Did you know that around twenty million children under the age of 15 are visually impaired worldwide?

Sight is a precious sense that enables us to interact with our environment. It is crucial for orientation, communication and the overall experience of reality.

This new project will provide 30,000 visually impaired schoolchildren in the remote province of Binh Thuan, aged between 8 and 11, with eyeglasses that will enhance their quality of life and learning. Once their sight has been restored, the children benefit from private tutoring to help them catch up, with funding provided by local charity runs. Screening of 86 primary schools is also part of the action plan.

Recovering clear vision reassures children, helps them develop self-confidence, and enables them to dare to look at the world and to be enterprising. Supporting his vision also means offering him the opportunity to gain autonomy, learn and acquire new knowledge and skills, and contribute to his well-being. It also has a positive impact on her social life.

Discover the wonderful story of Nga, aged 9, whose father thought “she didn’t know anything like the others” and for whom the project has changed her life.

In view of the results obtained, FdnF strongly supports this project to provide glasses in 2024.

Kenya – A land of hope and future. The people of Busia County are suffering the consequences of deforestation and soil impoverishment, which has led to the invasion of striga weed, a parasitic plant that attacks maize and sorghum fields, affecting farmers’ work and harvests. The problem also reveals the disruption of the local ecosystem and the pollution that invades the homes of local residents. The consequences for the local population, which also indirectly affect the rest of the world, are significant.

FdnF actively supported and financed the Busia Eco-Action pilot project, which brought together national and international players to implement solutions that would benefit everyone in the long term. The pilot project was a success, thanks in particular to the implementation of push-pull technology, which protects farmland by inserting repellent plants around fields; the construction of 750 improved cookstoves, which provide healthier stoves, reduce deforestation and offer a positive alternative to wood consumption. Finally, the funds have also enabled the establishment of workshops that provide quality training in organic farming so that local communities can acquire the knowledge they need to achieve autonomy, self-sufficiency and practices that enable sustainable development.

In 2024, FdnF will support the development of the push-pull method, which respects the soil, biodiversity and surrounding ecosystems.

230 million of them have no identity. They are the so-called “ghost children”, with no access to schooling, healthcare or vaccination, and vulnerable to all kinds of trafficking.

They are a former international civil servant and a Swiss painter who have settled in the streets of Kinshasa in the DRC to protect these children. Their dream: to build a village for children collected from the streets. The village was imagined as a collection of domes, some of which have already been built.

The local association has been approved as an orphanage, and is now authorized to house abandoned children.

However, the aim is not to provide a temporary solution for these children, but to offer them a future, including accommodation, but above all an education.

To achieve this, it is essential to give these children an identity, which we have already begun in 2023 and will continue in 2024.

The phases of this project can be summarized as follows:

• Phase I: Identification of the children, granting them an identity (birth certificate enabling identity papers to be issued), reintegration into school and family rehabilitation if possible.
• Phase II: Sheltering orphaned or rejected children by building a village of domes, to be operated by our local partner (from 2025).

Destroyed mangroves, emptying seas: this is the sad reality that has been emerging in Senegal for several years now, as overfishing and climate change have already driven many fishermen into exodus.

Thanks to the efforts of a number of NGOs, the country’s natural heritage has already been restored, and in particular hundreds of hectares of mangroves in coastal areas.

In 2024, FdnF will be joining a project to help local fisherwomen develop good seafood mariculture practices. The aim of these practices is to ensure that new resources are continually developed, with the ultimate aim of stabilizing the exploitation of natural resources.

To this end, certain areas will be closed to fishing to allow the development of young seafood, while others will contain harvestable resources.

Our local partner is a collective of women fishermen who work in close collaboration with the local authorities, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the West African Marine Protected Areas Network.

This is the 1st time that such an approach has been attempted in Senegal at Joal-Fadiouth, and if the project succeeds, it will offer great hope of bringing life back to these areas that have been so devastated.