seeking our help in order to prevent families in the US from losing their foothold in our economy and falling into extreme poverty. This is a program that we will continue in 2022.
TFI's Eric L. Brandenburg Children's Fund (Global)
TFI’s Eric L. Brandenburg Children’s Fund is a special funding program that we have at our foundation which provides individualized, long-term support for children living in dire circumstances anywhere in the world. It does so in order to ensure that they leave poverty and obtain a chance at a decent life. Currently, thirteen children have been served by this program. All of these children and young adults grew up in either India or Ghana.
TFI's Dr. Eugene P. Mohan Medical Assistance Fund (Global)
TFI’s Dr. Eugene P. Mohan Medical Assistance Fund was established in 2019 by Board member Jerry Mohan and his wife Beth in memory of Jerry’s late brother. Dr. Eugene Mohan was the Chief Medical Surgeon in Northport, NY. This is another one of our dedicated grantmaking programs and, since its inception, the fund has supported various efforts to help bring medical assistance to those in greatest need around the world. Through this fund, last year TFI supported projects mostly in Africa and India.
TFI's Preservation Fund (Global)
TFI’s Preservation Fund was created by one of our donors to provide emergency assistance to projects anywhere in the world that have been vetted by us and have historically done excellent work in uplifting the lives of the poor, but now, as a result of extraordinary circumstances, are in need of some emergency funding to be able to continue their work and hopefully overcome what we believe to be a short-term financial setback and/or programmatic emergency. The donor’s hope here is to free up some money in order to make it possible to make “meaningful” grants that will be used to “save” worthwhile projects from ceasing to exist through no fault of their own. Last year this fund was responsible for helping complete several capital projects, a sewing factory in Ghana, a new elementary school in India, and the building of a new (and only) clinic in a small village in Uganda.
Please consider making a tax-deductible gift to TFI
so we can continue serving impoverished women
and children in 2022.
The Forgotten International
P.O. Box 192066, San Francisco, CA 94119 • 415-517-6942
The Forgotten International is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Tax ID 26-1484826.
All donations are deductible to the fullest extent of the law.