EMBRACE RELIEF FOUNDATION INC

The world produces enough food to feed all 7 billion people, but 11.3% of the world's population is hungry. According to World Food Programme, 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world. And believe it or not, 1 in 6 people in the United States face hunger with 49 million Americans struggling to put food on the table. The primary cause of hunger, poverty, stems from people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict and hunger itself.

Embrace Relief has been organizing food drives both regularly and on special occasions like holidays to help alleviate this problem. To this day, Embrace relief distributed over 1 million lbs of food both domestically and internationally to people in need in over 40 countries. A great portion of this food was distributed directly to people through delivery or community events, while the rest were donated to regional food banks and local pantries. Donors of our organization volunteered in soup kitchens, homeless shelters and community gatherings.

Embrace relief also built a soup kitchen in Malindi, Kenya with regard to the poverty and increasing refugee population in that region. The facility can serve hot meals up to 3,500 people a day and is still regularly supported by our organization.

Despite the fundamental role of water for human health, survival, and development, every one out of nine people do not have access to clean water today. 2.5 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation, and every minute a child dies from a water-related disease.

People (especially women and children) walk far and wide to reach out to the closest water source (more than 140 million hours a day), sometimes putting their lives at risk and mostly keeping them from more essential activities like education. Additionally, while every dollar spent on water and sanitation yields a return of four dollars, the estimated annual loss from lack of access to water results in a 260-billion-dollar loss.

The emergency solution adopted by our organization is installing water wells with handpumps in regions with little or no access to drinking water. In most of the countries with no permanent fresh surface water, it is possible to provide access to clean water by utilizing the underground water resources. To this day, our organization has opened over 350 water wells in Africa and Haiti, providing approximately 350,000 people with access to clean water and improving their health and living conditions.

A separate website (buildawaterwell.org) was also launched on World Water Day 2016, allowing our volunteers to kick-start a campaign and realize their project through crowdfunding.

Hot weather, malnutrition, and climate conditions in Africa cause many people to lose their sight to cataracts at a young age. It is estimated that two million Africans experience vision problems stemming from cataracts. An insufficient number of doctors, as well as a lack of financial resources translate to thousands with cataracts living in darkness despite the availability of a cure for a small cost.

With a fully equipped mobile clinic, Embrace Relief regularly administers health screenings throughout Africa, and can conduct up to 30 cataract surgeries a day.

On top of that, Embrace Relief is currently working on a medical center project in Haiti which would provide essential healthcare to thousands of people in need.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011 which has left an estimated 400,000 people dead, Syrians have been trying to escape the tumult at home and trying to find a safe haven in a different land, especially in the neighboring countries. One of the biggest challenges these people face is the harsh winter conditions which make an already dire situation even worse. Having witnessed the troubles they’re facing with, Embrace Relief volunteers in the US had taken initiative and organized annual blanket & coat drive campaigns to assist them for the last four years.

In 2013 and 2014 Embrace Relief shipped blankets and winter clothes amounting to four and six containers respectively, to aid displaced Syrians in Turkey, the host country to the greatest number of Syrian refugees in the world. As the unfortunate situation in the region did not improve, we repeated that campaign in 2015 with an even bigger success. Approximately 40,000 blankets, 33,000 coats and 7,500 pieces of various clothing have been collected over a hundred drop-off locations in 2015 alone, and the campaign created great awareness on both local and national levels. A similar campaign was repeated in 2016 for Syrian refugees stuck in refugee camps in Iraq. To this day, 29 containers of relief goods were delivered to Syrians in need.

On top of the blanket and clothing drive campaigns, Embrace Relief also ran a program to support the education of Syrian children and sponsored facilitation costs of a private primary school run by Syrian refugees in Istanbul for six months. Embrace Relief also sponsored a soup kitchen serving hot meal up to 4,000 refugees in the border town of Kilis, Turkey for a whole year. Similarly, Embrace Relief has been working with local and national organizations in the US to help acclimate incoming refugees to the US and assisting families who have recently arrived in the country with guidance and material support.

Embrace Relief has an online English program for refugees, which matches refugees to English speaking individuals so that they can learn and practice conversational English through group classes and one-on-one lessons. To date, 157 refugees are currently receiving weekly online English classes in order to facilitate an easier transition to a safer country.

Embrace Relief works with communities around the world to improve living conditions for children by renovating orphanages and schools as well as providing a method to cover the costs of food, education, and health care. Our goal by supporting children in underdeveloped nations is not to create further dependency, but to give them opportunities to thrive in their current environments allowing them to create sustainable futures in a safe and nurturing environment.

Through the Raise the Children program, which focuses on helping orphaned children in Nigeria, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania, approximately 1,100 children have been provided with safe housing, food, clean water and education.

In addition to this assistance, Embrace Relief has renovated the Amani Orphanage in Tanzania and four orphanages in Haiti.

Embrace Relief recognized the integral role education plays in alleviating poverty, so our education support program tries to create opportunities for students both at a local level and around the globe through programs, such as our GradPlus and ACT-US initiative.

Locally, the GradPlus program was created to serve the educational needs of youth in Paterson, New Jersey, which has a 29% poverty rate. GradPlus is an academic program designed to help at-risk students complete high school and successfully transition to college or vocational training through our provided tutoring sessions for the SAT and CASAS, mentorships and guidance with career-readiness opportunities.

Globally, the ACT-US seeks to provide digital literacy and Information and Communication devices to students in Uganda and Tanzania by equipping K-12 schools with 324 computers with Endless OS technology. This provides students with limited access to the internet for fundamental classes and the opportunity to contribute to Africa’s long-term economic development and prosperity.

In addition, Embrace Relief has also provided necessary school supplies through several campaigns, merit and need-based scholarships and internship opportunities for US college students, and books for refugee schools and libraries.

Embrace Relief is providing jobs and skill training for women in Haiti, Kenya, and the United States. In the Haitian Creole language, “Fanm” means women, and “Fanmi” means family. At Embrace Relief we believe that without "fanm" there is no "fanmi". We hold onto the idea that communities will progress quicker, and more families will remain together with better accessibility to jobs and education for women. By providing more women professions, there will be a lesser need for dependency and support from others, and women will not experience desperation to feed, clothe, and educate their children. This will further create more equal opportunities for children as well.

We utilize the artisanal craft of the Haitians and Kenyans to create beautiful handmade jewelry and clothing. In the United States, Embrace Relief provides vocational training in e-commerce for women, teaching them how to sell products on eBay and launch their own business. To this day, 90 women were given vocational training in the above mentioned countries.

Embrace Relief also began RISE, an educational program that assists women seeking better lives for themselves and their families. RISE empowers young women in Tanzania in two ways. One is through higher education support, enabling them to become self-sufficient with a financially stable life. The other way is through certifications in Educational Leadership and Management training. This allows them to be to employed in more prominent, managerial roles in educational institutions and thus creating more paths for empowerment of future generations of women.