Accountability & Praise

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

At Sisters of Mary World Villages for Children, we thrive on basic principles of transparency, impact, and sustainability.

Transparency: As an organization, we work hard to use your money efficiently and focus on those in greatest need. When you donate to Sisters of Mary World Villages for Children, your contribution directly supports education, care, and a safe environment for children in poverty. Your donation keeps students in our schools and helps us open new programs in most needy communities.

Impact: By providing children from destitute families food, shelter, medical care, a quality education, and intensive vocational training, we empower them to build better lives for themselves and their families. Because the many lives we touch in turn transform entire communities, we have witnessed the success of breaking the poverty cycle – over, and over again. 150,000 children have graduated from our programs and started a path toward a brighter future.

Sustainability: Our mission goes beyond immediate impact—we strive for long-term, sustainable change in the communities we serve. The graduates of the programs play a vital role in this transformation. Many give back by “paying it forward”: supporting their families and funding their siblings’ education. Some return to work at our schools as teachers or staff, while others help care for younger children. A number choose religious life, continuing the mission in new ways. Their dedication ensures that the cycle of poverty is broken—not just for themselves, but for generations to come.

The result is a lasting change that effectively changes many more lives than those who have experienced our programs firsthand.

Sisters of Mary World Villages for Children abides by the internationally recognized Donor Bill of Rights and International Statement of Ethical Principles in Fundraising.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

As a donor to Sisters of Mary World Villages for Children, you make a powerful difference children’s lives. You support the Sisters of Mary in providing education, care, and hope to those who need it most. Thanks to generous donors like you, over 150,000 children have been educated in 18 schools across 6 countries. Every contribution gives children the chance to escape hunger, break the cycle of poverty, and build brighter futures.

Regular donations fully fund our programs across the Philippines, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, and Tanzania. This includes food, housing, school supplies, uniforms, medical care, teacher salaries, and essentials for over 21,000 children. Support from donors improves children’s health and provides academic and vocational training tailored to local industry needs.

Our children gain hands-on training in skills like electronics, bookkeeping, carpentry, mechanics, technical drawing, computing, and dressmaking/tailoring. They achieve accreditation in these and progress into paid employment, many becoming doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, and auditors. These graduates then support their families and communities with better healthcare access and education opportunities. To explore our programs in each country, visit this page.

ESSENTIAL COSTS

We carefully manage donor funds to maximize the impact of every gift. Like most charities, we incur essential costs to ensure compliant stewardship of donations and services are well-managed for our beneficiaries. We reinvest in fundraising to maintain funding sources and cover daily costs of caring for over 21,000 children. With a small, efficient team of around 10 full-time staff and the support of dedicated partners, we keep administrative costs low and focus resources where they matter most—on the children. Your donations go further, helping us deliver lasting change with efficiency and integrity.

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Most organizations exempt from federal income tax must file an annual information return (Form 990) on an annual basis. Some organizations, such as ours, are exempt from this. As a recognized Church-affiliated mission society where more than half of our activities are conducted in, or are directed at persons in, foreign countries, we are not required to file these annual returns.

This saves administrative time and money, allowing us to direct donations to programs that help children break free from poverty.

In accordance with our commitment to transparency, we conduct a thorough annual audit and makes financial statements from the annual audit publicly available. This audit provides information typically available in a Form 990. To learn more about our programs by the numbers, we encourage you to review our independent Auditors’ Reports:

2023 Independent Auditors’ Report

2022 Independent Auditors’ Report

2021 Independent Auditors’ Report

2020 Independent Auditors’ Report

2019 Independent Auditors’ Report

For more information on the impact of your charity, please also see our: 2022 Gratitude Report

DONOR PRIVACY POLICY

Sisters of Mary World Villages for Children and the Sisters of Mary take the protection of donor privacy and your personal information seriously. As partners with you in this work, we want you to be fully aware of our responsibility to you. You may read the policy in full here.

CHILD PROTECTION POLICY

The Sisters of Mary make the protection and care of the children in their custody their top priority. Their Child Protection and Anti-Bullying Policy outlines shared values, principles, and specific steps to safeguard every child in their care. It describes the steps that will be taken for the Sisters of Mary’s commitment to protect the children. You may read the policy in full here.