Overview

Friends of the Dominican Republic (FDR) is a non-profit corporation created to continue supporting Peace Corps' work in the Dominican Republic (DR). We summarize our work quite simply.

We are a "cyber-based" membership organization of former and current Dominican Republic Peace Corps Volunteers, staff, and supporters. Our Members:

• Raise funds to support the work of current Volunteers in the Dominican Republic,
• Advance the Third Goal of Peace Corps bu sharing out knowledge of the Dominican Republic with other Americans, and,
• Foster "connectedness" by growing our membership network to provide news and information about Peace Corps DR and encourage participation in and support for their work.

For 2019 we continued working on our strategic goals:

• Goal 1: Focus on Organizational Sustainability
• Goal 2: Strengthen Core Programs
• Goal 3: Increase Membership/Supporter Involvement

FDR's Significant Accomplishments in 2020

• Among the ten grants awarded by the Community Challenge Fund for a total of $37,468, were six grants for pandemic relief and installation of hygienic handwashing stations to 2 non-governmental organizations in the Dominican Republic.
• The Program Support Fund provided five grants for a scholarship, youth business development, pandemic relief, and support for the last issue of Aplatanow, the Volunteer publication, for a total of $10,725.
• The Growth-Professional Development Committee developed and presented six webinars on the pandemic response, applying for work, working for large and small NGOs, Non-Competitive Eligibility for federal employment and applying to graduate school for Evacuated PCVs and RPCVs; and restarted our Mentoring Program for recent RPCVs.
• The History Committee wrote and published a 20 Year History of Friends of the Dominican Republic that can be found on our website at https://fotdr.org/Portals/0/documents/History/Full-20-Year-History-PDF.pdf
• The Board determined to continue our Third Goal activities in cooperation with the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) rather than have a separate committee.
• We published six issues of our electronic newsletter, La Voz, and a special message from Peace Corps-DR Country Director, Jennifer McGowan, bringing members up to date six months after the evacuation of Volunteers from the DR and the COVID19 response in the DR.
• We began work on the planned transfer of FDR's website from an independent host to the NPCA Silkstart platform for affiliate organizations.
• Thanks to a generous bequest from deceased DR-RPCV Thomas Powell (Agriculture and Business Development-1990-1992) we created an investment fund to support future Program Support Fund activities.