About

Our mission is three-fold:

1. To ensure that the students in El Salvador can complete their education.

2. To educate ourselves about the realities of El Salvador especially regarding the quality of life and education in rural areas.

3. To build bridges between sponsors and students through letters and correspondence.


Family to Family Foundation, a registered 501c3 charitable foundation, is 100% volunteer powered. From the Brophy students to the board of directors to the moms and dads who’ve helped us get started, everyone is helping out in whatever way they can. So read below and see if you are inspired by our vision and hope. Whatever your talent is, whatever you can contribute, let us know and we’ll find a place for you in Family to Family.

To find out about volunteer opportunities, send us an email by clicking here.

Often we hear of the many children whose futures are not so bright. For reasons beyond their control, millions of young people are unable to develop their God-given talents and end up repeating the cycle of poverty into which they were born. While we may feel for them, we often wonder how we can be a part of changing such a massive problem. Well, if you’ve ever asked yourself that question, Family to Family Foundation has an answer.

Family to Family Foundation is the answer. The young people in our program are motivated to succeed, hard working, honest, and hopeful. They hope for a future that their parents cannot provide them. But you and I can. Our dream for Family to Family began when we realized that the young people we were meeting were like us in so many ways, except for the fact that after the fifth grade, their families could no longer afford to send them to school. They had the brains and desire to succeed, but not the means.

So when you go to the villages we work with, you see dozens of cute little kids in school uniforms, replete with backpacks and school shoes. But when you meet the middle school and high school kids, you realize that these kids, who love school and who want to be someone in life, simply don’t have a way to make it happen. Their families are just too poor to pay for the costs associated with sending them out of the village to the nearest town so they can continue their education.

When you sit down and listen to their story, you are amazed at what they tell you. These families are so poor that what holds their kids back from getting an education is less than a couple of dollars a day. If they had just that much, their kids could go to school. A cup of coffee at Starbucks. A gallon of milk. A beer at your favorite sports bar. Each of these costs more than what prevents these kids from have a chance at a life of hope. When we go there and meet them, that’s when we began to realize, hey—we can do something about this. We know good people back home who can and want to help. Family to Family is the result.

What we hoped for was to create a way to connect these kids to families in the US, but to do it in a way that was meaningful for both us and them. We operate under the belief that people who live far away from each other can come together, can work together, and can realize the dream of a better world for all. So we want you and your family to join us, and to have a great experience of building bridges together.

Meet Tim, Family to Family Founder

Timothy Broyles has been crossing borders it seems like all of his adult life. From the first trip he took to Guatemala in 1988 to the present day, Tim’s life has been about connecting people in his home town of Phoenix, Arizona to the people he’s met on his life’s journey through Mexico and Central America. In 1991 Tim served as a volunteer in a homeless shelter in Mexico, where he met his wife Clare, also a volunteer, who hails from Marin County, California. Together they traveled in 1992 to El Salvador, where they worked in the village of Tenancingo, a small town recently recovering from the civil war in that country. These early journeys into Latin America began a life of faith and a search for justice for the poor in Mexico and El Salvador.

Upon return to his hometown, he began working at Brophy College Preparatory, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1993. But settling into the life of a teacher didn’t seem yet like what God was calling him to. After getting married in 1995, Tim and Clare returned to Mexico where they lived for three years in a poor colonia on the outskirts of the city of Ciudad Juarez. Clare began an afterschool program for kids which included a children’s library that has now blossomed into a social services agency providing health care for developmentally disabled children and scholarships for over 200 students annually.

When their first child was born, Tim and Clare knew it was time to come home. So in the fall of 2000, Tim returned to the faculty at Brophy, where in short time he began Brophy’s El Salvador Immersion Experience for Brophy students. For going on eight years now, Tim has been bringing his students and colleagues at Brophy to this small, beautiful, impoverished country to allow the Salvadorans to tell their story. That is the beginning of Family to Family. Out of this experience of encounter with the most marginalized people in Salvadoran society, Family to Family has arisen. Our friendship has developed over the years, and now we call ourselves partners—compañeros—who desire to learn from each other and give what we each have to offer for the betterment of both us and them.

Our Salvadoran Partners

The folks who introduced us to these kids come from a non-profit charitable foundation of Christian influence based in San Salvador. For eight years now we have enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with our partner organization based in El Salvador, called FUNDAHMER, which stands for Fundacion Hermano Mercedes Ruiz. FUNDAHMER is a non-profit organization that is committed to Education, International Solidarity between communities in El Salvador and communities in North America, Europe and beyond, Community Development and Emergency Relief, and Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Protection. Through FUNDAHMER’s Education program, Family to Family has established a scholarship fund for two isolated rural communities in Morazán province.