2014: Our Year in Review

The Forgotten International operates entirely on donations  

and focuses its limited resources into four project areas:  

Small Grants, volunteer service through our Fellowship Program, donations of needed Goods and Supplies, and Building Awareness of global poverty issues.

Our Small Grant Program

TFI makes targeted grants to trusted community organizations, village schools, charitable medical clinics and orphanages that make the most of their resources. We have been working with some of these grassroots organizations for years and are proud to support them.

Giving to India Programs

Tom Nazario made a visit to India at the end of March to check in on programs TFI supports in Delhi and Dharamsala and reconnect with their directors while leaving some funds with the programs that support women and children in need.

Tom Nazario pictured with teachers and staff of SWATI in New Delhi.

In Delhi Tom visited the SWATI Project and delivered a special gift from the students in the Atlas Club, a student-led high school club in Greenville, South Carolina, that each year raises funds for a specific TFI program. This year the students chose Swati which used the funds to replace some old computers for their computer classes. Tom also left donations with Lha, a Tibetan adult education program, the Tibetan Children's Village to cover the tuition and school fees for poor children who do not have sponsors, as well as an organization called YouthNet, which among other projects, provides education to rural children in Nagaland, in eastern India. A new project TFI adopted this year is the Zilla Parishad High School in Andhra Pradesh in southern India. With the help of generous donors, the students there now have a water filtration system. 

A plaque honoring donors to the ZPH school in Andhra Pradesh.

TFI also made gifts to three U.S.-based organizations that serve vulnerable communities around the world: One World Children's Fund which supports St. Vincent's Children of Kibera in Kenya, The Tibet Fund which serves the refugee Tibetan communities living outside of Tibet/China, and MedLend which provides healthcare services through their medical missions help women suffering from obstetric fistulas.

Children's Fund

TFI's Year-End Giving

Before the end of the year, TFI plans to make the bulk of our annual giving through our Small Grants Program to the grassroots organizations around the world that serve primarily women and children to help lift them out of poverty through education and basic health care. We greatly enjoy being able to make these gifts on your behalf. Thank you for making it possible for us to help others year after year through your ongoing generosity!

Our Fellowship Program

Through our Human Rights & Economic Justice Fellowship Program, TFI sends skilled volunteers to live and work abroad for a minimum of two months. Our Fellows work with village schools and grassroots organizations that serve some of the poorest people in the world.

TFI Fellows in Cambodia, Nepal and India 

This past year, our TFI Fellows were:

• Mr. Greg Rosen served at the Cambodian Child's Dream Organization in the rural villages of Siem Reap where he analyzed and organized data and produced reports that the CCDO can use to track the effectiveness of their nutrition and educational programs. He also created a data management system for the organization to use going forward.
• Ms. Kha Sok also served at the Cambodian Child's Dream Organization this summer. Kha worked directly with the local teachers at the school to improve trainings and collaboration between them and the CCDO staff. Her bilingual skills of English and Khmer as well as her personal background as a Cambodian native helped her connect with the local families, as well as the school children who saw her as a model to pursue their education.
• Ms. Dawa Gangshar worked in several communities in Kathmandu, Nepal, through the Snow Lion Foundation, a new agency TFI partnered with this year. She taught English classes every day to their middle school students and interviewed 45 seniors in an Elders' Home in order to create personal profiles for The Tibet Fund in the hope that sponsors can be found for them. We also asked Dawa to visit some charitable organizations in Kathmandu that TFI is researching for potential support next year. She did several jobs on a single trip and we are truly grateful to her for her efforts. (Dawa, pictured above, is having some fun with the younger children at Namgyal Middle School.)
• Mr. Toan Do, a recent law school graduate, worked with the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala, India, where he completed several reports that will be presented to the U.N. and also worked on the TCHRD's Annual Report documenting human rights abuses of Tibetans in China.
• Ms. Regan Smurthwaite is presently serving as an intern in New Delhi at the Parliamentary offices of Mr. B.J. Panda who works on raising standards for the extreme poor in his home state of Odisha. Regan has been working on sanitation issues during the current Parliamentary sessions.  It is a unique opportunity to be part of poverty alleviation at the government level.

New Fellowship opportunities for 2015 will be posted soon. Applications are due March 1.

Visit our website to learn about our Human Rights & Economic Justice Fellowship Program and read about the experiences  

of all of our former Fellows.

Our Awareness Campaigns 

Living on a Dollar a Day: Book

Our book Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor published by W.W. Norton / The Quantuck Lane Press came out this year and the response has been overwhelmingly positive! Author, Tom Nazario, and photographer, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Renée C. Byer, have been making presentations and giving media interviews since its release in April.

Tom gave talks in San Francisco at the World Affairs Council (above) and at The Commonwealth Club, as well as the Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs in the South Bay. Tom also spoke on a panel at the United Nations for their inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Day on November 19th, the world's largest gathering of women leaders and innovators in partnership with 144 countries. Tom spoke on the importance of education for girls and women to empower and equip them for future leadership roles.

We have many people to thank for hosting wonderful events for TFI highlighting our book: St. Ignatius Loyola church in New York, the Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI) in San Jose, Ascenda Law Group in San Jose, BNP Paribas bank in New York, Credo restaurant in San Francisco, the Bingham and Orrick law firms in LA and San Francisco respectively, and private events at the homes of our friends and supporters. Many thanks as well to all the guests who came out for our events this year!

Awards for Photography

Image of Fati, age 8, sorting through an e-waste dumpsite in Accra, Ghana, selected for "Best in Show" gallery tour. ©Renée C. Byer

Tom and Renée were also featured in many media articles and radio and TV interviews this past year, including with Bob Woodruff on ABC News. You can enjoy them all on our website along with Tom's panel discussion from the U.N.'s Women's Entrepreneurship Day.

Presentations and Book Signing Events

Future speaking engagements and book-signing events will be posted on Tom Nazario's website:

www.thomasnazario.com

We will also post to Facebook and Twitter:

www.theforgottenintl/facebook 

@theforgotteninl and @thomasnazario 

Living on a Dollar a Day is available for purchase through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound and Powell's books.

Consider Giving Our Book as a Gift to Friends and Family this Holiday Season!

Tom Nazario and TFI's Board Chair, Debra Fischer, presented   His Holiness with his own copy of Living on a Dollar a Day.

Living on a Dollar a Day: Documentary "One Sixth"

The working title of "One Sixth" is a reference to the fact that one in six people who share this planet with us lives on less than a dollar a day: 1.2 billion people!

Photo of Tom Nazario and Renée C. Byer on film set in LA by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

We are grateful to our donors and friends who specifically gave to this film project last year and saw the importance of spreading the message of compassion through another medium. We thank our field videographer George Rosenfeld for capturing footage from 10 countries around the world and to everyone giving their time to this project. Thank you for believing in this work.

Compassion Education

Tom Nazario was invited to speak to groups of high school and middle school students this year about having compassion for others and being more aware of the world around us.

Tom talking to students at Saint David's School in New York about compassion.

The middle schoolers at Saint David's school in New York City, NY,  were asked to write about three things they are grateful for in their lives in advance of Tom's visit, and after reviewing their essays and talking with the kids about their answers, he gave them the additional homework assignment of writing a thoughtful thank-you letter to express their gratitude to someone who has made a difference in their lives.

Tom will return to Viewpoint in January 2015 to spend more time with students in different classrooms and present some ideas of how the young people can get involved globally.

If you would like Tom to speak at your local school or youth group, please contact us!

A Hero of Compassion

Miguel Rodriguez, Director of La Sagrada Familia in Peru receiving an award from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Photo by Briana Forgie

Ways to Help TFI

All of TFI's work is a direct result of your generous giving. We are grateful for your support and kindness over the years and hope you stay engaged in our work in the years to come. Below are some of the ways you can and have helped us this year, and we greatly appreciate it.

Tom at one of our first signing events at the Goldstine home in Berkeley, CA.

If you are a member of a community organization and wish to have Tom Nazario speak to your group, please contact us.

The Gift of Time

Finally, we'd like to thank our volunteers who offered their professional skills to TFI this year and helped us in a variety of ways. Ms. Vivian Ho's accounting expertise has been a tremendous help to us. Mr. Shohil Kothari has been advising us on social media and our new website which will debut in the new year. Ms. Ayn Lowry has been volunteering with us regularly for the last couple years and helps us with our day to day tasks, which are a lot! Their gift of time is invaluable to us, and we couldn't do our work without their consistent help.

If you have an idea for an event, or would like to learn more about our programs, or would like to get involved in any way, please contact us by phone or email. We look forward to meeting with you.

The Forgotten International is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.  

Tax ID 26-1484826

All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

 THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

You can donate online or by mail:

P.O. Box 192066, San Francisco, CA 94119  

415-517-6942