Haiti has a rich history and resilient people, but corruption and political turmoil have been ongoing challenges for Haiti's people. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Haiti had been experiencing a severe political and economic crisis sparked by a scandal centering around a government program called Petrocaribe, where $2 billion dollars which were supposed to go into social programs went missing.

Thanks a generous grant from the Harold C Smith Foundation, WCF was able to partner with 16 local ministries to provide a month's supply of Food and Hygiene Care packages to over 13,000 families, representing almost 80,000 people in 6 countries - Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, India and Pakistan.

Lebanon, with an original population of 4 million, has more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees and tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees throughout the country, the most refugees per capita in the world. WCF has been sending mobile medical teams to Lebanon since 2014 to serve the refugees who have fled war.

WCF has been sending Mobile Medical Teams to the Middle East region for many years, but much more since refugees began fleeing Syria around 2013. In 2019, WCF sent Medical Teams to various Middle East countries including Jordan where we served the refugees in Amman and Zarqa.

World Compassion Fellowship's involvement in India began at the very inception of WCF - in 2006. In fact, many of my co-workers on Wall St at that time were of Indian descent, some of whom were the initial supporters of WCF. To this day, I'm grateful for the support that got us started.

Over the years, WCF has provided medical and humanitarian care to Iraqi refugees throughout the region, but last year was the first time we were able to bring a mobile medical team to Northern Iraq itself. We were able to treat 470 patients overall in multiple locations.

Pakistan is the 5th largest country in the world with more than 230 million people, but 30% of Pakistanis live below the poverty line. As of this writing, the country has recorded more than 37,000 COVID-19 patients and 800 deaths.

The entire world has been negatively affected in some way by the unprecedented global COVID-19 pandemic. Here in NYC, the situation has been as dire as it has been anywhere else in the world. More people have died in NYC from C19 than we lost in 9/11.