The Foundation is pleased to again support MUAFCIG during these difficult times.  MUAFCIG was created in 2012 by a group of dynamic young men and women with the goal of empowering the poor and needy in rural and semi urban communities in the South West Region of Cameroon, Africa. MUAFCIG belief is rooted in teaching people on how to catch a fish and not just giving them a fish.

The Grant will be used  for their relief and emergency aid project that is aimed at empowering over 1,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), primarily made up of vulnerable and poverty stricken women and children who are mostly widows and orphans. The COVID-19 pandemic is a threat that is spreading in the South West Region of Cameroon and claiming lives. This project is intended to relieve extreme human suffering through provision of humanitarian assistance to many families that are victims and who have already been affected by the current crisis in Southern Cameroon. They are living in Buea and Bangem sub divisions without any reliable source of income. The project objectives include ways to sensitize IDPs and the general population alike on the dangers of COVID-19. It takes measures to reduce the spread of the virus in the Buea and Bangem sub divisions. It provides hand washing facilities, face masks and hand sanitizers to over 1,000 vulnerable people. They will also distribute essential food and other items to homes hosting many displaced families. Additionally, they work to provide displaced children (many of whom are orphans and girls) with educational support, so that they can return to school. This emergency aid project is necessary as many are faced with severe hunger and have been dying of starvation for many years, even before the pandemic hit. Children, in addition to being out of school are already suffering from malnutrition and limited access to health care facilities. Host families, who are mostly peasant farmers, are unable to cope with the increased number of people in need. Consequently, MUAFCIG expresses fear that these vulnerable women and children may die from the COVID-19 infection itself, but also from hunger and psychological trauma. The project will help provide relief for many individuals who have been suffering. It will provide educational assistance and food for children who have been internally displaced as well as help host families, widows, homeless, and disabled persons. It will also improve personal hygiene of vulnerable populations, especially girls, and help curb the spread of the COVID-19 threat that is diminishing the region’s population. Above all, the project will help prevent the local populations, who otherwise do not have access to reliable support from an NGO or government, from dying of hunger, starvation, and trauma.

The Foundation is pleased to support the efforts of BeyondHomes.  In 1986 Connie Zimmerman was moved by a co-worker at an assisted living facility who lost his home despite having a job. She responded by beginning the journey to raise money and get him and his family house. In 1988 she created a 501c3 to help working families obtain housing and secure a career which allowed them to stay housed. BeyondHome has three main goals: economic self-sufficiency, career development, and family stability for Colorado Homeless.

BeyondHome works to address the problem of homelessness facing working families, most of whom are single moms who have overcome domestic violence. BeyondHome solves the problem through affordable housing and programming that leads to a livable wage career, allowing these families to become able to provide housing and take care of their needs upon graduation from the BeyondHome program. BeyondHome serves an average of 47 working families that were formally homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless each year. This is done through the BeyondHome SelfSufficiency Program and the WWAC Scholar program that has an additional 14 single mom scholars. Five of our WWAC Scholars also live in BeyondHome housing. While 80% of the families at BeyondHome are single moms, BeyondHome also works with refugees, immigrants, and other two parent households who need a second chance at life. BeyondHome will use  funds received from the Kathryn B. McQuade Foundation to help their single moms in both the Self-Sufficiency Program and WWAC Scholar Program. While they care deeply for all the families that they work with, they know that single moms have many added challenges to overcome. BeyondHome’s Self-Sufficiency Program and WWAC Scholar Program take on a comprehensive, relational approach to allow families to heal from past wounds and to prepare themselves financially for a successful, self-sufficient future. There are currently 165 individuals in the program, all of whom were classified as low-income upon entering their programs

The Foundation is pleased to again support BlinkNow.  BlinkNow’s vision is a world where every child is safe, educated and loved. Their mission is to change the world by empowering Nepal’s children. The organization does so by providing quality education, a safe environment and through inspiring others.

Scholarships will be made for both boys and girl who have yet to be sponsored in the 2020 school year. Their students are the most vulnerable children in Nepal who otherwise would not have access to a quality education. Furthermore, the students’ enrollment impacts their entire family not only by having educated children, but families are also provided resources like medical care, educational workshops, and first priority access for mothers to be enrolled in the Kopila Valley Women’s Center. Their approach is community–based and holistic. The nucleus of the community impact is the school, with additional programs such as their Women’s Center, Girl’s Hostel, Health Clinic, Children’s Home and Futures which collaborate in a symbiotic relationship with the school. Scholarship support and student enrollment is the foundation to their larger community impact. By supporting a student at the school, the impact not only helps the student but also their family and community in Surhket. The teachers BlinkNow supports have had to do a quick pivot in helping their students adjust during the COVID-19 pandemic. The teachers have mobilized quickly to support their students, making multiple phone calls each week to every student to assess their health and safety. The teachers also began developing packets of learning materials to distribute weekly. Each teacher has been sent home a computer from KVS’s computer lab and been given a stipend to buy data packages if they did not already have access to WIFI. Because of this new posture they are operating in, teachers have grown their technology skills tremendously. BlinkNow has been closely monitoring teacher’s development and have created YouTube workshops to help teachers develop best practices with distance learning. Looking forward, Nepal has no plans of reopening schools and the country recently went back into lockdown. KVS will continue to be flexible and responsive to the needs of the community and the student’s they serve.

Fonkoze was founded in 1994 by a group of Haiti grassroots organizations that wanted to empower the rural poor in Haiti.

Since March of this year, Fonkoze’s clients have been confronted with the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic arrived in Haiti later most countries. The Haitian government took swift action to mitigate the spread of the virus, though necessary, has caused a severe impact on their economy. In the immediate near team, Fonkoze has worked to protect clients and staff, developing informational resources and materials, and also equipping them with essential supplies such as facemasks, hand sanitizer and hand washing stations. As Fonkoze looks to the future and ways their lending programs need to adapt, they have determined a digital platform is needed more than ever before. The Fonkoze Foundation, in partnership with Fonkoze Financial Services (SFF) will look to provide their client’s access to EdTek. EdTek will enable loan officers the ability to monitor the circulation of a shared tablet computer, provide technical support to users, and occasionally bring the tablet to a branch to upload data and access software updates for Fonkoze’s loan programs.

EdTek is currently being piloted in the Jacmel region and lessons learned will be used for implementation nationwide. The programs activities will include: 1. Training loan officers 2. Training Fonkoze clients on the Edtek Program 3. Conduct monitoring and evaluation activities 4. Provide technical support

Funds will be used  for clients in the rural areas of Mirebalais, the central plateau region of Haiti.

Asian University for Women (AUW) is an international liberal arts and sciences university in Chittagong, Bangladesh which seeks to cultivate the region’s next generation of women leaders.  AUW is unique in its mission to provide excellent higher education to particularly marginalized women, free of cost. At baseline, no university exists that specifically serves Asia’s regional need for an institution of high quality that is financially, culturally and logistically accessible to young women from poor, rural, and refugee populations.  AUW invites several targeted communities to join the University through its pre-university program, Pathways for Promise. These communities include: • Former garments workers from Bangladesh • Daughters of tea leaf pickers in India and Sri Lanka • Women from highly-trafficked regions of Nepal • Indigenous women from the Asian highlands • Women educated in the Madrasa system • Daughters of Grameen Bank and other microfinance borrowers. The most significant challenge to expanding access to higher education is cost. While primary school education can be provided with relatively few resources, much more significant support is required at the university level. Such costs necessitate an opportunity for women, in particular, to access university scholarships. In developing countries where women’s education is not a cultural priority, university fees can be an almost insurmountable barrier to entry, especially for poor families.

The Grant will be used  for the 2020-2021 academic year to fund the scholarships of new students in Pathways for Promise. This grant will cover tuition, room and board, health insurance, school supplies, and travel to and from the student’s home country. Quantifiable results indicating students’ progress in becoming educated and empowered leaders include: 1. Completion of Pathways for Promise. Achievement of a 3 or 4 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). 2. Completion of Access Academy a. Participation in Leadership Seminar. 3. Achievement of increasingly improved CGPA. 4. Enrolment in courses that encourage critical thinking, class participation, and analysis of global issues. 5. Participation in summer internships. 6. Participation in extracurricular activities.

Founded in 2014, the goal of MLP is to work towards equitable, sustainable healthcare across the globe. This includes but is not limited to education, medical and dental services, housing and clean water, all essential to good quality of life. Since its recent inception, MLP has been successful in partnering with other non-profits to provide education, services and construction in multiple countries including Ethiopia, Jordan, Puerto Rico and India.

The Appalachian region (205,000 square miles with 25 million residents) includes some of the poorest counties in the United States, with a median income 20% lower than the rest of the nation. Many areas are either rural or extremely isolated, which results in geographic health disparities for residents due to lack of transportation and greater financial concerns. Residents in some Appalachian communities in Virginia are 23% more likely to die from heart disease, 28% more likely to die from complications of diabetes, and 44% more likely to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, when compared to residents of the rest of the state. In many counties in rural Appalachia, lack of healthcare resources have been associated with the lack of specialty providers, and patients may experience several months wait for outpatient services. The grant  will provide assistance to residents of these communities by creating free clinics to bring healthcare services directly to their neighborhoods. Funds will be used to purchase a location, pay for medical supplies and other needed supplies and two forty foot shipping containers. Funds will be spent from the fall of 2020 to the spring of 2022 and used specifically for underserved women and children in the Appalachian region of Southwest Virginia. With increased access to resources for reproductive health care, sex education and birth control, a significant difference will be made in preventing unplanned pregnancies.

ESARDEF (created in 2014 and registered in 2017) is a not-for-profit, and nonpolitical organization in Cameroon (Sub-Saharan Africa) dedicated specifically, on the improvement of community Education, Healthcare, Agriculture, Environmental Safety, Climate Change resilience, Conservation, Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law for the consolidation of Peace and Cultural Diversity. ESARDEF believes this can only be possible by means of diverse Educational activities like; capacity and infrastructural building in schools and in communities, and working towards sustainable livelihood lifestyles through formal and informal educative and training programs in all the community sectors that holistically empowers all especially women/girls, and children/youths.

This project seeks to rescue over 250 women and girls who are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) with professional skills in Limbe, Cameroon. These women have been seeking refuge on the streets for better livelihoods due to the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. ESARDEF has already set up a free Computer and Catering Vocational Training Center in Limbe, which aims to empower women with income generating skills, to help keep them off the streets of Limbe for prostitution and other illegal deadly practices. They are currently training 67 women. With an increasing demand there are a number of increasing challenges which include: 1) Inadequate desktop computers, accessories and furniture. 2) No financial motivation for volunteers. 3) Inadequate finance for the catering unit, which is limiting enrollment, and the ability of the training center to function properly. Once these challenges are addressed, the center expects to increase its training enrollment to over 250 women and girls IDPs yearly.  This will help these women and girls increase their livelihoods and hopefully allow them to stay off the streets of Limbe.

This grant will to help them purchase an additional 6 desktop computers, purchase needed furniture, finance motivation for volunteer trainers, and assistance in the running cost of the catering unit. It will provide each IDP with re-usable menstrual hygiene kit as well. Improving these issues will help increase enrollment. Very few organizations are addressing these issues and are typically only providing free food. ESARDEF goes beyond that by training them with employability skills on computers and cooking for local restaurants.

During the training period, trainees will be exposed to practical tasks in the form of assignments and exercises that will be used to determine their success during and after the project. It will measure their ability to recall and do what was taught during class lessons and practical sessions. This will help determine the successes because these same skills will help these women in generating money for their livelihoods when the project is completed. The Grant aims to provide women and girls an opportunity to succeed and become self-sufficient through the acquisition of professional skills. This will allow them to lift themselves and their children out of poverty and misery.

The Foundation is pleased to announce a grant to the Boys & Girls Club of the Piedmont, Abby Winthrop SMART Girl Program.

Since 2009, the Boys & Girls Club of the Piedmont has been in the forefront of youth development, working with young people from disadvantaged economic, social and family circumstances. The Boys & Girls Club of the Piedmont has actively sought to enrich the lives of girls and boys whom other youth agencies have had difficulty in reaching. They are dedicated to ensuring that their community’s disadvantaged young people have greater access to quality programs and services that will enhance their lives and shape their futures.

The Abby Winthrop SMART Girls Program aims to enhance at-risk girls’ physical and emotional health. The program combines informational and experiential learning activities to help girls, grades 4 thru 12, develop the knowledge and skills necessary to practice healthy lifestyle choices. In addition to ensuring that their members gain knowledge with making healthy choices, they also ensure that they are introduced to academic success program as well as career exploration. Their members are able to take different colleges tours, attend day camps, and engage in job shadowing.

The Abby Winthrop SMART Girls Program and the Boys & Girls Club of the Piedmont is located in South Statesville Community of North Carolina. This area is home to approximately 1,800 children under the age of 18, with many of them lacking educational resources to reach their full potential. This area is also known for gang violence, generational poverty, crime, and high unemployment rates. Their membership demographic shows that 65% of Club members live with a single parent and 78% of their members receive free or reduced lunch. By collaborating with families, school and community partners, the Club provides their Clients with a safe place to learn and grow. The SMART Girls program also coordinates with the local school system, The United Way and many other community partners. The grant will be used to support the SMART programs 3 components. They are as follows: 1. It’s Your Body – physical and emotional growth, media influence and body image, female victimization, eating disorders, dating responsibility and more. 2. Take Care of your Body- Exercise and physical activity, the importance of regular exams, healthy eating and more. 3. Tangible Path to Success – Educational and College Field Trips, viable path to a college or vocational scholarship, mentor partnership with young women and parent advocates to help keep students on track.

The Foundation is pleased to support CENCUDER vocational Training Center.

CENCUDER’s vocational training center in Upper Buduma village, is a career, financial empowerment and technology training project for economically disadvantaged women and girls. It targets school drop outs through computer literacy, sewing, and tailoring. The center aims to help them break poverty cycles, generate self-employment, become self-reliant and contribute to a sustainable economy. It is intended to provide hopes to those in despair, create job and employment opportunities to the poor through education and vocational training. Issues the center will address include: unemployment, abject poverty, hunger, sexual and reproductive rights, extreme marginalization and strife. This project has as main objective of reducing extreme suffering as a result of lack of opportunities and support for marginalized women, single mothers, school dropouts and teenage girls in Buduma through practical vocational trainings. Buduma village is a typical slum community in the South West of Cameroon, with above 90% of the households living below the UN poverty line. There are a very limited number of farm employment opportunities. There is also extreme marginalization of women and girls since many, by native laws and customs, don’t have access to land. CENCUDER’s vocational training center is going to help these groups by providing hope, a brighter future, and an opportunity to earn a livelihood. The center will operate two units with two shifts of intensive and practical training every working day. One unit will train women in practical sewing techniques and dress design to serve the general public. The other unit will train them in computer literacy and teach them how to use the internet. This will equip the beneficiaries with the social and vocational skills they need to succeed in life. The center will also provide the women information on menstrual hygiene, as well as their sexual and reproductive rights. CENCUDER intends to set up an interest free loan program that will facilitate the beneficiaries to set up their sewing/tailoring workshops as well as a cyber café upon completion of studies. Through this initiative, many women will be empowered with financials means to enable them to send their children to school, support themselves, and transfer the skills to their children, friends and relatives within their communities.

The Foundation is pleased to support Unlocking Communities.

Through Unlocking Communities research and work in Haiti, Unlocking Communities passionately believes that providing Haitians the tools to be their own catalysts for change is a more effective way to make a quality and long-lasting economic impact in the community than giving well-intentioned, but misguided handouts. To do so, their Community Partner gives aspiring entrepreneurs (majority women) a solid foundation by training them in business fundamentals. Then, they give these budding entrepreneurs access to either: 1. In-demand, environmentally beneficial products (water filters and clean-burning stoves) that they earn a commission from selling, 2. When there is no longer a need to sell these products the loans are repurposed to fund their own business ventures: resulting in cyclical economic growth. This has proven to be more successful by instilling a sense of dignity, empowerment, and ownership in Haitian communities.

This funding would cover the initial inventory of up to 100 water filtration systems and/or clean-burning stoves, Business Basics Training for Haitians, monitoring and evaluation, and on-going training from their in-country staff for each community.

Unlocking Communities focuses on helping low to middle-income Haitian communities (mainly women and children). These families lack access to unpolluted water and clean-burning stoves. The entire community benefits from gaining access to their environmental products and the resulting economic savings; however, the community entrepreneurs receive the additional benefits of business education and economic opportunity. Secondary beneficiaries are their families. Haitian families are typically 6 people (3-5 children, 1 mother, and sometimes a present father); therefore, 1 filter or stove is providing clean water or lowering second-hand smoke levels (and the risk of related illnesses) for multiple people. This is a major benefit considering: 1. Over 5,600 people die each year in Haiti from contaminated water, 2. Impoverished families are spending between $150- $400 a year (24% of their small annual income) on bottled water and charcoal.

Unlocking Communities has 2 communities in the center of Haiti (Goyave and Cange) that are currently conducting community readiness assessments. They are very keen to get started with the full model. They are interested in being an all-women operation and to support this they will be working with the local women’s organization as their Community Partner.