A MESSAGE FROM OUR FOUNDER
APRIL 10, 2026
Our 2026 NATIVE EYES Travel Team members are flying out to Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota this weekend to open our Annual Free Children’s Clinic. Our partner, Todd County Elementary School, will be hosting us once again, as we take care of 180 kindergarten children and hundreds of children in 7th and 8th grade. We want to thank your sponsors: Changing Life Through Lenses, Padre Pio Foundation of America and the thousands of artists who have painted a 6x6 canvas as part of our 6x6 4 PEACE MOVEMENT. We’re excited, and proud, that we will be seeing our 9,000th patient next week. Please follow our clinic on our FB and IG pages: Artists for World Peace, where we will be featuring our wonderful medical travel team. This year our doctors are joining us from Austin, Texas and Pennsylvania. The rest of our optical team will be flying in from New Jersey and Connecticut. We’re also very happy to have an ever-growing team of tribal members who work side-by-side with our AFWP travel team.
After we arrive home we will be co-hosting our “Seeing is Believing” Free public event with Padre Pio Foundation of America, where we will be presenting the work of AFWP’s NATIVE EYES teams throughout the years. Speakers who have been with us since we built and opened our Free AFWP Health Center in Tanzania will join us, as well as doctors who have traveled with us as we opened free clinics in our hometown of Middletown, CT and our clinics for tribal members in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Dr. Soroush Azadi will be flying in from Austin to speak about our work on Rosebud Reservation, where we established NATIVE EYES in 2018. Brenda Geer, an elder and Chairperson from the Eastern Pequot Nation will be joining us to speak about the clinics we hosted for her tribe. We will also have a Q+A where the public is invited to ask questions to our panel of AFWP team members who have traveled with us and helped make our work possible. We’ve very excited to present our ongoing work to the public and appreciate St. Pius Church, in our hometown of Middletown, CT, for hosing this event.
On May 16th we will bring a small slice of our traveling PEACE WALL that has helped financially support our clinics all these years. Thousands of artists from across America, Mexico, and Italy have donated a 6”x6” painting for our WALL. Every painting is available for a $50. donation to AFWP.
Our PEACE HOUSE in Tanzania will be completed by this summer, when our children will be moving into their permanent home! We’re so excited to have our family dream come true. Our kids are excited to have a beautiful 2+ acre farm where they will be building their futures together. They are growing their own food, and once the house is completed we will be raising chickens for eggs and a cow or two for milk. The kids will be self-sufficient, well fed and will all be together. THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to our family dream!
We look forward to all of the exciting things we have planned for 2026. Our Musical Director is planning more wonderful concerts, and each one will be advertised through our website, as well as our FB and IG pages. We hope you can join us and look forward to seeing many of you at one of our upcoming events.
Meanwhile, we wish you all peace, love and good health,
With love from Wendy
