Turimiquire Foundation: A Beacon of Light in a World of Gloom

I thought I’d reproduce here a part of the Thank You letter I receive for my annual contribution to the Turimiquire Foundation, a non-profit whose purpose is to improve the quality of life for the poorest of the poor in a remote part of Northeastern Venezuela.  These folks have made a huge difference in the lives of tens of thousands of families, and, in my mind are noteworthy for two main reasons:

a) They have very little overhead.  About 95 cents out of every dollar donated actually produces direct benefits for its clients, and

b) They concentrate on the aspects of their clients’ lives that mean the most: education and family planning.  When you think about it, these are two sides of the same coin and serve to re-enforce one another: educated people have healthier, stronger, and smaller families, and smaller families tend to promote education as a core value.

I struggle to think of anyone on Earth I admire more than my dear friend Willie Bloomstein, the organization’s treasurer, who writes in part:

⇒ In reproductive health, we reached over 3300 new women and families with family planning services, and offered 130 workshops in responsible sexuality to over 2000 adolescents. Since 1997, we have cumulatively delivered over 79,000 Couple Years of Protection (CYPs) the metric by which USAID measures family planning achievement – to more than 35,000 rural and low-income urban women in four rural counties, making an enormous difference in the lives of families who do not normally have access to these critical human services.

⇒ In education, we provided scholarships to 45 rural high school students and to 15 scholarship graduates now in college. Since 2003, over 450 rural students have attended high school for the first time through our scholarship program, and three of our students have now graduated from college, a true precedent for this remote rural community.

 Those wishing to make a philanthropic contribution will travel a long way to find a beneficiary more laser-focused on making this world a better place.