IRFF UK: About International Relief Friendship Foundation's [IRFF] in the world

You were asking about International Relief Friendship Foundation’s [IRFF] in the world..

I have tracked the history of IRFFs around the world ever since Robert Michael Standard suggested to True Father that it would be good to have an organisation which the 1975 missionaries could work through - and True Father took to the idea immediately, Thus IRFF USA was founded in 1975 and IRFF UK late 1980, plus many others.

I have been with IRFF UK since 2001 as the bookkeeper, then as a trustee from 2003, then as the Chair of the Trustees since just about 12 years now.

People have come and gone but we are now a group of seven funding ten projects in five countries in the fields of primary, secondary and tertiary education as well as three period poverty projects and a soup kitchen in South Africa. We have many donors (but never enough) and had an income in the financial year just finished on 31 March 2025 of £82,000.

This year will be even more on receipt of a currently awaited legacy but that will all go to Senegal (so still need more!).

So we are always striving to find more volunteers to fill open positions and more income from donors both individuals and corporate donors.

If you have ideas in that direction please let me know.

We have just started a campaign on LinkedIn so if you are on there please visit us and follow us.

Back to world IRFFs. Based on info. actually obtained from tparents,org I could see lots of IRFF activity in 41 countries at first, then that went down to 30 countries for a while (maybe because WFWP started doing similar work over our women missionaries) and it has only been active in a few countries in the last 10 years:

Central African Republic, Estonia, Gambia, Ghana, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Moldova, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda, These are the activities countries.

The actual IRFFs I know of funding these operations are:

IRFF Germany - doing similar work as IRFF UK but is about half the size

IRFF Italy - does mainly relief work, for example with Ukrainian refugees

IRFF Moldova - does mainly relief work, for example with Ukrainian refugees, and employment guidance to people

IRFF UK - see above

IRFF USA - does mainly relief work as and when necessary and still sees itself as the world coordinator for all IRFFs.

IRFF Zambia - recent and very small.

There may be other IRFFs out there on paper, as in DR Congo, but they are not active. So it seems that IRFF UK is the largest “international development” charity in the group.

IRFF UK is not just trying to keep the idea of “IRFFs” alive - it is actually currently serving the 3,800 people in Africa and sees no reason why that cannot be increased to 5,000, 10,000 and even more if we had more human and financial resources.

A model period poverty charity from the USA I follow - Days for Girls - started really small in Africa about 18 years ago and now claims to have reached 3.5 million girls and women in many countries - so it can be done!

As I always say: “If you can do some goodness by supporting roughly 4,000 people why can’t you do ten times as much goodness; it is just a matter of ambition, and resources”.

You can see what IRFF UK is doing at www,irff-uk.org but also, more and more, we will informing the world about all of the happiness IRFF UK is bringing to people step by step on LinkedIn, whether it is 18/19 youths in South Africa working on university entrance exams or 73 children in the same area learning to read when 81% of their contemporaries cannot read or a very happy Jesca, head teacher at Destiny School Uganda, who runs a very well equipped and safe school with top-flight equipment, toilets, etc. and is educating 206 primary school children at the moment to a very high level - she wants to expand to up 400 pupils - +++.

Feel free to ask for any further details or suggest how we can serve many more people.

All the best