2020: Doing Good in a Bad Year

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, United Aid Foundation and our volunteers made a difference in 2020.

Here’s how:

We started the year by traveling to Mali, where we built a cafeteria for a village school that is also used as a community gathering place.

After the coronavirus hit we shifted gear, gathering PPE for first responders as the Northeast area of the country suffered in the early days of the pandemic.

We held food drives in New Jersey, Florida, Virginia and Kansas City; providing tens of thousands of pounds of food and we supplied a neighborhood food pantry with fresh produce and paper products.

We were unable to make our yearly trip to Haiti for our project building sustainable homes, so we supervised local Haitians who worked tirelessly on their own to rebuild a house for a widow and her children, which allows them to live in dignity. We also supported our Haitian volunteers who deliver monthly supplies of beans, rice and oil to a country that has fallen farther into hunger due to the pandemic.

UAF is proud to have supported a campaign in Sri Lanka delivering food to the elderly and disabled.

And we were able to send a crew to the Bahamas to finish refurbishing homes for people who had to put their lives on hold after Hurricane Dorian demolished their island.

UAF continued our educational support for a young woman in Uganda, who has a goal of helping her community heal from the trauma of war.

And we wrapped up the year by helping a hard-working teenage girl go to college in the Gaza Strip.

2020 forced UAF to pivot and become creative in ways we can deliver direct aid. But by no means did the crisis force us to be idle. That simply would not fly with the type of people who support our work.

We hope 2021 will offer more opportunities for travel- within the United States and in other countries where there is need. No matter what the new year brings we have learned we can and will be effective as long as we stick together.