Mission

The mission of the Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) is to facilitate and promote participatory community-based sustainable natural and human resource management and development in Liberia.

Vision

SAMFU envisages a new Liberia in which the natural resources are managed sustainably to ensure a healthy environment and decentralized development under the rule of law in the next ten years.

This is pursued through an educational and empowering process in which the people in partnership with each other and those able to assist them identify their priorities, mobilize resources and assume the responsibility to manage and control the resources they depend on. The organization's activities are directed towards the protection for the environment, facilitation of nature conservation and embrace the promotion of social justice, equality and respect for human rights.

Core values

Respect for the environment, facilitation of nature conservation, promotion of social justice, equality and respect for human rights.

History

The Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) is a Liberian non-profit, non-governmental organization and is fully registered, incorporated and accredited by the Government of Liberia. The organization was founded in June 1987 by Monsignor Robert G. Tikpor a (renown Catholic Priest) Mr. Ronnie Siakor and Oswald Hensiles. The institution was dormant for most of the 1990s due to the fratricidal civil war, which devastated the country and ruined the economy, further plunging an already impoverished citizenry into destitution.

Following the cessation of hostilities in 1997, efforts to reorganize SAMFU began. Both Environmental and Development Services for NGOs (Both ENDS) based in the Netherlands funded its reorganizing through its small grant initiative and by 1999 the organization was operational again. For most of 1999 and 2000, the organization focused on a series of preliminary exploratory research to identify areas of intervention in line with its mission. These led to the initiation of the Liberian Forest and Human Rights Campaign, the Liberia Sea Turtle Project and the pilot scheme of the Community Development Initiative.

With very limited external support, the organization set out in pursuit of its goals. The organization received its first major grant of US$5000 from the Global Greengrants Facility of the Tides Foundation in 2000. In 2002 the Whitley Laing Foundation of the United Kingdom awarded the Sting and Trudy Styler Award for the Environment and Human Rights to the coordinator of the organization. Also in 2002 SAMFU was named environmental NGO of the year in Liberia for its outstanding and leadership role in the campaign to protect the Liberian rainforest.