TPRF - The Prem Rawat Foundation

Saturday

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | The Prem Rawat Foundation Gives Grant of US$20,000 for Cambodian Children’s Fund

The Foundation’s second grant to CCF will provide food for over 1,000 people in toxic landfill area of Phnom Penh

Los Angeles, March, 2009 —The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has given a grant of $20,000 to the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF), its second grant in two years, to provide food for 1,076 people trying to survive in the landfill district of Seung Meanchey, one of the most toxic garbage dumps in Southeast Asia. The children living here typically spend their days scavenging for food and recyclables, regularly suffering injury and disease as well as malnutrition. The estimated child mortality rate is 20%.

The TPRF grant will provide food year-round for four residential educational facilities, the Community Child Care Center for preschool children, and the Community Café. Scott Neeson, Founder and Executive Director of CCF, expressed, "The Cambodian Children's Fund serves one of the most impoverished and deprived populations in the world. The Prem Rawat Foundation grant provides our community with an assurance that their basic food requirements will continue to be met. With so many ambitious plans to save the world, the beauty of Prem Rawat's work is in its simplicity: feed the impoverished."

CCF’s four residential educational facilities literally rescue children who have been relegated to a life in the dump, providing them with food, medical care, education and preparation to beat the odds and live productive lives. TPRF funds will directly provide the 440 children three nutritious meals and a snack six days a week and lunch for 140 staff members, many of whom come from the same impoverished area.

TPRF’s grant will also provide two meals and a snack for 58 children aged two to six and 27 staff members of Community Child Care Center, where children are not only fed but given shelter, healthcare, immunizations, preschool education and training in hygiene while their parents attempt to earn a meager living.

Remaining funds will go to the Community Café, which offers subsidized meals made fresh daily from local produce for an average of 500 people a month.

CCF reports that, “Even in a short period of time, the change in these young children is remarkable. Within several weeks of improved nutrition, these previously malnourished children demonstrate more energy, focus and alertness. They show healthy height and body mass increases, and damaged hair and skin begin to heal and show new vitality.”

Photos courtesy of Cambodian Children’s Fund

About The Prem Rawat Foundation
The Prem Rawat Foundation was created in 2001 by Prem Rawat, known also as Maharaji, and has a dual mission of bringing his message of peace to people around the world and providing essential humanitarian aid to those in need. TPRF partners with other humanitarian organizations to bring food, water and rapid disaster relief where it is most needed.

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | TPRF GIVES US$25,000 to Provide 1,000 People with Access to Clean Water

February, 2009 —The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has made a grant of $25,000 to help the internationally known WaterAid charity continue its projects throughout Asia and Africa to provide people access to safe water and proper sanitation.

The findings are staggering: As many as one in eight people in the world (884 million) do not have access to safe water; as many as 2.5 billion people (40% of the world’s population) do not have access to sanitation; and about 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.

A major focus of The Prem Rawat Foundation is helping ensure that people have sustainable access to clean water as a first step in moving out of the cycle of poverty and disease.

The Foundation has provided clean water to 2,500 schoolchildren in rural Thailand; 15,000 in Pakistan; and both food and water to hundreds of children who had been rescued from a life in the garbage dumps in Cambodia.

In Africa, TPRF has helped provide water wells and sanitation facilities in 23 villages in Ghana, including training local people to manage the facilities and keep them in good repair; and has provided clean water systems for 11,000 in Mozambique and 40,000 in Niger, where one in five children die before the age of five, many due to diseases carried in their water.

This latest grant from TPRF continues the Foundation’s efforts to help the world’s poorest people gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.

Photo credit: WaterAid/Marco Betti

About WaterAid
WaterAid is an international charity based in the United Kingdom, whose mission is to overcome poverty by enabling the world's poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education. Founded in 1981, with a vision of a world where everyone has access to safe water and sanitation, WaterAid is currently working in 11 African countries and four Asian countries. http://www.wateraid.org/uk/

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | TPRF’s Grant of US$50,000 Provides Eye Care for 9,700 People

Los Angeles, January 2009 — The Prem Rawat Foundation donated $50,000 to sponsor five eye clinics in poor, rural areas of India during November and December, 2008, with its partner, Premsagar Foundation India.

Clinics were held in Ranchi (four days), Hyderabad (three days), Jaipur (three days), Dausa (two days), and Delhi (four days). Doctors and optometrists examined nearly 9,700 people, giving eye drops for infections to over 8,500 and providing over 6,400 pairs of glasses. Cataracts were identified in over 1,000 people, who were referred to specialists.

“This camp gives eyes to the blind,” said Maheshwari Devi, one of the attendees, “I was given spectacles after my eye examination. Now I shall be able to do my routine work without difficulty.”

Over 15 million people in India suffer from blindness, and it is estimated that 75% of them could have preserved their sight with the proper care. (“The Times of India,” October, 2007.) Yet the country continues to suffer from a severe shortage of eye-care professionals and lack of eye care for its poorest residents, resulting in limited educational and economic opportunity for them.

“It’s an honor to be a part of this camp serving people who don’t even have primary health care services,” said Dr. Ratnesh Kumar, one of the attending physicians who donated his time to provide care. “This eye clinic offers selfless service to a needy population in their own neighborhood at no charge.”

For the past five years, TPRF has regularly held eye clinics throughout India, with doctors and eye specialists who have donated their services. To date, nearly 30,000 people have had their eyes examined, nearly 18,000 have received eyeglasses, over 22,000 have received eye drops, and 2,400 instances of cataracts have been identified and referred for further medical care.

“It has been difficult for me to read and identify words, but now it is easy for me to see things,” said Mr. Hari Narayan, from the village of Lakhana. “I was even given eye medicine. Now I can do some reading and writing work.”

About Premsagar Foundation India
The Premsagar Foundation India, a nonprofit public charitable trust, carries out various projects for the benefit of the poor and needy in India.

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | TPRF Funds Breakfast Program for Elementary School Children in the Yucatán

Los Angeles, December 2008 — The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has extended its work with Compartimos Bienestar y Salud Para Los Niños Maya I.A.P. in Mexico to provide a breakfast program for the 59 students of Alfredo Peniche Erosa elementary school in San Pedro Chenchela, Espita, Yucatán, through the end of the school year in June 2009.

San Pedro Chenchela is a small Mayan community with only one elementary school. Typically, the children there come from families trying to cope with severe poverty. They arrive at school hungry, as the only breakfast available to them at home is a hot drink made from soaking burned tortillas in water and sugar, simulating a kind of “coffee,” sometimes accompanied by a taco with a little tomato. Malnutrition in the area is rampant.

Now children arrive 45 minutes early for school to be served a nutritionally-balanced breakfast. The new program has become a community effort. Each school day, two teachers supervise the meal and four different mothers come to prepare the food while learning, in the process, the basics of clean food preparation and nutrition. While the meals are now quite substantial, initially they were small. Since the children were accustomed to eating so little, they might have become sick from too sudden a change.

Maria Jose Medina Diaz, President of Compartimos Bienestar y Salud Para Los Niños Maya, was moved to tears when she first saw the eager smiles on the faces of the children as they ate with such obvious enjoyment. “The teachers told us that the children were becoming more attentive in class and, in general, appeared more content,” she reported. “And the mothers often smiled and laughed as they learned to prepare the breakfasts. They seemed to be very happy for their children.”

TPRF first partnered with Compartimos Bienestar y Salud Para Los Niños Maya I.A.P. in 2006 to provide the supplies needed to replace roofs on water- and wind-damaged homes in two farming communities in the Cancun area after Hurricane Wilma, and later in 2007 to bring relief to flood victims in the state of Tabasco.

Photos Courtesy of Maria Jose Medina

About Compartimos Bienestar y Salud Para Los Niños Mayas I.A.P.
Compartimos Bienestar y Salud Para Los Niños Mayas I.A.P. is a nonprofit organization under the laws of Mexico which provides, in collaboration with other national and international foundations, services and goods to children and families suffering from malnutrition problems and extreme poverty in the Yucatán State of Mexico.

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | TPRF Gives US$15,000 Grant to Provide Clean Water to 60 Schools in Pakistan

TPRF and Pakistani Rotary Club bring clean drinking water to 20,000 students

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Los Angeles, October 2008 — The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has made a contribution of $15,000 to the Rotary Club Lahore Mozang, which will add $5,000 in matching funds, to provide clean drinking water for 60 schools in the Punjab region of Pakistan serving approximately 20,000 elementary through high school students.

“An estimated 250,000 child deaths occur each year in Pakistan due to waterborne disease,” according to USAID. “Waterborne infections such as cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery also burden the public health system and can impose significant economic losses.”

The Rotary Club will purchase a water pump and cooler for each school and provide them to the Ghazali Education Trust (GET) for installation. The water system will become an ongoing community responsibility, expected to benefit students as well as their families and their communities by decreasing the spread of disease and improving educational opportunities.

Established in 1995, GET is a nonprofit government organization operating 270 schools in impoverished and rural areas of Pakistan, many of which have no access to piped water. Within four months, 60 schools will benefit from new water pumps with electric motors, purifying equipment and cooled storage tanks, essential in a country that has summer weather nine months of the year.

Photos Courtesy of Ghazali Education Trust

About Rotary Club Lahore Mozang
Rotary Club Lahore Mozang, a nonprofit organization, is an individual Rotary Club belonging to Rotary International. A worldwide organization of more than 1.2 million business, professional and community leaders, Rotary Clubs provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. Clubs are nonpolitical, nonreligious and open to all cultures, races and creeds.

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | TPRF Gives US$20,000 to Provide Eye Care for Thousands in Gaza

The Prem Rawat Foundation aids St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital, treating over 17,000 people in war-torn Gaza

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Los Angeles, November 2008 — The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has made a contribution of $20,000 to help St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital continue providing care in conflict-ridden Gaza. The only charitable provider of eye care in Gaza, St. John is open to all patients, regardless of race, religion or ability to pay.

St. John Eye Hospital is one of the few medical care institutions currently functional in the Gaza territory, where all infrastructure, including the healthcare system, is in nearly complete collapse.

It is now estimated that over 80% of the population of Gaza is dependent on humanitarian assistance. According to a March 2008 report* by a consortium of humanitarian agencies including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Save the Children UK, 70% of households in Gaza subsist on $1.20 a day, almost half the $2.30 that denotes “deep” poverty. Despite these conditions, the St. John clinic has managed not only to remain in operation, but to treat over 17,000 people in 2007, which is 3,600 more than in 2006.

Dr. Jom’a El Jazzar, head of the St. John Eye Hospital Clinic, said, “The donation from The Prem Rawat Foundation will have a very real and demonstrative impact on our ability to broaden and deepen our much-needed humanitarian services.”

The St. John primary and secondary care clinic in Gaza runs five days a week, offering surgery four days a week. When eye disease requires treatment that the clinic cannot provide, St. John coordinates the successful transfer of patients to its hospital in Jerusalem—a difficult feat in the volatile region.

While 80% of blindness is preventable with early diagnosis and proper treatment, blindness is 10 times higher in Palestine than in most Western countries. Blindness has economic consequences for an entire society—decreasing educational opportunities, raising unemployment and consequently decreasing tax revenue, while adding the burden of providing additional humanitarian and medical care.

Photos courtesy of The St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group

* “The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion,” March 9, 2008, Amnesty International, CARE International UK, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save the Children UK, Trocaire.

Photo courtesy of Steve Sabella

About St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital
St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital, established in 1882 for charitable works in Jerusalem, has become the main center for expert eye care service in the region at the Main Hospital in East Jerusalem and satellite clinics in Gaza and the West Bank. St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital’s fundraising appeal for 2008 will support the Gaza Clinic, which has been operating since 1992. http://www.stjohneyehospital.org/

Prem Rawat - Maharaji | TPRF Gives US$25,000 to Reduce Blindness in Rajasthan, India

The Prem Rawat Foundation’s grant will support ORBIS UK in preventing blindness in thousands of children in northwestern India

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Los Angeles, November 2008 —The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has made a grant of US$25,000 to ORBIS UK, a beneficiary of the 2008 Lord Mayor of the City of London’s Appeal, to support ORBIS UK and the Lord Mayor’s Childhood Blindness Programme in India.

According to ORBIS UK, India is home to almost 20% of the world’s blind children. Over 320,000 children under the age of 16 are totally blind, while even more are visually impaired and at risk of losing their sight. At least half of these children could likely be cured with proper care, yet only 1% of India’s ophthalmologists are trained to treat children.

“This donation will certainly make a real contribution in achieving our aim to make the lives of future generations brighter,” says Wendy Lloyd, director of the Lord Mayor’s Appeal 2008. “It is enormously encouraging to receive such fantastic support.”

The TPRF grant will support ORBIS UK and the Lord Mayor’s Childhood Blindness Programme in the development of two children’s eye care centers, in partnership with local hospitals in Jaipur and Udaipur, areas in the state of Rajasthan where there are now no pediatric ophthalmologists. These centers will provide eye screening for 200,000 children, with an estimated 23,000 receiving medical treatment; 2,000 receiving eye surgery; and 10,000 families educated about detecting problems and protecting their vision. Equipment and personnel will be provided to sustain long-term eye care services for children in poor local communities.

It is estimated that the economic impact of blindness in India is approximately US$4.4 billion annually. Blindness and visual impairment limit education and life choices and place a heavy burden on families and the wider community. Blind and visually impaired children in India almost never receive an education, get married or live independent lives.

Photographs Courtesy of ORBIS

About ORBIS UK
ORBIS UK is a London-based affiliate of ORBIS International, a nonprofit, global development organization whose mission is to eliminate avoidable blindness in developing countries by strengthening the capacity of local eye health partners to prevent and treat avoidable blindness. ORBIS has pioneered the introduction of pediatric ophthalmology services in seven rural districts of India. It also operates a DC-10 Flying Eye Hospital that brings the gift of sight to developing countries around the world.