New Year’s Greetings from the President of the Foundation for Africa
Dear Friends, Volunteers, Partners,

First of all, let me wish you a Happy New Year on behalf of the Foundation for Africa and thank you all who with your indispensable contribution have furthered our noble cause.
The year 2012 was a banner year for our Foundation following ten blessed years of unceasing work. Guided by divine providence, we entered the new year with tangible results. Every new year is the beginning of a new era, which seems to be true in the case of our foundation as well – 2013 is the beginning of a new era. Therefore it is not only wishing a Happy and Blessed New Year to all, but also wishing a Happy and Blessed New Era to every people following the Foundation’s activities, in which to achieve common and personal goals and to accomplish our mission.
These ten years have proven that one source of happiness is simply bringing others happiness and joy. Proudly, we can declare, together with all our supporters, that whenever – close by or from afar, virtually or personally – we made an African child smile, wiped a tear off the the face of a Masai orphan, or gave a life-saving piece of bread to a Congolese refugee, we gave meaning and content to the customary New Year’s Greeting: Happy New Year! These moments of our conscious and unconscious good deeds are also a source of happiness and blessing for ourselves. As the Bible says „he who waters will himself be watered” (Proverbs 11:25). Our Foundation did not not change its slogan in the last ten years, because we have never ceased to believe that: „To be able to help is a privilege.”
With every new year comes new challanges, achievements, difficulties. Far be it from us to try to create the illusion of an unclouded happiness in the new year, rather we wish all our patrons, volunters, partners and African friends to have positive thoughts, an optimistic outlook, untiring perseverence, unity of purpose and a new year filled with lots and lots of moments of love. These are the virtues that have helped us grow, develop and further our cause in the recent period of time.

Respectfully Yours
France Mutombo 

Dear Patrons and Friends,

As France Mutombo in his New Year’s Greetings said, 2012 was a milestone year in the history of the Foundation for Africa, ending a ten year period and ushering in a new era. So now, in addition to telling you what happened in 2012, we would also like to recall the the stepping stones of the last 10 years making such achievements possible.
During the past decade, the Foundation for Africa provided for the education of 12,000 students and the provision of about 6,000 impoverished children. What happened in these ten years?
2003 – the Foundation took over the the maintenance of College Othniel, a school teaching 200 students.
2005 – we launched a priority development project of school construction. It was to be the main pillar of a children’s social and educational centre. The first block of 8 classrooms was completed. We started supporting the orphanage Caro, and launched a small grocery shop project to help the institution.
2006 autumn – the Othniel Elementary and Secondary School was opened as an independent institution reconstructed using donations from Hungarian contributors.
Presently we provide 400 children with reduced rate education in our school through our student’s grant programme.
We enlisted the cooperation of several international and national organizations in order to carry out our projects.
2007 – the Foundation launched a student’s grant programme in Ethiopia too, and took part in the reconstruction of the orphanage there.
2008 – we built a new school in Congo to provide for 400 children living in a rural area. That time the Foundation helped nearly 600 students receive education using the contribution of about 500 Hungarian donators. We sent a Hungarian education worker to Congo, whose task was initiating school reforms. In the village Ngamanzo we opened another school built with the contribution of Hungarian sponsors. In the same year we established an independent institution taking care of 20 children and called La Providence Orphanage.
The Foundation organized disease prevention and health promotion programs in remote villages and sent healtcare, medicine, clothing and school supplies packages. We renovated and supplied with medicines several hospitals and health centres.
2009 – we completed the drilling of a well in the yard of Othniel College thanks to Hungarian and international donations. With the help of contributions from Hungarian organizations and other donators we carried out an aid project in the refugee camp in Goma.
Our achievements in 2010: Our first Mission Journey to Congo (September 2009 – February 2010) resulted in the following reform steps: 1) improvement of the standard and the quality of education 2) making the system of our students&orphans support programme more effective and more transparent, filtering out administrational errors 3) a change of attitude in students, parents and teaching staff towards a more responsible way of thinking 4) holding regular teachers&parents meetings to guide parents about how to follow and help their children’s school career 5) organizing training seminars to teachers.
Milestones of 2011
• Our four-month Mission Journey (August 2010–January 2011) ended in January 2011. As a result of our work during the journey a regular salary for the school staff of 50 persons was ensured. We introduced a „privilege programme”, the essence of which is to grant more and more reduced rates of study fees to students who have good result in their schoolwork. Thus we motivate children to learn and parents to take on a responsible attitude. We introduced new subjects to the curriculum: tailoring&sewing, information technology, English and installed a computer classroom in College Othniel with 20 computers. We forwarded Austrian, German, Belgian and Hungarian donations to those in need of aid in educational, wellfare and health fields.
May 2011: a 100% final exam results in College Othniel was achieieved.
• The Foundation’s first successful EVS tender made it possible for us to send 6 Hungarian volunteers to our institutions in Congo: College Othniel and La Providence Orphanage. The main tasks of the group were to provide formal and informal education and assistance as well as to improve the standard of education. The volunteer group consisted of an IT specialist, a teacher of French, a teacher of English, a nurse (to organize disease prevention and general hygiene courses to the children) and social workers.
• With the contribution of an American partner association, „Restore a Child”, we set up a group to practice sewing and tailoring for jobless and therefore impoverished widows.
• We launched a project to buy the building of the orphange where we take care of the well-being of 11 orphans. In 2012 we bought the property from the donations we collected.
• We organized a humanitarian tour to Tanzania where we visited two institutions, a Masai orphanage and a Masai school and gave out presents (school supplies, books, toys)collected by the participants of the tour to orphans and impoverished children. We gave a hand in constructing a catch-water drain in the school yard.
• We won Hungarian (NEA) and international (HAND, EVS) grants and participated in conferences (New Vices Opening Conference, JPA i.e the the 21st meeting of AKCS-EU representatives), photo exhibitions, cultural events, and also held several lectures to shape attutides and strengthen tolerance (Congolese Missionary Evening, The Week of Birth, Africa Day, National Civil Festival and Forum, Language Parade, End of the Year Christmas Eve).
In 2012, new initiatives and projects fired our enthusiasm, for example:
• „Leave a Mark!” – an innovative online donations system
• Purchase of La Providence Orphanage ($36,000)
• Sending 5 volunteers to Congo (as a result of winning a second EVS tender)
• obtaining 3 EU grants
• 2 Humanitarian Journeys (Tanzania, Congo)
• More than 20 high-quality media representations
• organizing 3 large-scale events (opening ceremony and press conference on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Foundation; Africa Days, a 10th Birthday Party)

We delivered educational lectures and lectures on tolerance in more than 150 institutions of about 200 towns and villages in Hungary as well as organizing 30 exhibitions of photos, children’s drawings and objects of interest. Our many and varied festivals attracted lots and lots of visitors. The work of the Foundation was amply covered in the media (MTV, TV”, ATV – Faces of the World, Civil Radio, Kossuth Radio, Neo Radio, Mária Rádió, Life Network, Origo, Népszabadság, Courier Magazin EU-AKCS Magazin, Magyar narancs, Nők Lapja Cafe).
Since 2007, The Foundation has organized 7 Humanitarian Tours, 11 Missionary Journeys, renovated 4 hospitals, sent more than 130 volunteers and supporters as well as 130 tons of aid supplies to Africa.
During the past year we successfully managed to give considerable impetus to the activities of the Foundation and the institutions operated by the Foundation. We still have a long way to go to implement in practice all we have imagined and planned. But there began a process establishing firm foundations for us. A new era has commenced in the history of the Foundation for Africa. Therefore we would like to thank all our suppoerters, donators, volunteers and partners their contrubution to our accomplisments.