At The Foundation For Dignity, Ltd., we’re raising funds and promoting initiatives to help those who need it most. With an array of fundraising events and volunteer projects, we welcome you to join our endeavors aimed at making Staten Island a better place. Read on and contact us to learn how you can help support us. 
The Foundation For Dignity, Ltd., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charity established itself on Staten Island in 2014. Through the Foundation for Dignity, we do all within our power to prevent stillborn babies and indigent and homeless men and women from being buried in unmarked graves in New York City’s Potter's Field.

The picture shows the twelve babies that were buried last year at the Guardian Angels section of Resurrection Cemetery in the Pleasant Plains area of Staten Island, New York.  Indigent and homeless Staten Island adults are buried at various cemeteries on Staten Island, including Resurrection, Oceanview and Mount Richmond. Our goal is to ensure that all Staten Island residents receive a dignified burial on Staten Island, and that no one be relegated to Hart Island, New York City’s Potter’s Field, for burial without dignity.   

The Honorable Edwina Martin, Public Administrator of Richmond County, assumes jurisdiction for stillborn babies and indigent men and women when there is no one else to bury these forgotten Staten Islanders.  In other boroughs, stillborns for whom a dignified burial is not provided by the biological parent(s), as well as indigent men and women who have no one designated, qualified, and willing to bury their remains, are routinely sent to Potter’s Field at Hart Island.  The will of the people of Staten Island, as expressed through their Public Administrator, is that all must be afforded a dignified burial on Staten Island.  As pictured above, this is exactly what The Foundation for Dignity is committed to doing.  The Foundation for Dignity, Commissioner Martin,  and the people of Staten Island strongly feel that anonymous consignment to a municipal burial ground in the waters off the Bronx--where 700,000 stillborns and indigent men and women are currently buried is not acceptable.

The Foundation For Dignity, Ltd. in cooperation with the Office of the Public Administrator will find a way to bury all stillborns and indigent men and women. If we did not, the Staten Islanders pictured above, and many others, would be sent to Potter’s Field.

We read about the Public Administrator's efforts, and decided to use our established not-for-profit vehicle to deliver desperately-needed funding for these burials.  Our foundation has won praise from Commissioner Martin as critical for the long-term success of the program. 

These are real people—people who, in the absence of our efforts, would have been sent to Potter’s Field. These were real deaths. These were real losses of life. Whether  the parents or families of the stillborns were able to be involved, these children, as well as the indigent men and women, are just like the rest of us--our equals in deserving human dignity..

This effort is about saving children, women, and men from a common grave.  Through our work and charity, they will not be buried in Potter’s Field, but will instead receive a dignified burial on Staten Island..

The Foundation for Dignity speaks for those who cannot speak. 

Please help give these babies a dignified burial. 

Donate today!