My Nonprofit Reviews

I have sponsored a Tibetan refugee child through TCEF since 2007, and a few years after that I added a Tibetan refugee elder to my sponsorships. I have visited my sponsees in India three times and have been very impressed by the help that TCEF provides. My sponsored elder lives in a two-room apartment with an attached tiny kitchenette and an outhouse on the edge of the jungle. Her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren all share a single bed in the one bedroom, and she sleeps on a small cot in the living room/dining room/all purpose room. Clearly, this family lives in extreme poverty. Every time I visit she thanks me profusely for helping her and her family financially. I don't know how she and her family would get by without the money I send them through TCEF. The student I currently sponsor is a sweet girl whose family could never afford to send her to school. She gets excellent grades and my sponsorship will undoubtedly help her break out of the poverty that her refugee family has suffered. Karma Tensum, who founded and continues to run this non-profit is an amazing person and a good friend. He makes sure that I receive regular updates and photos of my sponsees, and clearly cares about all of them. As a child his own education was funded through a foreign sponsorship. He ultimately earned a masters degree from Harvard -- not bad for a poverty-stricken child whose mother carried him over the Himalayas when he was two years old, and got a job breaking rocks with a hammer for road projects in India to feed him. TCEF is one charity that I know for a fact helps some of the poorest people in the world break out of poverty and even to thrive. Without TCEF, my sponsored elder would be begging in the streets. Without TCEF, my sponsored student would be working for a pittance to help support her family despite her young age, and would probably never even learn to read, much less get a decent education. Please consider sponsoring a student or an elder, or even one of each. After all, you can't help every poor person in the world, but you can make a world of difference in the life of one or two.