As consequence of  the global coronavirus lockdown in 2020, schools closed and students were back at home, a situation with serious social and economic repercussions. Many of our students’ main meal of the day is provided by the school and with schools in lockdown the risks of food deprivation and of malnutrition became very real. Recognizing that for the students’ education to continue post-Covid-19 the basic living needs for their families had to be met urgently, FOTIS created in May 2020 a “FOTIS Covid-19 Response Fund” .

Following the appeal to our donors we witnessed a very generous response with donations totaling over CHF 32,000 in excess of our goal of CHF 15,000. Because of the scale of the response we were able  to make two distributions of funds to all the schools, in early May and in June. In return the partners sent us remarkable and moving reports of the distribution they made of food,  but also of sanitary packs and some education materials.

Below are fa ew extracts of the messages we received, you can find photos and videos in the link below. All the projects have sent so many touching video clips, thank you cards and photos , a huge thank you to the partners and to all who have made this possible.

 

Our staff has told me how incredibly happy the families were to receive their food donation. The only government support that has been offered during these last few months has been one bag of food meant to last only a few days. So we can confidently say, with FOTIS’s support, we are the only organization providing meaningful food support to these communities.

 

Education to Envision

from Honduras

The people living in remote areas such as Masantigie and its environs have suffered the most as they could not afford to provide food and other basic amenities for their families. With the prompt response from FOTIS, the transfer of funds was received in Sierra Leone. A list of 50 beneficiaries together with a list of food items was identified. The following items were purchased for distribution; 50 kilograms of rice, 5 bags of onions, 5 bags of sugar, 50 rolls of milk, 1 cartoon of soap, 15 radio sets, 10 boxes of big size batteries and 100 facial masks. After the purchase of the above items, they were packaged, transported and distributed to all beneficiaries on the 14th of May, 2020 at Masantigie village. The FOTIS students are particularly appreciative for the radio as that will keep them busy by listening to teaching programme organized by the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education.

 

Education for All

from Sierra Leone

Wow – where do we start to say thank you so much for this amazing initiative! Indeed Kenya is facing some unprecedented challenges with COVID-19 and the closure of schools being particularly hard on families. Our students get most of their food during the week at school so two months at home is very difficult for them. We have bought maize to distribute to the students with the first FOTIS donation of CHF 2’500. As IVS is closed by law due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are not able to distribute the maize at the school but students have been collecting it from our Children’s Support Centre which is open. We also supplied each student with a mask. I attach a couple of photos though the distribution is ongoing and will take a couple of weeks – maize is very heavy so they take 10kg at a time and we plan to do a second distribution of another 10kg per student a little later. It may sound like a lot of food but as this is a staple, they do not eat much else and of course it will be shared with their families. At the moment there is an increase in hunger as the price of maize has increased by over 30% and rain has been so heavy that beans and early crops have failed.

 

International Village School ConnectSwiss

from Sierra Leone

We are so thankful for this support at this time.  We are currently supporting 50 of our student families with food and other essential supplies, another 50 families in our Gashora community, and many more with internet and phone access to continue online learning.  We are so proud of the incredible work our staff is doing to go above and beyond and stay connected to our students and make sure that they are taken care of during this lockdown.  As the country borders are closed as well as districts within the country, essential supplies have been hard to come by and prices have increased. Thank you so much for your generosity and always thinking of our students. 

 

Rwanda Girls Initiative

from Rwanda

FOOD AND NOURISHMENT IS PRIMARY. We first began with the distribution of cooked meals on a daily basis from the third week of March but then slowly transitioned to giving weekly rations to 1500 families. As I write this mail to you, we would have provided nearly 700,000 meals in the 87 slum communities that we are working with. We have also reached out to additional households in the neighborhood and nearby refugee settlements, since sharing resources for everyone’s wellbeing is very important for us.

 

Parikrma Humanity Foundation

from India

18 families have received food vouchers. The money received from the emergency fund will be distributed among the families that have been seriously affected. To do this, we will rely on the requests that parents have sent us and on a survey that we carry out to find out the real status of families. Thank you very much for your support.

 

Santa Marta

from Colombia

May I thank you very much indeed for FOTIS’ decision to assist the teaching community at WATU secondary during these very difficult times for them. Our main and urgent pre-occupation is to look for money to pay staff salaries which we have not been able to pay for three months now  because we did not receive school fees during the time students were are at home. Our staff have and continue to go through difficult times. These are people with families and who depend on job salaries to support their families. 

 

WATU

from Tanzania