Friends Without A Border (FWAB) was established in 1995 with the mission to provide free, compassionate, high-quality healthcare to children in Southeast Asia. After seeing a child die in Cambodia because her father could not afford $2 for medicine, a NY-based photographer Kenro Izu founded FWAB. In 1999, FWAB opened Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC), which has provided care to over 1.5 million children. In 2011, FWAB expanded its impact by supporting The Lake Clinic (TLC), a boat-based health delivery organization serving the deprived floating village community on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. In 2013, FWAB achieved the longstanding goal of AHC becoming independent. While continuing financial support to AHC and TLC, FWAB opened Lao Friends Hospital for Children (LFHC) in Laos in 2015, with an aim to replicate the successful model of Treatment + Education + Prevention that was achieved and proven at AHC. We have been operating for six years and have provided over 200,000 treatments.

“Every child deserves a happy and healthy life" is the founding philosophy of Friends Without A Border. Our vision for Lao Friends Hospital for Children specifically is to help reduce the high child mortality rate amongst the children by providing free, compassionate, high-quality medical care to children in the northern Laos and for the rest of the country. Our mission to train the local medical personnel is based on the philosophy of "teach a man to fish." We offer them to obtain self-sustaining capability to grow as medical leaders for the next generation. LFHC also strives to meet specific needs of the population that they serve. Thalassemia Clinic, Development Clinic and Outreach/Homecare are examples of the services that are unique in the country of Laos. Prevention is also a critical component to achieve our mission.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: We aim to improve in all areas of Treatment + Education + Prevention; with increasing our intensive care capability, providing more training to other clinics and focusing more on community prevention.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Two: Getting our 4-year medical training recognized as an official pediatric residency program. Also providing extensive clinical training outside of the hospital to better serve the wider community.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Three: Toward our goal of making LFHC a self-sustaining hospital, we want to initiate an endowment that makes LFHC solvent while maintaining the current level of care after it becomes independent in 2030.

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Describe an investment in leadership

Lao Friends Hospital for Children has ongoing clinical training for staff, which includes managerial training and assessments. FWAB spends close to $100K annually on this program. As of October 2022, two doctors completed the four-year Residency Program, and eight more doctors are currently enrolled in this training program. In addition to daily instruction, we are hosting a formal leadership program at the hospital on the topics including Public Speaking, Communication, Leadership and Life Skills Training Center. It will be our first program conducted in Lao. In our small NY office, staff makes use of frequent seminars and webinars on fundraising and management, hosted by various NGOs and online platforms.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

• LFHC provides medical outreach to isolated communities; traveling total of 15,785 miles pre-Covid in 2019. • LFHC uses clinical expertise of expats from around the globe. During Covid, medical staff continued receiving Zoom seminars and classes. • Coordinating with Ministry of Health, LFHC provides clinical training to local clinics in the Luang Prabang Province and makes presentations to health institutions in the country. • Production of training videos on nutrition funded by UNICEF; Research on thiamine deficiency in Laos funded by Gates Foundation. • Director of Prevention position was created for better collaborations with other NGOs in health sector, especially to minimize stunted-growth and preventable diseases in the region. • Two new positions for development and communications were created locally. This change strengthened our capability to solicit more support among in-country private sector, as well as to convey messages closely linked to the program on social media.

Strict travel bans into Laos, where our project site is located, necessitated that we reevaluate our approach. We added three positions locally: a Director of Development (who reaches out to the community and initiates collaborations), a Communications and Social Media Manager (formerly this position was held in the US) and a Director of Prevention (who will work closely with other NGOs and the Lao Ministry of Health). Our Communications Manager has added a direct and insightful voice with a prolific posting schedule as a result of him working out of the program site. The founder, who is a board member, made a life-changing decision to relocate back to Japan after 50 years in the US, so that he can make trips more frequently and easily to oversee the program. The biggest challenge since January 2020 was not being able to have in-person fundraising events. We made our annual half-marathon into a virtual run and also held a virtual live gala for the first time in 2021, honoring Richard Gere for his humanitarian efforts and with a performance by Lea Salonga. With our supporters participating from around the globe, these events were successful. After travel restrictions ease, we will use a hybrid fundraising model combining in-person and virtual, as we are able to reach many more people simultaneously regardless of locations. We will continue to communicate virtually on a more personalized basis since we cannot gather. We have greatly increased our use of social media and will sustain and grow these levels of usage.