Monthly Charity Donations - November's Funds will go to Main Springs Foundation

Every month AoIP donates 10% of our income from our website sales to a charity/fundraiser that is in immediate need, or is a choice from our AoIP community.

November's donation will go to Main Springs (the Janada L. Batechlor Foundation for Childrein) in East Africa. Our student, Margaret Paul had proposed this foundation for consideration.

Here are Margarets words about the foundation: 

An organization that I am deeply connected to is Main Springs, the Janada L. Batchelor Foundation for Children (JBFC). JBFC is a federally recognized 501c3 dedicated to alleviating extreme rural poverty in East Africa by providing compassionate, lasting, innovative change via safe refuge, education, access to healthcare, and economic sustainability through agriculture.

This organization, named after my mother and headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was founded in 2006 by my nephew, Chris Gates. Since its founding, I have watched the organization grow from a four-acre campus on the shores of Lake Victoria in the small village of Kitongo in Tanzania, to what is now a 70-acre campus. This JBFC campus is home to 56 vulnerable girls, educates over 400 boys and girls through their top-ranked primary and secondary schools, and provides access to healthcare to 400 local families. The flagship campus not only employs around 80 local East African staff, but also works hard to be as self-sustaining as possible, using their 35-acre permaculture farm to harvest around one ton of produce a month to feed the school children, residential girls, and staff.

The holistic model of JBFC has been so successful that they were asked by the Tanzanian government to replicate their campus in a second community in Tanzania, and are in fact, breaking ground later this year. JBFC is not only important to me in the sense that it keeps my mother’s legacy alive, but it is important because it is impacting the lives of thousands and creating brighter tomorrows for an entire community.

I recently visited the campus this past summer, after 7 years of not seeing the growth for myself, and I was truly blown away by the incredible progress this whole organization has made. I, of course, am supportive of my nephew and love what he’s doing, but this organization has become so much more than he, my mother, or our family - it is a movement that is changing lives and an entire community. And, after visiting and seeing all of the projects that JBFC supports, I am more passionate than ever to help it grow and succeed. 

Buy purchasing a class or gift certificate on our website in the month of November, you will be participating in making a difference for Main Springs.

Octobers's donation will be going to charity: water.