The Mission of the Han-Schneider International Children’s Foundation is to provide basic needs for the orphans around the world. The foundation has been created to focus attention on the desperate plight of destitute children everywhere. As we strive to emulate the love and compassion of our Savior, the HSICF will devote all of its time, energy and resources to providing life-sustaining essentials for abandoned orphans.
The foundation's purpose is to realize the vision of our Founder, Sang Man (Sam) Han, once an impoverished orphan in Korea, which is to establish the necessary infrastructure that will enable an ongoing supply of food, medicine and clothing to save the lives of defenseless children living in the squalor of distressed orphanages world-wide.
The Foundation functions through a Board of Directors which makes all decisions concerning projects for support. The founder, Sam Han, remains a vital, vibrant presence and his vision continues to shape the Foundation’s work.
Sam Han established this Foundation in honor of his adoptive father, Dr. Arthur Schneider, who always sought to provide for other people, especially those most in need, without recognition or ego. His simple, compassionate relationship with his God and his society inspired those with whom he worked and whom he loved.
In sum, Dr. Schneider attained a high level of professional success, but it was his sensitive, humanistic approach to he world around him that this Foundation commemorates. You can read more about Dr. Schneider here and also a summary statement from Mr. Han here.
The plight of marginalized children is, sadly, one of the world’s most overlooked situations. While large-scale aid and development projects pour millions of dollars into developing countries, at the community level where those dollars seldom reach, children and young people often cope with challenges that define the nature of their existence. Malnutrition, disease, and the lack of access to education rob young people of the basic, precious element of hope. Often, in desperation to find an escape from this vacuum, where hope and aspiration no longer exist, young people place themselves in vulnerable or exploitive circumstances.
The issues of hazardous child labor, commercial sexual exploitation, and bonded servitude reside hand-in-hand with the poverty that permeates the lives of children at the edges of their societies.
The numbers of young people living in desperate poverty and social isolation are impossible to count with any precision. Quite simply, we do not know for certain how many children live in dire poverty. Census takers generally do not reach distant squatter communities or penetrate into the slums of the inner cities. However, we do know through the efforts of the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and The World Health Organization, as well as several other non-governmental organizations, that the number of children struggling to exist on less than $1 a day reaches into the millions. UNICEF has estimated that, of the 2.2 billion people in the world below the age of 21, approximately 1 billion – nearly half – can be classified as living in extreme poverty. No country, no region, has a monopoly on these conditions. According to UNICEF, 30,000 children around the globe die each day due to conditions associated with poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
We believe that even one child devoid of hope, of aspiration, of the dreams and wonderment that should define childhood is one too many. These voiceless, often forgotten children are the targets of the Han-Schneider International Children’s Foundation.
The Foundation’s projects involve the provision of basic services to young people who have no other avenue of subsistence. We commit ourselves to providing, first, a place where abandoned, orphaned or abused children might live together comfortably, safely, and securely, knowing that they are loved and cherished for who they are. Once these children are safely housed, they can begin to recreate for themselves their sense of a future, with promise and dreams. The Foundation encourages each child care center to provide basic services, as well as educate, socialize and offer vocational training. We encourage, too, the teaching of what some communities term “right living” – the notion that each of us belongs to one another and that we must act in accordance with the principles that instill health, safety, good hygiene and respect for ourselves and the world around us.
The Han-Schneider International Children’s Foundation, at its inception, is targeting some of the most impoverished nations such as Cambodia, Tanzania, and North Korea, but we are global in scope. We anticipate that our work – the sponsoring and maintenance of centers that provide marginalized children the opportunity for safety, good health, affection, and most significantly, the precious commodity of hope – will expand to various other countries as we move forward.
The Foundation has been initially capitalized by the Han and Schneider families. It exists as a registered 501c3 organization within the state of California, and is managed by a Board of Directors, receiving counsel from an Advisory Board. All those affiliated with the Foundation are volunteers.
We believe that the work of the Han-Schneider International Children’s Foundation provides a unique opportunity for investors with a shared passion for this mission to embrace projects that otherwise would be outside their province. Quite simply, the greater resources directed to these projects, the greater the number of children whose lives can be re-authored through this work.
Further, we believe that partnering with other institutions in this work will create a body of funders with shared values and missions that, working collectively, can surpass the impact of their individual investments.
Especially in the increasingly competitive world of civil society development – in which the number of valid and virtuous projects far outstrips available resources to fund them – collaborative funding efforts will be most effective in identifying and buttressing those projects of special interest. Continued research and close working relationships will assure the proper and most beneficial use of the funds for the children.