The Global Fund for Children

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The Global Fund for Children (GFC) is a nonprofit organization located in Washington, DC. They give small grants of $5,000-$20,000 to grassroots NGOs in the developing world that work with vulnerable children and youth.

GFC is currently funding in Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Washington, DC and the Gulf Coast. [1]

The current President of GFC is Maya Ajmera, who founded the organization in 1994; its first grant was to an organization in India that taught children on train platforms. In May 2006, GFC received an Oprah's Angel Network award ^[1] to distribute GFC books to children living in conflict regions. As of early 2007, the organization had published 20 books for children. The first book, published in 1997, was Children from Australia to Zimbabwe.^[2] The books are made up of photographs of children across the world and are meant to promote diversity as well as raise funds for GFC.

As of mid-2006, GFC had given 969 grants, valued at nearly $5 million, to 205 grantee partners in 61 countries. GFC estimated that more than 1 million children had benefited from its grants as of that date.^[2] In 2007 GFC attended the Clinton Global Initiative in New York and made a $10 million commitment over 5 years to invest in early childhood programs worldwide, targeting vulnerable children under 8. This commitment is known as U-8. In the same year GFC established the UK Trust to extend the organisation's fundraising and communications reach into Europe. The UK Trust will focus its grantmaking activity in countries within the Commonwealth and will run a two year project supporting organisations working with traficked children in Europe. http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKN2622374120070926]