Monday, 12 February 2024, FOTIS celebrated the Chinese New Year, the year of the dragon, with a dinner at the China Garden Restaurant in Geneva. It was a great success and a very enjoyable evening with over 80 donors and friends participating in a sumptuous buffet of Chinese festive and traditional dishes. All funds collected help us to continue providing secondary education to hard working children who do not have the means to pay for it themselves. Thank you!
As Julie-Anne Braddock, FOTIS’s Treasurer shared in her speech that evening:
“Fund-raising events such as this remain an essential part of our work to enable us to achieve our goal of providing secondary education to hard working children who do not have the means to pay for it themselves. The cost of educating our students varies considerably, from CHF 100 per year to CHF 2,800 in certain structures. This is due not only to local prices, but also to what the school offers. Our partner in Jodhpur for example provides full-time boarding to girls from the remote villages in the Thar desert to guarantee them access to secondary education in a secure environment also offering them the chance to break with child marriages. Our partner in Honduras operates schools in remote mountain areas: they must provide transport for their students to get to school as they have to travel in challenging terrains, using dangerous roads, or in areas affected by high crime rates. In Sierra Leone our partner provides assistance to the best students who graduate from their primary school program, including secondary school books and access to a guidance counsellor to help them with their exam and university applications.
These are only three examples. All the projects require more than just the cost of school fees. Since COVID, prices have risen everywhere in the world. Previously with CHF 50,000 a year we could educate 100 students. This is no longer the case. This year we sponsor 107 students in 7 countries in 10 projects, it will not be possible without the generosity and support of our donors. We hope that this year we will have raised almost CHF 1 million since FOTIS’s inception!”