About Koma Karanth Foundation

During a feeding in Gloria Oriental Mindoro, Maitreyi (Founder) came across a family with a young mother, Marilyn, who had suffered a stroke.  Her husband, a labourer, had no work (because of the COVID lockdown). They had a 10-year-old son. Maitreyi asked her what she would like, and she slurred her words but said “please give us food”. They lived in a hut with no toilet and something kept telling Maitreyi that she needed to live with dignity.

 

One morning, Maitreyi woke up and told her team to put together a team of labourers and started building a house for them immediately. Marilyn would sit watching her dream home being built and would refuse to lie down. On the fourth day of the house building the team gave her a haircut and she asked to take a nap. She never woke up. Maitreyi cried for days. The team gave a wonderful funeral, and thus began the journey into house building for the poor. We completed her dream house and called it Marilyn.

 

Maitreyi also decided that all the labourers in the team should have a house as well, as they lived in terrible conditions themselves. How horrible it must be to build for others knowing you have to go back to nothing. Some of the labourers didn’t have their own land so we requested the government for land under the minority quotas. That was how we were able to build them the houses.

 

We have built 31 homes so far, with more planned. We run KOMA tutoring school, KOMA old age community centre, we provide free lunch and transport for the tribal children, solar streetlights at the Tribal village. One of our much-loved project was bringing water to 26 tribal families up the mountain. We installed pump in the river below, piped it all the way up the mountain into a huge tank and today they have water!

 

We have started various businesses, including KOMA ice candy, KOMA sari sari store and KOMA cakes and tea. All for women. We also employ women for various other jobs such as taking care of the old age community centre, teaching assistant at our school, cooking the free lunch for the children etc.

 

We have distributed tablet computers for deserving children in Cabuyao, Butuan City and Mindoro and have also offered scholarships to an engineering student and a veterinary medicine student in Manila and Mindanao.

 

We have a feeding team at Cabuyao. During the pandemic, they fed 100 children in the slums every Saturday without fail. We also hired clowns for entertainment.

 

Our next project will be to build community housing in Gloria Oriental Mindoro.  We will also continue to support the children and single mothers in their business endeavours. The goal is to build loving and sharing communities that become a role model for the future generations.