International Federation

Why, How and What we do

The entreprise of Maison Chance is a project in constant evolution and development. From the small house that Tim Aline Rebeaud has built to raise her small family of abandoned children and disabled she hand picked from the streets of Saigon, to the Maison Chance shelter, the Take Wing Center and now the Village Chance, we can see that she has followed not a definitive plan but her heart. When the need for a place where the street kids and disabled can feel protected and care for, she created the shelter. When the needs for regaining their dignity and their place in society were most accuted, she found the funds necessary to build the Take Wing Center. As the society evolved and the living conditions of the disabled and their families are deteriorating, Tim Aline Rebeaud found again the energy and courage to fight against the odds and to build a Village Chance.

If there is a constance in such development, we can only find it in the mission of Maison Chance itself which is to “offer to disadvantaged children and disabled the possibility to live in dignity, to acquire training and to achieve personal autonomy within society” (Charter of Maison Chance, Part 1).

The creation of the International Federation of Maison Chance in 2009 follows the same logic and Tim’s gut feeling. Without her insistence, the Federation would not have been created. This brings us to the subject of why the Federation has been created, how it is organized and what it aims to accomplish.

international_federation

Why?

Prior to the creation of the Federation, each national association in different countries are organized as a self-sufficient entity without much coordination between them. Efforts are sometimes wasted because of duplication due to the lack of communication between them. The involvement of Maison Chance in major projects dictates that it must coordinates the activities of the various national associations, help build the credibility to Maison Chance internationally and improve the accounting transparencies to allow each donor to verify the use of funds he or she contributed to Maison Chance.

How?

The Federation is composed of the General Assembly of Delegates which convenes once a year to establish the directions and objectives of Maison Chance for the coming year, and of the Executive Committee which makes operational decisions. All the volunteers at Maison Chance, including those who serve at the Federation, do not receive any compensation. How they served is dictated by the Bylaws which have been approved by the General Assembly of delegates from each national association. The Federation serves essentially as a bridge between the various national associations, while each national association still maintains their autonomy in their operations.

To know more about the current officers of the Federation, please click here.

What we do:

As mentioned earlier, the aims of the Federation are:

To coordinate the activities of national associations and to ensure the transparency of Maison Chance financial information;
To provide Maison Chance Vietnam with assistance in the form of advice, training, recruitment of volunteers, dispatch of medical or teaching materials, and any other way deemed appropriate.

Since its creation, the Federation has accomplished among others the following tasks:

It has coordinated the financing for the construction of Maison Chance, by putting in place a financing structure adapted to the needs of each association partner.
It has established an accounting model to comply with article 11 of the Bylaws;
It has integrated all the websites of Maison Chance associations into a single website www.maison-chance.org while preserving the identity and content of each national association

To download the minutes of the last Assembly of Delegates, please click here.