The Elma Foundation
The foundation of ending global poverty begins with building a future for the coming generations. The ELMA Group of Foundations, founded in 2005, has seen the potential in youth and grown into one of the world’s largest private foundations focused exclusively on the children of Africa and selected groups in the United States and the United Kingdom.
ELMA’s mission is to improve lives through sustainable efforts to relieve poverty, advance education and promote health. They achieve this by utilizing grant making and investment, and supporting grassroots, community-based and large scale regional, national and international initiatives as catalysts for systematic change for people around the globe.
The group of foundations is made up of four major services arms: the ELMA Foundation, ELMA Relief, ELMA South Africa and ELMA Music. They are located in New York, Cape Town, and Dar es Salaam.
The ELMA Relief Foundation provides humanitarian relief to help people affected by disasters in any region of the world. They pay special attention to the needs of children, who often suffer more in the aftermath of environmental tragedies. They support successful disaster risk reduction activities and work to strengthen the strategic development behind it.
Some of their active grants include Global Fund for Children, Medecins Sans Frontieres UK and Oxfam America. These and other grants have provided support for disaster victims in countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Haiti, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
The ELMA Foundation has a particular focus in South Africa where they provide assistance to both children and adults. These include a Legal Resources Centre which aims to renew ongoing social justice programs with focus on children’s rights and the University of Pretoria, a community-orientated nursing education program for women and child health.
The ELMA Music foundation works mainly in the U.S. and UK. They offer financial assistance to musicians and musical performs, and to established programs seeking to assist the problem of substance abuse and addiction in the music industry. ELMA also supports opportunities for underprivileged children and youth to study and create music.
All in all, ELMA has a large and diverse outreach that tackles social injustice and pushes for relief and education all around the world.
– Janki Kaswala