The Origins of Diabetes Empowerment International:

For the past 10 years, we have helped impact the lives of people living with diabetes under the name, Marjorie’s Fund. We are honored and excited to announce that with a decade of modest beginnings, plus international partnership across 3 continents, we are now named Diabetes Empowerment International.

Over the past years since founding the first organization, we have always kept in mind what patients in resource-poor areas would have needed. People need direct access to health care because those systems for these patients do not exist. We focus on setting up clinics and counseling, training local healthcare providers, and direct-to-patient education. You cannot put a limit on the impact of education. It costs very little to educate one person who will then inform others. We also focus on income generation projects that will help patients, most of whom are uneducated, earn money to help pay for their diabetes care and supplies.

All of the projects we’ve worked on and continue have focused on sustainability and we’re looking toward the day when we are no longer required to be involved. We want to teach people how to fish, not just give them fish. This will allow them the chance to be able to thrive living with diabetes, not just survive their diagnosis and the first couple of years of life.

Empowerment is at the core of our work and uplifting our global diabetes community is why we hope to grow even further as Diabetes Empowerment International.

We want to create more peer educators across the world. We know we have to teach the healthcare providers who are starving for more information about how to manage diabetes, particularly type 1. They just don’t have access to the conferences or good internet connections by which they can go online -- all those things that health care providers in the U.S. can do at  whim.

We firmly believe in partnership with other NGOs who focus on this and we think their work is invaluable, but we want to focus on what to do when those shipments are not possible. We work with our partners to provide some level of product to bridge people until they can afford to purchase that product in their home countries with money that they have earned through various programs.

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