FOOD

Jose Fernandez is the director of two schools which he has built in the Dominican Republic. He has a registered foundation. Children attend his schools for free. In the Dominican, the Haitian children cannot attend school if they don’t have Dominican papers.

Since January 2011, we have donated money to this foundation specific to feeding the children. Each trip we are given an accounting, do inspections of the cupboards and receive receipts for food.

Children in both schools in La Union and Montellano receive one small meal each school day.

300 hungry children are fed one meal a day in Jose Fernandez’ schools in the Dominican Republic.

Delivering Food Packs February and November 2011

Delivering food packs during flooding of 2012

Delivering Food Packs November 2013 and February 2014

February 2012, we bought and prepared pasta for 300 children.

Our grandchildren then gave away toys that they had brought from home to all the Dominican children.

December 2013 we had a one week donation drive to feed people Christmas dinner.

Our foundation in the Dominican ended up feeding Christmas dinner to a whole community of people in a settlement called La Chocolatera. There were 169 people there for the dinner plus 40 others who had come to help. We don’t have pictures of the event because it was too dark to get pictures. These pictures were taken when we went to see the area in February 2014.

We delivered food packs and hygiene kits to the residents of this community. 169 squatters live in the framework of an old chocolate factory. In the first picture you can see the shacks they have built. Five families also live in the top part. The big yellow building is where dinner was served.

Two different groups delivered food packs to the very poor in this area.

A group of Volunteers from Color My World, joined with Dominican Starfish Foundation to feed 100 hungry children in the school in Maggiolo, Febraury 2014. Maggiolo school was the one we built. When given a chance to talk about their day (we did many fun activities with the children) each of them as they held up their hand to speak, thanked us for the food. We fed them again in June with the dentist families who came to do free dental work.

Originally we passed out clothing in the communities and to the workers at the resort.

In 2012 we built a distribution center where clothing could be left and passed out year round.

Top left—shipping containerTop right—inside the containerafter half of the shoes and clothes were distributed

Bottom left- Volunteers inside the distribution center

Mariaand

Albania

We met Maria and Albania in February of 2012 when we were distributing shoes in Maggiolo. Albania asked us if we could help her mother get a new leg. Through research we were able to find a connection through the LDS Church and Orthopedic Innovations that donated a prosthesis for Maria. We made all the arrangements, paid for food and travel and she received her new leg June 28th 2012.

Later we selected them to receive a new home because where they were living made it impossible for Maria to walk and because they were in dire need.

They recently moved into their new home. The majority of the funds for this building were donated by Donella Sewell of Cochrane, Alberta. Donella and her family through our foundation have been helping to feed the family and have helped Albania with upgrading her schooling.

We chose to build a home for this young family because they are doing so much to help themselves and others. Their home was in a dangerous situation. The foundation was crumbling and the home was falling down the hill. Neighbors had come to the rescue late one evening as a side of their home fell away. Construction continues. Funds for this home were donated the Kilgor Family through Color My World. The group came and helped with the building of this home. Because of the location of the home, 350 buckets of dirt had to be hauled by hand up the hill by hand to fill the floor of the home.

BIERCA LOPEZ PICHARDO and familyBierca and her family of five children lost their home to fire on February 21st, 2014. They lost everything that they owned except the clothing on their backs. Initially our foundation provided clothing for the family.

We received donations to rebuild a home for them from the Oaks and ZoBell families. Construction is currently in progress.

When Jose and his family had a new addition, our foundation

offered to build a room onto their home.

Few, if any have given more service in the community than

Jose. He is constantly volunteering his time for

foundation projects.

The funds for thishome were donated

by an anonymous donor.

Senior’s Home Project

In November 2013, Jack ZoBell went with someone from the resort to visit a

senior’s home. It was in deplorable conditions. There are 15 senior’s living

there who have been rescued from the streets or dropped of.

He sent some information out to get help so that we could assist in paying the

rent for the building. All of our children and some friends donated money for

Jack’s Christmas to pay the rent for a year for the facility.

We have provided clothing, shoes and sheets for the beds. Now we are having

diapers and bed-pads made for each of the residents.

Eventually we would like to raise money to help them build a new facility—one

that has real windows and doors and doesn’t leak in the rain.

June 2014 we raised funds to buy anew fridge for the Seniors’ Home

We took a group of about 15 youth and a few adult volunteers and washed the feet of all the residents. Our foundation is taking meals to the men there are well.

EDUCATION

Dominican Starfish Foundation believes in the importance of education. We continue to provide school supplies and learning materials to several schools in the Dominican Republic.

In November 2012 we learned that the school in Maggiolo had become unsafe for the children to attend. Our foundation made a commitment to rebuild the school. The work was done quickly and the grand opening was less than two months after start.

Not only would we make the school safe but children who could only look on would be able to attend.

Grand opening of the school January 2rd, 2013

We currently have a small scholarship program for university students inthe Dominican Republic. Our main focus is to sponsor parents who aretrying to create a way of earning income for their families.

To qualify, students must be in a recognized school with a definite program.We require reports each semester from the students and receipts and accounting from tuitions.

As funds continue to grow in our foundation, scholarship programs and requirements will increase.

At present we have 4 people receiving scholarships to attend university.

We have raised $16000 to construct the Luis Antonio Jaquez Cruz memorial library. This library will service two communities of 6000 people. Below are the blueprints. Construction begins in June, 2014. The library will be owned and operated by the communities of El Estrecho and Luperon. This will be built with volunteer labor under the direction of our project manager.

Proposed Blueprints In honor of this man

Ground-breaking June 19, 2014 with Angela Hughes of Color My World, the widow and Louise ZoBell of Dominican Starfish Foundation

EMPLOYMENT

Unemployment abounds in the Dominican Republic. A huge percentage of the people have no work, no skills for employment and no hope.

A huge percentage of the people in the Dominican live in poverty.

Our foundation goals are two-fold:

Provide vocation training opportunities

Train and employ workers to help in our home building projects

Workers who built the school

In addition to thousands of hours of donated service, we

are happy to be helping to support 10 families with

employment.

Eliezer Gardner before and after

14 month old, Eliezer was burned in March of2011 over 90% of his body.Without medication and surgery his life would have ended. We raised $4200.

Eddy Morrobel andhis wife were both inthis accident. She was not hurt badly but Eddy had life-threateninginjuries. We raised $1600 to help with his surgery

Medical Emergencies and Assistance. Several donations through our foundation has saved or greatly improved the quality of life to the recipients in the Dominican Republic.

We raised $1800 to pay for cancersurgery for Xiomara Torres—a young mother of four. The surgery was successful and doctors are hopefulfor a complete recovery.

Money for this surgery was raised by a widow in Canada. Upon seeing the situation, she returned to Calgary and sold items from her home to pay forthe surgery.

Jaun Pablo Padilla was in an accident ten years ago and hasn’t walked since. A doctor offered to do a surgery free for him this year if he could come up with $300 for food and transportation to the capital city of Santo Domingo. He is extremely poor and there was no possible way for him to come up with this kind of money. We were able to donate the money to help give him his life back.

We raised money to pay for formula and medical expenses for quadrupletsBorn in the Dominican Republic.

We regularly take supplies to the public hospital to assist in helping those who are impoverished.

In June, 2014 our foundation hosted Ayuda Humanitarian. The group consisted of 70 people including dentists, hygienists, and their spouses and families. They did over 600 appointments in the week they were there. They also participated is 5 additional service activities.

After taking shoes to this baseball team,the children asked if we could help them get a back-stop. Because of the great initiative they have shown, (even using their meager lunch money to help) we agreed to help them with this project.

With uniforms and equipment supplied by Ayuda Humanitarian and Dominican Starfish Foundation

Baseball is the national sport in the Dominican. We supply

several teams with

shoes, uniforms

and equipment