A Touch of Love Foundation
604 Hupa St., Ventura, CA 93001 805-641-2800 1-877-273-2549

Thank you for your generous support

A Touch of Love Foundation continues to provide essential services to those in desperate need, particularly children, in India including the tsunami affected area, Ghana, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and local projects in Southern California. As you may know, we are an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff in the U.S., so 100% of your contributions go to our programs. Any overhead costs, such as this web site, are covered by our sale of Indian crafts at fairs in Southern California.  These fairs also raise thousands for project  development.

   Our philosophy is to enable sustainable village development. We offer the services a community wants and needs and pay local people a fair wage to provide them, thus supporting the local economy.  We now employ 29 people at project sites, including doctors, nurses, a dentist, teachers, cooks, and social workers. We develop our programs personally, in conjunction with community leaders, and oversee them in person. We’re excited by    the growth of our ongoing programs and by our ability to add new programs to our mission of supportingthose in terrible need. Your participation, interest, and financial support constantly surprise, delight, and encourage us continue expanding and developing new programs to reach more and more children.

 NEWSLETTER

  SUPPORT FOR NEW ORPHANAGE IN GHANA

Sometimes timing makes us aware of a new project in need. We arrived in Ghana in January to see all the children and get their supplies. When we reached our second school project, it wasn’t open yet for the new term. So we went to the headmaster’s house and talked with him about the school and the children. He told us about an orphanage that had lost almost all of their funding and so he was giving them free education at his school. We immediately went to see it.
As the photos show, this orphanage is well built, the children are well dressed, and they even have a commercial baking center on the property to make bread and sell it for a small income. The problem is their two main donors stopped sending any money five months before we arrived. They could not pay school tuition fees and are struggling with food and daily supplies. After inspecting the orphange, talking with the children (who loved it there!) and going over the situation with the directors, we started sponsoring 10 of the children that day. We also went to the local store and bought boxes of some basic supplies that they needed. Now we send every quarter by wire transfer enough money to support the 10 children and keep them in school. Wayne also talks with the the two directors at least once a month to check on the children. 
  

   VICKI WITH CHILDREN IN JASIKAN, GHANA

 HOSPITAL FOR RURAL POOR IN INDIA

 
Every family in the world dreads the possibility that serious illness or accident could strike their family. Now add to that a family in poverty that would have financial ruin if this happened or simply could not afford to pay for medical costs at all. Many of our sponsor families are in this situation in rural India, especially from Dhablepuri.
Now they don’t have to worry. Our Director, who is a medical doctor, has built a small hospital outside of Kalkoop village and near Dhablepuri. Any patient he sees at our free clinics who needs serious medical help gets treated for free in the new hospital. To make it more effective, A Touch of Love Foundation just bought a new electrocardiogram machine for the hospital and supplied a full generator backup so it can get through the 4-8 hour power cuts a day without any interuptions to the work. How do you bring peace of mind to a poor family? This helps. 

LOCAL SUPPORT

Many homeless people need only a little help to be able to get and keep a job. Sometimes it’s new tools or hard toed shoes to qualify for a job. Sometimes it’s a new car battery or a license to keep a job they have. A Touch  of Love Foundation started a fund at our local partner Project Understanding to provide any person in their care who needs to keep or get a job the funds to do so. The funds are kept in advance so quick action can prevent a job loss or a job offer from going wasted. All of the above examples were real people who needed  tools, shoes, a car battery and a license to get or keep a job. Since Vicki and I are often out of the country when a need arises, we make sure that the solution is already in place. We hear the success stories in bunches when we deliver food each month or other supplies to the office. This has become  even more important as the weather turned cold at night.

Our support for the local low income tutoring center has had to increase 50% due to increased demand. Also, at Christmas time, we responded to a direct request to fill the gaps in the presents the low income drop in center needs to cover the middle age children. Using some of the beautiful gifts we have from our fundraising   events, we provided scarves, jewelry and beaded boxes to these kids. We added many other gifts for their general fund. 

    CHRISTMAS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC   It takes a lot more than just food and clothes to make a child have a childhood of hope and happiness. Many of our programs have reached a stable environment for the children. Now we wanted to add a fun and joyful component to the rigirs of a daily life of school and chores.
In December we gave a Christmas party to both our project sites in the Dominican Republic. The first was at the orphanage in Hugey where 18 boys had never eaten pizza. They have now! Vicki even came up with the idea of having the children pick one of the four different kinds of pizza themselves. They had never had a choice in what to eat, either before or after joining the orphanage. After dinner we played for hours in the backyard and with new toys. Then the dessert cups came out with chocolate, candy, mints and jelly beans. Some of the youngest children had much of the chocolate on their face. Isn’t that the fun of Christmas?
We help a school in “the hole of Bavaro” where many day laborers and Hatian immigrants live. They can’t afford to have a regular Christmas on their own, so we help put one on at the school grounds. The parents provided some food, then we went with the principle and bought whatever else was neccessary. Several church groups and other schools who had no place to go were also invited. In all we served over 600 chicken and rice dinners with a delicous dessert afterwards. Wayne carried about 150 of them to the children and Vicki parted the sea of children in front of him to reach the next table of 50 or so kids.