ISIS Foundation Settles In At New Location
The ISIS Foundation Bermuda has recently established its new office on Parliament Street. ISIS Fund Services have generously provided pro-bono office space and resources to the 15 year old Bermuda registered charity.
“The ISIS Foundation’s Bermuda office is just one of nine ISIS offices in five countries (including two at 11,000 feet in the high Himalayas and one deep in the heart of rural Uganda)”, a spokesperson said. “The Bermuda office has been established to renew a deeper engagement with the local Bermuda community”.
The office is being managed by Development Manager, Pamela Barit Nolan, the former executive director of The Centre on Philanthropy.
Ms Nolan says, “I am pleased to be a part of The ISIS Foundation family. Over the last several weeks I have started connecting with the many people in Bermuda that have supported ISIS over the last 1 5 years. I am also reaching out to new partner organisations and individuals that are interested in the work of The ISIS Foundation.”
The ISIS Foundation works side by side with communities and children in remote areas in Nepal and Uganda to improve their lives through health, education and other development projects. From its early beginnings in Bermuda in 1998, the ISIS Foundation is now managed from a global support office in Sydney, Australia.
“The team in Sydney provides for all the financial, legal, and administration needs of the organisation, and manages the Foundation worldwide”, the spokesperson said. “Bermuda remains an important partner for The ISIS Foundation, and without its many committed resident supporters, would not be where it is today.
“The ISIS Foundation is partnered with ISIS Asia Pacific, a `business for purpose’ in Australia, set up with the sole aim of supporting all the core administration and infrastructure costs of The ISIS Foundation.
“Following the early work and support of ISIS Limited in Bermuda, ISIS Asia Pacific was established in 2007 as the primary ISIS business, when Audette E,el, Co-Founder of the ISIS Group, moved back to Australia. ISIS Asia Pacific provides over $1 million of support per year.
“With the business focused solely on funding administration and infrastructure costs, The ISIS Foundation can assure financial partners that 100 per cent of their money goes to where it is needed most: project-related costs providing health, education and other services to vulnerable clients in remote areas of Nepal and Uganda”.
Exel says, “We are continually inspired by the kindness and compassion of our supporters who have looked beyond themselves to see the needs of others around the world.
“Bermuda has long been a part of the work of The ISIS Foundation as many Bermudians and residents have supported projects, helped build schools and sponsored children, and for that we are immensely grateful.”
The spokesperson continued, “The ISIS Foundation has touched the lives of well over 100,000 people since inception. In the future, they will continue to deliver best practice health, education and other community development services with the aim to deepen their support to the communities they work with, in Nepal and Uganda.
“In Nepal, ISIS continues to work in the remote district of Humla, as well as supporting local NGOs in Kathmandu. They have expanded their assistance to the Humli community in improving, repairing, installing or constructing basic community infrastructure.
“They also implement and improve alternative technologies such as smokeless stoves, clean drinking water systems, pit latrines, greenhouses, solar lights, micro-hydro and solar driers.
“In a country where close to 2,000 children die each year from diarrhoea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation, the introduction of drinking water systems and pit latrines have had an immense positive impact on health outcomes in these communities.
“In Uganda, The ISIS Foundation has partnered with Kiwoko Hospital in the Nakaseke district of Uganda for the past (5 years with the goal of improving health outcomes for a catchment area of 500,000 people. The district has poor healthcare facilities, malnutrition and a lack of basic health awareness which has led to a high infant mortality rate.
“In 2012, a whopping 6,500 children received immunisations through the ISIS-supported community based health care programme. Safe motherhood clinics have become the cornerstone of the programme providing immunisations to children, antenatal education, postnatal care, follow-up for women recently discharged from the hospital and referrals for at-risk women.
“Despite its successes, Exel says, “ISIS still has big dreams and exciting new plans.” The organisation intends to build out its established research team, and create a whole new pillar of work which they are calling `knowledge sharing”.
Nolan says, “If we achieve the goals which ISIS has set, tens of thousands more people will benefit as ISIS builds a training and knowledge-sharing pillar to its work to support others who are interested in doing similar work.”
“In order to sustain its critical community-impacting work, ISIS is working to raise a minimum of $3 million a year and is looking to partner with a handful of major financial partners. This goal can be achieved with the help of existing and new Bermuda-based supporters.
“The ISIS Foundation has survived and thrived the last 15 years because of the astonishing kindness, generosity, love, passion and compassion of all their wonderful supporters, in all their different forms, from around the world”, the spokesperson concluded.
