FOREWORD

MARIA ELENA CUOMO PRESIDENT

Since its very early beginnings in 1999 and its formal establishment as the Cuomo Foundation in 2001, the Foundation has had an opendoor policy of responding where aid is requested especially for the less advantaged in societies. Now over 20 years later and with the maturity of age, the Foundation and myself, as the co-founding president, have retrospectively analysed the actions taken, both the successes and failures, to draw insights that will help shape the future of the Foundation. In my opinion, the most meaningful actions are those that positively impact both the recipients and the donors. To clarify, it is crucial to determine the goals and objectives, as well as the final completion target, both in terms of time and location, at the very beginning of any project. It is important to define the desired outcomes and specific milestones of a project, both temporally and spatially.

“…In my role as president of the Cuomo Foundation, I have the professional responsibility of offering a platform that can promote and facilitate significant commitments to support communities and aid individuals and hopefully create positive change in the world.”

Reviewing the history of the Foundation, two major actions stand out as achieving these aims:

- Building and maintenance of schools in Tamil Nadu, India, providing thousands of young people with educational opportunities since 2002,and the introduction in 2004 of the Cuomo Scholarships for Indian students

- Establishing The Cuomo Paediatric Cardiac Centre in Dakar, Senegal, which has performed over 1,000 successful paediatric operations since 2017

These enormous programmes had a starting point, and even though we continue our observation of them, they have all become successfully selfsustaining and no longer require our intervention.

The Foundation has sponsored numerous other initiatives over its decades of existence, yet none have had the same meaning or value. The impact of our actions in India and Senegal remains the most gratifying in terms of the long-term positive outcomes for both the beneficiaries and the givers.

Both my late husband, Alfredo Cuomo, and I were awarded academic scholarships which enabled us to gain further knowledge, expertise, and create financial security. It has always been our belief that with wealth comes a societal responsibility to assist those less fortunate. In my own remaining lifetime, I stay committed to supporting such philanthropic initiatives yet in a personal and private way.

In my role as president of the Cuomo

Foundation, I have the professional responsibility of offering a platform that can promote and facilitate significant commitments to support communities and aid individuals and hopefully create positive change in the world.

And so, after more than 20 years of philanthropy and patronage for hundreds of diverse actions and good causes of which we have been proud and honoured to be part of, the Foundation will now look to the future with a more focussed approach and will evolve into concentrating on fewer, but critically for us, more meaningful projects.