Midtown Assistance Center provides timely assistance to the working poor to avoid families' descent into homelessness. Internet access is a basic need for functioning and thriving in today's society: students doing homework, parents locating and applying for jobs, and children developing skills that will be needed in the workplace.
Mundito provided $45,500 to Midtown Assistance Center to launch a Technology Assistance Program to furnish devices and internet access to low-income families in the Atlanta metro area.
Spring 2016: Resiliency
Managing trauma in the homeless and in their front-line caregivers
Richard Higgins and Margaret Graff spent ten days traveling in Nepal with Free the Slaves (FTS), meeting with slavery survivors and grass-roots groups working to eliminate slavery.
FTS works with grass-roots, regional, and governmental groups to progress on all fronts. They provide high-level guidance based what they have learned from their anti-slavery work in other countries, provide a modest amount of economic assistance, and let the locals take full ownership of the process through community vigilance committees.
Mundito contributed $15,000 to cover three years expenses for the youth center.
We worked with two organizations to help alleviate homelessness in Atlanta. With Nicholas House, we provided funding to transition five homeless families into stable housing. With Chris 180, we funded a youth drop-in center that provided social services to stabilize 25 homeless youths.
Mundito provided $29,500 to each organization to help stabilize the lives of homeless families and teens in Atlanta.
Spring 2021: Food insecurity in Atlanta
HELPING VULNERABLE POPULATIONS SURVIVE COVID'S CHALLENGES
There's not much room for being a kid when you and your parent(s) don't have a place to sleep. Thanks to generous supporters like you, Atlanta Children's Shelter is adding enrichment components -- music, art, fitness/dance, foreign languages -- into its programs, thereby helping homeless children mainstream into schools and preparing them to become life-long learners. With enrichment activities added to its curriculum, ACS will qualify for full accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and will be eligible for long-term funding channels that are not currently accessible.
Mundito provided $20,200 to Atlanta Children's Shelter to develop its enrichment program.
In the sprawling metropolis of Delhi, India, is the resettlement area of Madanpur Khadar, where thousands of families were relocated when various slums were bulldozed for development. Today a community of children in Madanpur Khadar works as ragpickers, low-tech recyclers who pick through garbage for items that can be re-used or resold. Without intervention, their future will look a lot like their present. It's just the kind of place where our friends at Plan do their best work.
Non-formal education, recreation, and counseling activities have been instituted at the center, serving 20 ragpicker children and their siblings (potential working children) who are not attending regular schools. Plan provided 100 first-aid kits to parents. The center is working to sensitize parents and the dump owner of the importance of education to improving their living conditions.
Fall 2015: Rebuilding in Nepal
Restoring normalcy to the lives of children in the earthquake zone
Year Up empowers low-income young adults to go from poverty to professional careers in a single year. Mundito partnered with Year Up Greater Atlanta to provide an intensive training program (six months of coursework, six months of corporate internships) to two ambitious Mundito Scholars:
Chicobi Frazier. "My family looks up to me as a role model. I don't want to live paycheck to paycheck."
Courtney Tyree. "I will work hard to own my own home. It inspires me to know that Mundito has my back."
Mundito provided $42,000 to Year Up Greater Atlanta to cover the expenses of the Mundito Scholars in their professional transition.
Fall 2018: Brighter futures
KEEPING TEEN MOTHERS IN SCHOOL
Fall 2019: Water and sanitation in Africa
HEALTHY OUTCOMES THROUGH SAFE WATER AND CLEAN LATRINES
Spring 2009: Refugee Family Services
Financial independence for victims of domestic violence
For refugees seeking a new life, metro Atlanta is a likely destination. Refugees typically receive 90 days of placement assistance from the US government. Then it's organizations like Refugee Family Services that help the newcomers mainstream into housing, schools, jobs, and social services.
Mundito helped five women to be placed in permanent jobs with benefits. Four of these women are now living violence-free, as are their children. Fifteen more women are receiving employment-related services: assessment of skills, job readiness, orientation to the American job market, and establishing contact with potential employers.
Mundito provided $15,000 to Atlanta's Refugee Family Services to support a pilot program for refugee women who are victims of domestic abuse.
The Sandy Springs Mission has a successful After-School Program helps immigrant children complete their schoolwork and provides extra academic help as needed. SSM proposed that Mundito provide funding to launch a new Life Skills Training program for children in grades 4-8 to increase their likelihood of finishing high school.
Fall 2010: Family planning
Giving families in Guatemala a better chance to advance
Mundito provided $15,000 to cover two years' funding for the Life Skills Training program.
Spring 2019: Homeless in Atlanta
HELPING TO REBUILD LIVES
Central America is literally teeming with children. In Guatemala, lack of information, distance to medical services, cost, cultural and language barriers, partner disapproval, and religious opposition all contribute to low contraceptive use. To those families who wish to control the number and spacing of their children, WINGS then provides solutions.
Mundito helping WINGS expand a project using a reversible contraceptive implant, Jadelle® that protects a woman from unwanted pregnancy for up to five years. We visited WINGS in spring 2016 stay up to date on their work and vision.
Mundito's grant of $21,000 provided Jadelle® implants to 500 women.
Mundito provided $15,200 to support Free the Slaves work in Ghana.
COVID has increased food insecurity in Atlanta. Mundito worked with two organizations to reduce food insecurity for two vulnerable populations.
(1) Working with the Atlanta Community Food Bank project, the Mundito project expanded the successful school pantry program that is part of the Atlanta Public Schools Carver Cluster.
(2) With Open Hand Atlanta, Mundito helped feed medically fragile and home-bound seniors by expanding the “immediate-demand” program to cover acute needs.
The Mundito campaign provided $42,000 to each organization to reduce food insecurity in Atlanta.
Spring 2015: Hitting the reset button
College scholarships for low-income women age 35+
Fall 2008: Free The Slaves
Removing children from a life of slavery
Mundito provided $30,500 to Free the Slaves to support its antislavery activities in Nepal.
Spring 2012: Home again
Helping soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq to readjust to family life back home
We worked with Plan International (together with Plan supporters in the Netherlands and England) to rebuild a school that was destroyed in the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Rebuilding schools is a critical step in restoring normalcy to the lives of children in the affected area. Without school and the support structure it provides, children are left to fend for themselves, unprotected, and are at increased risk of being trafficked into child labor. Girls face additional risks of becoming child brides or being sexually abused and exploited.
Mundito provided $44,000 to Plan International toward rebuilding the school. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we provided an additional $6,000 to winterize temporary shelters until the school is completed. Wow.
Fall 2016: Food crisis
saving lives in South Sudan
Prior projects as mundito foundation
We worked with Community Advanced Practice Nurses (CAPN) to launch a series of workshops to teach coping skills to professionals who work with the homeless: staff of CAPN, hospital emergency rooms, ambulance services, prisons, homeless shelters, law-enforcement officers, and firefighters. The workshops provide tools to maintain emotions of the professional and their homeless clients within a functioning range to avoid blowups or depression. .
Mundito provided $33,000 to CAPN to launch a one-year pilot program of resiliency workshops.
Fall 2007: Ragpickers' Youth Center, Delhi, India
Improving the lives of kids who work in A garbage dump
We've always been in the business of changing lives, but in this project with Action Against Hunger we were actually saving lives. South Sudan, already fragile after years of civil war, has been devastated by famine, and over one million people there are internally displaced. There has been a drastic escalation of severe malnutrition, particularly among children under five years of age.
Mundito provided $53,000 to Action Against Hunger for three months' emergency nutritional assistance to approximately 2,120 people in dire need.
We helped Plan International develop a program for keeping teen mothers in school: a financial allowance to cover school supplies, uniforms, and transportation, individualized follow-up to promote successful school year completion, and educational programs on violence protection, reproductive health, reinforcement of self-esteem, and planning for a secure future.
Mundito provided $61,102 to Plan International to scale up a pilot program in Guayaquil Ecuador that is helping teen mothers to remain in school.
Climate change threatens the food supply in vulnerable populations that have an urgent need to adapt to the new environment. We helped transform agricultural methods and economics in five Kenyan communities affected by climate change. Working with Action Against Hunger through five "mother-to-mother" support groups, we helped promote kitchen gardens and organic farming, supported community poultry farming, and provided seed funding to build income-generating activities.
Mundito provided $84,000 to Action Against Hunger to help transform the agricultural processes of communities in Kenya.
Fall 2006: Health center in Guatemala
Giving doctors a place to serve their patients.
Spring 2007: Samaritan House (Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency)
Life skills training for atlanta's homeless
This campaign supported social entrepreneur Akanksha Hazari in Mumbai, India, to develop m.Paani, a sustainable method to help lower-income people make a step up in health, education, or financial stability. In making everyday purchases at neighborhood convenience stores or in topping up a cell phone card, participants earn credit that can be redeemed for social benefits such as water filters, discounted visits to medical clinics, or educational children’s books. Mundito’s stipend supported the pilot program that proved the strength of the business model. We visited m.Paani in fall 2015 and were mightily impressed by Hazari and her team.
Mundito provided $42,000 to Ashoka - Innovators for the Public to support the work of social entrepreneur Akanksha Hazari in Mumbai.
Fall 2009: Quality Education in Healthy Environments
Improving facilities and hygiene in three schools in Nicaragua
Spring 2011: Youth in Crisis
Providing constructive direction before young people's lives go off track
Being young and alone on the streets of Atlanta is a recipe for disaster. Being gay in rural Georgia can be just as scary. Mundito supported two local organizations that help teens survive critical periods of desperation.
(1) Child sex trafficking is big business in Atlanta. We're helping Juvenile Justice Fund expand theirVoices project, which targets girls who are considered "high-risk" for being commercially sexually exploited. Workshops help girls develop self-esteem, set goals, learn appropriate sexual behavior, and develop money-management skills. All of these activities deliver the fundamental message of the dangers of commercial sexual exploitation.
(2) Teens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT) and who lack support from parents or other adults in their community are eight times more likely to consider suicide than their heterosexual peers. We're helping The Rainbow Center, a division of Jewish Family and Career Services, to implement the Sources of Strength (SOS) suicide prevention program with LGBT teens in Fannin County, Georgia. Adult advisors are training 40 student peer counselors.
Mundito provided $8,250 to each organization to implement the Youth in Crisis programs.
Spring 2013: Enrichment
Preparing homeless children for school
Access to clean water is the first step out of extreme poverty: fewer diseases, better health, brighter futures. Women and girls can pursue productive activities when their lives are not occupied by fetching water. We worked with two organizations:
Water for Good in Central African Republic, to construct a well in each of two villages and set up systems to keep the wells in working order, and
Lwala Community Alliance, Kenya, to install latrines in three villages and train local villagers to maintain sanitation in the latrines.
Mundito provided $36,000 to each organization to improve health in five villages.
Fall 2017: WINGS
Providing choices to families in remote villages
Spring 2014: College bound
Preparing Atlanta-AREA refugees for college
Spring 2018: Connected
INTERNET ACCESS TO LOW-INCOME FAMILIES
Fall 2011: Medical supplies to Guatemala
Sending a container of medical supplies to Hospitalito Atitlan
Over the period 2007-2021, Mundito Foundation and our amazing group of donors helped improve the lives of approximately 15,000 people in Atlanta and around the world. Total grants were over $1M, impressive results for a little foundation with no employees!
We're proud of our accomplishments and profoundly grateful to our donors who made these projects possible.
Team Mundito, here is a sketch of the great work you accomplished as Mundito Foundation.
You’ve heard reports about the difficulties encountered by returning soldiers who struggle to fit back in to family life in the U.S. Many returning service members suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or depression and anxiety. Their families experience a high rate of mental health and emotional difficulties as well. The VA provides comprehensive mental health services for the soldiers but does not offer family or reintegration therapy. That leaves private mental health organizations to fill the gap.
Mundito helped Odyssey Family Counseling Center (College Park, GA) launch a pilot program “Home Again” to treat military service members and their families during their reintegration. “Home Again” shifts the focus of treatment from the veteran as an individual to the family as a unit. Odyssey will utilize proven techniques to reduce the stress of reintegration and address mental health concerns. Odyssey professionals provide filial therapy (addressing the family as a whole), play therapy for children, and trauma treatments for veterans suffering from PTSD and related conditions.
Mundito provided $20,600 to provide mental health services to approximately thirty returning veterans and their families.
Fall 2020: Food insecurity in Kenya
MOVING TOWARD SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Education for girls is a major driver of economic advancement in developing countries. Girls who complete secondary education have fewer children and have them later in life, when they are more mature and can provide better upbringing. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, with per capita income of ~$1,500. It’s a relatively peaceful country where NGOs like Plan International can work without harassment. Since 2006, Plan has been managing a highly successful pilot program to help girls finish primary school.
Mundito provided $38,400 to Plan International USA to fund 48 four-year scholarships for girls to attend secondary school in Burkina Faso.
Guatemala is among the poorest countries in Central America, with infant mortality among the highest. A local private non-profit hospital, Hospitalito Atitlan, does the best it can with local staff and international medical volunteers, but the hospital lacks funds for basic medical necessities. Working with Atlanta-based Medshare. Mundito shipped a 40-foot container of medical supplies and equipment to Hospitalito Atitlan. Thanks to our generous donors, we provided additional funding to send MedShare's wizard biomedical engineer to train end users and technicians and to repair equipment already on site. We visited Hospitalito Atitlan with MedShare in spring 2016 and witnessed the huge impact of this project.
Spring 2020: Stabilization
PROVIDING THE BOOST THAT STABILIZES LIVES
Spring 2017: Airlift
A year of intensive training to build a new life
Fall 2013: Secondary education
Providing scholarships to girls in Burkina Faso
We again partnered with our friends at Plan USA to improve education in San Pedro de Lovago, a village of approximately 7,000 people in the cattle country of central Nicaragua.
A dominant characteristic of Nicaragua is its very young population. Plan International recognizes the urgency of educating those who will soon be running the country. Their child-to-child methodology empowers tomorrow’s leaders and augments the capacity of the educational system. Mundito improved hygiene and education in three elementary schools of San Pedro de Lovago: installed toilets in the main elementary school, trained children and adolescents to teach personal and community hygiene, and increased parents' awareness of the value of education.
Mundito provided $16,000 to cover this project.
WINGS provides family-planning services and cervical-cancer screening to low-income women in Guatemala. Mundito helped WINGS expand their mobile clinical services (now two vehicles, soon three) to reach rural areas of Guatemala where family-planning services are hard to come by. We are proud to support this organization that achieves stunning results with a limited budget.
Mundito provided $59,000 to WINGS Guatemala to expand the scope of their mobile clinics to reach more women in rural Guatemala.
Plan has been changing the lives of children in developing countries since 1937. We (in our previous incarnation as Tour de Life) asked them to propose a project in the village of Barranca, in the Izabal province, where we had been sponsoring a child for many years. They proposed that we help build a health center in the village: our team of donors would provide building materials, the Minister of Health would donate the land, skilled labor would be provided by the municipality, and the community would provide unskilled labor.
Tour de Life (the predecessor of Mundito Foundation) and friends donated $11,500 to cover the cost of building materials for the Barranca health center.
The homeless population is a frustrating problem that often seems intractable. Samaritan House (now Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency) helps to fix the lives of individuals who are ready to move forward. Their EDGE program (Earning Dignity...Gaining Employment) provides comprehensive daytime support services to homeless men and women seeking employment.
Mundito and friends donated $16,115 to provide housing and health insurance for a full-time volunteer for one year.
Fall 2014: Rewards
Social entrepreneurship in India using cellphones
Spring 2008: Atlanta's Sullivan Center
Preventing homelessness by helping individuals and families avert financial crises
Spring 2010: Life skills training
Teaching life skills to at-risk students
Working with Atlanta's Sullivan Center, we were able to extend a helping hand to help people avoid homelessness. The Economic Stimulus plan of 2008 (aka tax rebate program) was being launched, but the Sullivan Center staff was fully occupied with life-skills workshops, a food pantry, a community garden, and neighborhood youth programs. Sister Marie Sullivan told of twenty-plus benefits that are available – but largely unknown – to the working poor.
Mundito contributed $16,000 to The Sullivan Center's Earned Benefits Program to cover six months' salary for a case worker.
Mundito provided $27,000 to cover the shipping ($25,000) and the biomedical engineer's visit ($2,000).
Free the Slaves, an American nonprofit based in Washington DC, has developed a 25-year plan to end slavery worldwide. FTS identified a project that Mundito and friends could make happen: helping liberate children in bondage to fishermen on Lake Volta
A human trafficker was apprehended and charged to three years in prison for trafficking thanks to the work of Challenging Heights. This is the first time that the Ghanaian 2005 anti-trafficking law has been used to convict a trafficker in fishing-related slavery. Congratulations and safe-keeping for CH staff as they make inroads against organized trafficking networks.
During the critical period when COVID-19 was entering on the scene, we worked with two organizations to help the homeless and the working poor.
(1) We supported Intown Collaborative Ministries to help move approximately nine chronically homeless individuals from living on the streets and in encampments into permanent housing.
(2) We worked with Action Ministries to transition eight families from living in motels to stable housing and self-sufficiency.
Mundito provided $33,000 to each organization to reduce homelessness in Atlanta.
Fall 2012: Freedom
Working to eliminate slavery in Nepal
It’s hard to fathom the life of a refugee. You escape trauma in your home country to find yourself isolated from your traditional support structure; you struggle to build a new life in a foreign country with a different language and a vastly different culture. How can a student dream of college when no one in their family has ever finished high school?
Mundito provided $25,800 to International Rescue Committee Atlanta to develop a structured mentoring program that will help Atlanta-area refugees with career choices, standardized testing, college visits, and applications for college and financial aid.
We worked with Jeannette Rankin Foundation (JRF) to provide scholarships to low-income women. JRF scholarships function as a reset button for women who are determined to turn their lives around. Recipients are women age 35+ who earn less than $35,000 per year.
Mundito provided $34,000 to Jeannette Rankin Foundation to provide $2,000 scholarships to 17 low-income women.
Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved.