Countries where we work
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the fifth nation in the world with the highest percentage of deaths related to non-potable water consumption. In 2017, more than 60 thousand people (15% of children under the age of five years) died of diseases, such as cholera or diarrhoea, related to the supply of non-drinking water.
Many of the Ethiopian population live in rural areas, and very fragmented communities in the mountainous area create particular problems regarding school education, a healthy water supply, and health.
The construction of water access facilities and the building of primary schools helps to limit important migratory movements.
During these years, the Foundation has built 300 wells, 25 rural schools, and a clinic in Mokonissa, south of the country.
Madagascar
Madagascar’s economy is in 2020 one of the world’s most imperfect, with 70% of the population living in extreme poverty caused mainly by the lack of distribution of resources of which the country is rich. The lack of infrastructure, especially roads, makes it difficult for farmers to bring their products to the markets. The geographical isolation of Madagascar from the rest of the world increases the costs of trade.
Almost half of Madagascar’s children under the age of five are malnourished.
The 2007 Constitution states that the official language is Malagasy, Malaysian-Polynesian origin, spoken and understood throughout the island. The Malagasy population has always lived in poverty. Still, the situation has worsened in the last ten years, after the coup against former President Marc Ravalomanana in March 2009, because banditry, theft and robbery have increased. Since then, the country has been in free-fall: food and essential medicines are lacking.
The Foundation has built since 2004, 52 artesian wells in Tsiroanomandidy and schools of Saint Joseph, Maritampona, Ambatomainty, and Nosy Be and a medical dispensary at the village of Ampassindava to Nosy Be, which will be inaugurated as soon as possible.
Nepal
Nepal is a South Asian state with about 30 million inhabitants; its capital is Kathmandu. It is bordered to the north by China and south by India and is a landlocked state. The territory between the Ganges Plain and the Himalayan mountain range is predominantly mountainous and geographically part of the Indian subcontinent. About half of the country’s population lives on less than US$1.25 a day.
Tibet is a forgotten tragedy, but it began back in 1949 when the newly formed People’s Republic of China militarily invaded the world’s Roof, proclaiming the “liberation” of the Tibetan people, more than two million Tibetans out of a total of about seven million died.
Precisely to some of these children who live the problematic condition of exile, the Foundation has allowed attending a school where they can keep alive a language, a tradition and a culture that would otherwise risk being extinguished.
In 2005, the Foundation created the “Tashi Boarding School” in Kathmandu, in the Boudha district, to provide about 160 Tibetan and Nepalese children with primary and secondary education, food and accommodation for a hundred of them.
Myanmar
Myanmar is a south-eastern Asian state that occupies part of the western coast of the Indochinese peninsula, overlooking the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea; it borders west to east with Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand.
According to the 2017 census, it has a population of over 55 million. The majority of the people are Bamar ethnic and Buddhist. Since independence, numerous ethnic minorities have been involved in several armed conflicts with the central government. Particularly criticized by the international community is the treatment suffered by the ethnic minority of Rohingya, Muslim religion, victims of persecution and deprivation of citizenship.
In 2004, Butterfly Foundation set up a school for 210 children in the village of Kaungh to in the state of Shan and a new facility for epileptic patients in Payaphyu, which is home to some 170 patients with mental illnesses and physical malformations as well as many orphans.