FoundationMakers make a dramatic difference to Comfort International’s ability to respond to needs and crises as they arise, as well as allowing us to continue to fund the vital work that our partners do. We’ve called it:
Undesignated Giving, Limitless Impact
The impact of FoundationMakers donations truly is limitless and often immeasurable. In this update, we hope to give you an insight into just how vital these donations have been, and the difference they have made to our partners. You can visit our website for more information on what it means to be a FoundationMaker.
Over the years since the Street Kids Rescue projects began the funds needed for education have steadily increased and outstripped the sponsorship funding. Sending 350 children to school is an expensive activity as many of them are now at secondary school or boarding school. In particular, when a child passes their secondary 3 exams they then get placed in an appropriate S4-6 school and a good proportion of those are boarding schools. Because of the great support the kids on the projects get from the Comfort Rwanda team many of them are being placed in higher performing schools which can have higher fees. This year the cost of education for Street Kids Rescue is £22,000. Foundation Makers have helped greatly to enable us to meet this requirement.
You may have seen the Goats and Garments project in Burundi featuring in our Spring appeal. Projects in Burundi have always been challenging to fund as Burundi is not well known by our donors and supporters. However, Burundi is extremely poor. The United Nations Human Development Index (UNHDI) which is a composite of life expectancy, education opportunity and the standard of living, ranks Burundi 187th out of 193 countries with the northern area where the project is located being around 20% poorer than the western regions. So the people we are trying to reach in partnership with Gerard Rukerandanga of the Elim Churches are very poor indeed. The appeal has gone reasonably well but Foundation Makers funding will add to this and help lift people out of their desperate cycles of poverty.
The tragedy in Rubaya, in which hundreds of people have been killed in a series of landslides affecting that mining town, has very much torn our hearts over the last weeks. Those are people we have met, spoken with, preached to and grown to love and now their children and babies lie dead, caught in the horrific landslides exacerbated by climate change and corporate greed. FoundationMakers help us to let them know that help is on the way and that even as the appeal is gathering pace a start can be made to bring God’s love and compassion to a broken, hurting and desolate community where many people have been robbed of absolutely everything they owned.
These are just three of the projects for which FoundationMakers really helps. There are lots of other projects where designated income does not meet the demand but these three give you an idea of the crucial significance of FoundationMakers in bringing hope and a better future to the lives of many, many precious people. If you can keep spreading the news about FoundationMakers that would be great – every little helps and every new FoundationMaker is hugely welcome.
call to action…