Fundacion Mir

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About MIR

Fundacion MIR (Mission International Rescue) is a non-profit organization that works to supply the Dominican Republic’s most marginalized people with a variety of life-altering services. Since 1990, we have served the women, youth and children of La Romana and the Eastern region of the Dominican Republic by partnering with and providing funding for social programs. With the help of benefactors and individual contributions, the programs provide a home, medical assistance, education and technical preparation for the people that are most in need in our community.

The Numbers Behind the Need

Recent reports reveal:

• 63% of Dominican families cannot cover their basic needs such as food, water, and shelter
• More than one in six children are functionally illiterate
• Less than 60% finish the 5th grade
• Most children beg on the streets
• One in three children will engage in delinquency and robbery
• One in five children will engage in prostitution
• 50% of all children are abused and 70% of all rapes are against minors
• 130,000 Dominicans are HIV infected
• The Dominican Republic has the second highest infection rate in all of the Caribbean and Latin America

Our beginnings:

In 1988, after a pilgrimage to Bosnia, Lian Fanjul de Azqueta, the founder of what has come to be the Fundación MIR, felt an overwhelming need to give to those in need in her community.

Humbly, she began a small food distribution service with a colleague. They packed bags of food in her mother’s garage and distributed the sustenance throughout the nearby town of Pahokee, Florida.

Later that same year, her brother Alfie Fanjul won the Sugar Golf Tournament and donated his winnings to his sister to use as seed money to found Casa de Paz – the beginning of the M.I.R.

Foundation. For over a decade, the Fundación MIR has grown quickly in order to keep pace with the continued need for the delivery of services, hope and love to the people of the Dominican Republic