GRACE CARES INCORPORATED

Outstanding organization helping community leaders around the globe make their communities stronger, healthier and smarter!

GRACE Cares has worked with GuateBuena, a project in Guatemala my husband founded when we were living there, in order to provide continued to support to its local leaders since we left. With GRACE Cares' support, the project was able to continue and has now grown to serving more than 400 women in solidarity groups and to branching out with a social enterprise giving the women work opportunities. We are profoundly grateful to the support GRACE Cares has offered.

I'm the director of Project Hearts, a small nonprofit based in Baitoa, Dominican Republic. GRACE Cares helped our founder, Ruben Ottenwalder start our organization back in 2011, and since then GRACE's expert staff have been guiding us in achieving our mission, and helping us increase our impact.

What sets GRACE Cares apart is how personal they are with each of their partner organizations, all of which are scattered around the world, with varied challenges and thus varied missions. Rather than trying to provide "cookie cutter" solutions, they listen and understand the unique obstacles and goals that we all have, and work with us to develop equally unique opportunities for the communities we serve.

GRACE Cares is committed to genuine community development that will create long-lasting change for beneficiaries. That means that they are just giving out consumibles, but rather are investing in the education and empowerment of individuals, who can then invest in their families and communities. This offers participants the freedom to care for themselves, rather than teaching them to constantly depend upon others. This is what results in true change, and GRACE is facilitating such transformation in some of the most rural, under-served areas of the world.

The GRACE Cares' staff are also refreshingly realistic when it comes to working in the nonprofit world. They understand that it is difficult, and that quite often we don't get to feel the "warm fuzzies" from our service. Yet they persevere in providing their partners with support, as well as personal encouragement.

Thanks to support from GRACE Cares, we have empowered 80 women through health education, improved the health of more than 2,974 people through clean water, protected the futures of hundreds of teens through sex education, and much more.

I have been contributing to this charity because I admire the work they accomplish in education, in health, in clean water, and other essential needs of communities. The workers are mostly young people determined to improve life for others. I love their spirit and dedication to make our world a better place.
Susan

Youth Cultural Promotion Association (YOCUPA) has been a friend of Grace Cares for over 5 years. It came into contact with Dr Zoe Kopp, who shared an inspiring story of how Grace Cares International was touching the lives of many with little resources. Our organisation has been following, learning and getting inspirations from the works that Grace Cares International has been going with other partners. Then YOCUPA shared with Grace Cares International its newly introduced Innovation called 7ASIDE-Anti Sexual Harassment Action Groups (7ASIDE-ASHAGs).

Early this year, Grace Cares International officially partnered with YOCUPA under the 7ASIDE-ASHAGs project which aims at preventing sexual and gender based violence in learning institutions, places of worship, workplaces, homes and community spaces.

Grace Cares International has become the first ever organisation to finance the implementation of the 7ASIDE-ASHAGs model since its official launch in March 2021. This has made YOCUPA realise its desires and dreams to share the innovation with stakeholders, implement its Theatre for Community Action pedagogy in schools, places of worship and community spaces and finally create and establish the Anti Sexual Harassment Action Groups (ASHAGs) which will in turn conduct outreach activities beyond the live theatre performances.

This is only a dream come true with the support of Grace Cares International. We are excited, grateful and overwhelmed by the support that we are receiving from Grace Cares International beyond financing. The technical support, the participatory programming and flexible project implementation so far shown to us by the Grace Cares International team, YOCUPA 7ASIDE-ASHAGs only wishes Grace Cares International all the best in generating adequate resources to support its beneficiary organizations like us.

This is a great organization. Though I am a new intern, I can see the current influence that GRACE Cares' has with its current projects. While working abroad I was able to observe GRACE Cares' ground work in the Dominican Republic first hand -what a wonderful initiative they have!

I co-founded GRACE Cares in 2002 with my husband T. Namaya and Kenneth Giancola. Both Namaya and I have worked internally in health and community development since the 1970s. We started GRACE Cares as we wanted to find a way to help local heroes; that is, people who want to help their communities by helping to get water, housing, healthcare, food or education for their community. We have since provided technical and financial assistance to over a dozen projects in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America. We have no paid staff, just have a consulting book keeper, we are run by volunteers and have intern positions. So you can be sure your funds will be used for our projects and our local heroes make sure your funds will be used wisely. Visit www.gracecares.org to find out more!
Yours,
Zoe Kopp