Four people, a committee and a store
Small on purpose, and clearest about the things we will not do.
Knowing what we are not
The foundation started in 2019 when a teacher wrote asking for books and two of us drove a box to a boat. For the first year we said yes to everything that was asked of us, which sounds admirable and was the least useful the foundation has ever been.
We were asked for emergency help we were not equipped to give, for cash for households, for medical appeals, and for sponsorship of named children. We tried some of it, badly, and the committee eventually wrote down what we do not do and stopped apologising for the list. It is on the front of this site now rather than buried, because a donor deserves to know what their money will not be spent on before they send it.
What is left is narrow and it works. Reading corners in schools that asked for one, after somebody has gone and looked at the room. A store where donated goods are checked, listed and packed so that a teacher is not inventorying boxes in their own time. Clean up mornings where everything is weighed so that a council has a record rather than a memory.
And two rules that never move. No photographs of children and no family named anywhere. No figure printed here without the date it was last confirmed, and no total that counts itself.
What we hold to
No sponsoring a child
In any form. A child is not a product and a photograph is not a receipt.
Nothing described as audited
Because none of it is. When that changes we will say who did it.
A school asks first
We have never put a corner into a school that did not ask for one.
The four of us
Aishath Nuha
Arranges every island visit and runs the briefing. A teacher for nine years before this, which is why she asks a school what it needs rather...
Mohamed Thasneem
Closes the books every month and reads them out at the dinner once a year. Will give you the last closed figure and the date on it, and neve...
Ibrahim Saif
Runs the Saturday sorting and decides what can go to a school. The person who has to say no to a well meant box of textbooks from 2009.
Hawwa Reema
Chairs the meeting that agrees each target and the date it is confirmed on. Has twice talked the committee out of a campaign it could not ho...
Come to a store Saturday first
No briefing needed, nothing to pay, and three hours of sorting will tell you more about this foundation than any page here.