International Humanity Fundation Fraudulent Misrepresentation NGO San Diego California

I am currently working as a volunteer Co-Director at the Banda Aceh IHF center where we have numerous students and classes sponsored by generous supporters from around the world.

I have personally been involved in identifying children attending the center who are in financial hardship and have witnessed the IHF Sponsor Team actively outreach to find sponsors for these students.  Donations are electronically transferred to me once per month and I immediately pass the donated money onto each specifically sponsored child at the center. As soon as this exchange takes place, I supervise our students as they write a thank you letter for their sponsor, updating them on current events and thanking them for their support. The process is completely transparent with additional contact between our students and sponsors encouraged.

I have never experienced any complaints or issues with this system. Our children are able to access needs they would otherwise be unable to afford while sponsors experience the satisfaction of directly seeing the positive outcomes their donation is making. There is constant communication maintained between the sponsor team, the sponsor, the child and staff at each center. This leads to very few misunderstandings.

Every IHF center is operated in the same way and the Sponsor Team is an international group that monitors the activity of all centers, making sure that all of our valued sponsors are kept informed and satisfied with IHFs services to the same standard. This complaint is a rare and unfortunate event that is not accounted for in IHF records. All IHF staff are committed individuals who continuously go out of their way to ensure sponsor satisfaction with our programs.

Please see the following testimonial from one of our current sponsors:

‘IHF is one of the best smaller scale charities that I have had the honour of sponsoring through. I sponsor two children through the TEP. It only costs a small amount each month to provide a child with Maths, Computer and English classes, along with celebrations, outings and supplies. Each month I receive a newsletter from the Centre, along with a photo and letter of the child. It is so easy to get to know your sponsor child. The communication is quick and easy. There is also the choice of sending packages, what little girl wouldn't love a teddy bear for their birthday? Or a pretty pink dress? I know my sponsor girls have received opportunities they otherwise would not have had, which in turn has made a life changing impact on them. Where poverty once defined who they were, they are now stepping out of poverty, into a world of education, love and support, which will see them reach their goals in life, and, impact their family too. It is really amazing what a small cost per month can do to change someone's life. Thank you IHF for what you are doing in Indonesia, Thailand and Kenya.’

– received August, 2013

I believe this testimonial speaks for the many of our ongoing, long-term sponsors. You can contact us directly at ihf@ihfonline.org if you have any further questions.

Caroline

IHF Co-Director

Please see all additional following emials sent between IHF's CEO Arnau and the author of the published critisisms. 

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 5:51 AM, jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com<jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Cheryl!

I hope this finds you well.

I have recently received e-mails from volunteers at IHF stating that attempts for my monthly sponsorship fees have been unsuccessful and to update my credit card via a provided link...bringing me to an unsecured site. This, alone, concerns me, but even greater is that my monthly credit card statements show the sponsorship fees charged from IHF monthly!

The return e-mail addresses on the e-mails sent to me have read ‘sponsor processing’ however, I do not recognize the names of the senders.

I am assuming that your e-mail address has somehow been compromised and wanted to bring this to your attention, as it would be quite a shame if others, that were sent these e-mails, followed the instructions and unknowingly gave out their credit card information...thinking it was intended for IHF!

Be well!

Jenn

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 1:29 PM, IHF Sponsor Processing wrote:

Dear Jennifer,

My name is Arnau, IHF Executive Director. I apologize for not introducing myself before. I have been 2 & 1/2 years with IHF, first as a IHF Medan co-Director and after as IHF Executive Director. I take care of all the programs we currently run at each of our Centers and took over the IHF Sponsor Division some months ago when unfortunately Cheryl wasn't able anymore to keep helping us on a regular basis for personal reasons. 

We have been sending reminders to those sponsors that for some reason or another (mostly it was a problem of expired credit cards) were not sending their monhtly donations for their sponsored children/classes.
Since we have not contacted anyone with the email address you sent below email, and have no previous correspondence either in this mailbox I am afraid I can not know your complete name or your current sponsorships that you were sent a reminder for.
If you could provide me the date when your account was billed I will have a look immediately at it. 

Kind regards,

Arnau

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 7:49 AM, IHF Sponsor Processing wrote:

Dear Jenn, 

Following up with this conversation, we have not received any answer from you. 

We would be more that happy to sort out any problem there might be. As previously said. if you could provide me the date when your account was billed I will have a look immediately at it. We could also use your complete name, or the name of the person who has made those donations.

Also, we would appreciate if you could forward any previous communication with you, that might have not been appropiate. As we have no records of communication with you under this email address "jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com" <jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com> besides this email, and don't have anyone in our sponsors database under the name of Jennifer Rosenberg, whom google gmail says is the owner of this email address. Sometimes, sponsorships or monthly recurrent payments are created under different names, so we would be glad if you could provide all this information so we can solve this problem.

I hope we can solve this problem asap, so IHF children can benefit from your kindness and support. 

Warmest

Aranu

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 6:19 PM, jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com<jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com> wrote:

Who is this? Is this a joke? What problem are you wishing to resolve?

I spent 6 months trying to resolve sponsorship and donation issues with Arnau, with lots of talk, but with no solid answers. Now, you are following-up on an e-mail that Arnau had responded to 6 months ago?!   You have my correct name. You have my correct contact information. You have my sponsorship and donor details. You have my credit card information. What you do not address here are the issues with sponsorship and donations...sponsorships that I had had for 5 years and the donations I had made over the past several months. I already know why I had not heard from two of my sponsored children for several months, as I was told by one of them that they had both left the home in June 2012...yet my monthly sponsorship fees continued being charged to me for 11 months after...11 months. Donations I made to these two children following their departure (that I was never made aware of )...birthday, Christmas, Back-to-School and Easter money, etc....the children have told me they did not receive any of these donations. This raised concern over the misuse of sponsorship fees and donations made to this organisation, not only to these two children, but to my other sponsored children, as well.

So, when you say that you wish to resolve "this problem" as soon as possible, which problem? No problem was mentioned. And, after 6 months, "as soon as possible" sounds rather disturbing to me. Is 6 months swift in your mind?

Your lack of organisation and attention to sponsor relation issues is quite discouraging, to say the least.

If the financial benefit of my support was actually going towards the welfare of my sponsored children, I feel strongly that this all would have been resolved in a more organised, professional and swift manner. After 5 years of continuous sponsorship and support to the children of IHF, I have sadly had to terminate my sponsorship and support as a direct result of the lack of organisation, the misuse of funds and the poor communication of this organisation.  If my support was truly an urgency, you would not be contacting me for my credit card information following termination of my monthly support.

Regards,

Jenn

PS  I have Cc'd this to Arnau, as I had been dealing directly with him on my current sponsor/donor issues.

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 3:50 AM, IHF Sponsor Processing wrote:

Dear Jenn,

I am Arnau. First of all, thanks a lot for your response. From IHF, and specially personally, I can't apologize enough for any misunderstanding and inconvenience that we might have caused.

Since I started working in IHF Sponsor relations Division I made myself a promise not to let any of our beloved sponsorships lose their trust in IHF. I truly believe on what IHF does for the children and communities it works for and tries to help. And it is with the help of IHF sponsors that all this can happen. 

I have copied our CEO, Carol Sasaki, our long time advisor and trustee, Andi Connor for them to be aware of this problem. In IHF we have never hide any of our mistakes, and always believed in our cause and that there is a way to fix it. 

First of all, I want to assure you that if there have been any mistake from our part, we are the ones that want to know about it. Regarding the issue at hand, I would like to clarify some of the above said:

- As I have stated in several emails, we are unable to find any correspondence from "jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com" <jenn.onelifeonelove@gmail.com> to this email address from this same mailbox: IHF Sponsor Processing, or my personal mailbox.

I was assigned to the sponsor division around the autumn of 2012, therefore I was unfamiliar with your problem since our correspondence on December 2012. (emails can be read below)

This was mention in my last email to you on December, 1st, 2012. Which was never answered: 

"Since we have not contacted anyone with the email address you sent below email, and have no previous correspondence either in this mailbox I am afraid I can not know your complete name or your current sponsorships that you were sent a reminder for.
If you could provide me the date when your account was billed I will have a look immediately at it. "

If you were using another email address for our conversations, could you pelase provide it so we can look at the problem and clarify responsibilities?

- We have a policy to immediately reimburse any sponsorship donation for any child that have left the center from one reason or other. There are no exceptions for this rule, and if it has been my mistake, I can't be more worried to have damaged IHF image because of a personal mistake. 

If you could kindly provide us:
a) the name you used to sponsor through our website (as I said in the email above I can't find any Jennifer Rosenberg, which is the name google assigns to the email address you are sending these emails) in our website database where all sponsors donations and information is stored upon any donation is done. 

b) Payment method (I assume is by credit card and monthly payments?)

We will look at it right away and reimburse you any money charged since the children you sponsored left the center

Again, I can't apologize enough for any inconvenience caused. It is in our true interest to sort out this misunderstanding asap, and for me personally because I could not bare to have damaged IHF, an organization I have spent the last 3 years working for full-time in a volunteer basis. 

Looking forward to hear from you and hoping to be able to solve this for IHF children's sake and the trust of our many beloved sponsors

Warmest,

Arnau

 From: IHF Sponsor Processing 

Date: Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 11:13 AM
Subject: Re: Your sponsorship payments

Dear Jenn, 

We have not received an answer from you. It is very important for us to be able to sort out any issues if there were to be any. 

Please let us know

Warmest

Aranu