Finding Freedom Through Friendship Inc

From building homes for vulnerable families to kick-starting businesses for women, Finding Freedom through Friendship is making a difference at the individual and community level in Guatemala and Egypt by supporting widows and their children through nutrition, medical care, youth education and lodging until they graduate with a small business. Often a gift of husbandry (chickens, goats, sheep or cows) are given for a source of food (milk, meat & eggs) and the sale of the offspring can provide income to purchase food and medicines. We offer life skills training by providing life-skills vocation to women and youth, which opens the doors to find a job or start a micro enterprise. Examples of training includes sewing, baking, hair styling, makeup artist, husbandry, language, and gardens. FFF also sponsors Higher Education
through the annual support of 2-4 college students (limited because college expenses are high since they often cover tuition, books, exams, transportation & lodging). The final tier of our program offers Micro loans. Our community health events offer free physical and eye checkup, free medicine and raises the cognizance of health issues in the community.

Finding Freedom through Friendship has paid in-country staff (referred to as facilitators) members that we utilize in both Egypt and Guatemala who effectively carry out our program accomplishments. These facilitators carry out our monthly home visits to our widows, shop for and deliver the food staples we donate, oversee the needs of our scholarship program and oversee construction of the homes we build. They also provide the receipts for purchases, photos of events, and mentoring of the families. We currently have 8 facilitators in charge of 53 families.
In addition, FFF board members visit Guatemala and Egypt twice a year to oversee the work of the facilitators and families and to administer community projects.
We continue to enjoy working with a number of other nonprofits and partners in both countries that assist us in community/cultural acceptance, logistical methods to carry out our community projects and transportation and our health events.

By utilizing in-country Egyptian and Guatemalan staff members and a selection committee, FFF is able to screen our applicant participants, monitor their progress and assess the utilization of our funds spent on desirable outcomes. Our executive board members also visit the respective countries we work in to oversee the progress of our facilitators and participants.

In 2017, Finding Freedom through Friendship (FFF) launched the Karma Women's development Center in Minya, Egypt. At KWDC we have developed and implemented 22 classes for 243 Egyptian students who had a 94% attendance rate. Of the 243 students, 95 of the women started a micro business. Twenty-two Guatemalan women have graduated from Finding Freedom through Friendship after receiving micro business supplies, kiosks and mentoring.
FFF has continued to increase the quality of life for 36 women and their children by placing them in permanent housing.
In the future we plan to increase the number and type of classes we offer at the Karma Women's Development Center in El Myna, Egypt.
Our micro finance program has a payback rate of 97.9 percent. We plan to offer this program to more women heads of households in Egypt and Guatemala.
Continuing our scholarship program in both countries is a high priority. We plan to increase the scholarship program in Egypt and Guatemala from the current number of 56 children to 75. This will include all levels of education including high school and university classes.
We plan to increase the number of houses we built or rehabilitate from 3-4 per year to six per year.
Perhaps most importantly, we will be launching a community health clinic in remote Northwestern Guatemala in an area where there is currently no medical care of any kind. We also will be providing another health clinic in Egypt in 2022 with the expectation that we will provide free medical and pharmaceutical care for approximately 800 Egyptian women and children as we have in the past.