Bam Final Report
Nov. 11, 2004

Dear Fellow Fundraisers and Contributors,

I am pleased to report on our successful fundrasing efforts on behalf of the children orphaned by the earthquake in Bam last December 27th. Within the 3 month window of time allowed by the US government we were able to raise and send $620,000.00 for the benefit of those orphans.

Thanks again to all our generous contributors, groups, individual fundraisers, supporters, and companies that gave or helped us in our efforts. Special thanks to “Click and Pledge” for making online donation possible and to “Cenoba Technology” for maintaining a first class website for ERFO. As difficult, time consuming, and expensive as this was, it was “a piece of cake” when compared to what it took to get the job done in Iran.

To the credit of ERFO representative Mr. Jamal Farivar and his team of volunteers/semi-volunteers in Iran, after 8 months our activities in Bam come to a conclusion. In addition to Jamal staying for 2 months in Bam, Mrs. Massy Farivar traveled from Boston to Bam on 5 different occasions, I went to Bam twice, and our semi-volunteer group stayed in Bam for several months to finish this seemingly “mission impossible”. To give you an idea about the extent of work involved; we identified each orphan by going from tent to tent, located and copied their parent death certificate, and located and copied children’s birth certificates (not an easy task when houses have turned into rubble and everything is buried under it). We established and certified their status and financial need thru local groups and independent government agencies, found a guardian and signed a contract with them to establish a home environment for several hundred children. We had to go back several times to make sure that our choices had been appropriate and to increase financial aid when more concrete financial data was available for these children. That is why some children have more than one bank CD number. We made a total of 28000 pages of copy in Iran alone. A lot of time this required going back and forth from a remote village to Bam to copy documents and return it to them. All the paper work required by the bank to establish 650 short term saving accounts and greater than twelve hundred long term CDs was done by us. Our out-of-pocket expenses have been several tens of thousand of dollars. This is to make sure that your entire donation went to benefit the children.

In October, Massy and I traveled to Bam for the last time to present 148 additional orphans and their legal guardians with their Melli Bank certificate of deposits and saving account booklets, (see photos) and to increase financial help to several others.
At this point ERFO has successfully adopted 648 orphans in Bam and few more are being evaluated for adoption. Please see details under the children section (Bam Children). If you are interested in knowing more about each orphan including address, vital statistics, guardian names, etc. you may contact us. We have withheld publishing this information to guard privacy of orphans as much as possible.

In the month of August, Mr. Jamal Farivar traveled to Guilan, Zanjan, Ardebil, Khorasan and Shahrekord provinces to see orphans of previous earthquakes who remain under ERFO care and to increase their financial help as required.
He increased financial help to: 24 children in Nir, 13 children in Sarein, 3 children in other Ardebil villages, 9 children in Manjil and Rudbar of the Guilan Province, 26 children in Tarom and Abbar of the Zanjan Province, 50 children in Quaen, 12 children in Birjand of Khorasan Province, and one child from Shahrekord. All received new certificates of deposit according to their needs (Jamal's Report).
Several of our grown children now attending universities received financial help as has been promised. You can see details of this report as filed by Jamal.

We have updated the donor list as well. If you have contributed and your name is not on this list please contact us (Bam Donor List).

Again thanks to each and every one of you who helped make this effort by ERFO a success.

Sincerely,
Mohammad Farivar, MD
President
Earthquake Relief Fund for Orphans