The Story of Our Founder
Dr. Komi Semenou Folly, was born in Togo, Africa and grew up in a family of 6 brothers and 4 sisters. He was fortunate to have been surrounded by loving parents that provided adequate nourishment, understood the importance of school, and taught him about hard work, love for others, and honesty.
As an 11 years old boy, he dreamed of helping people, focusing his education specifically on healthcare and education because of the poverty, devastation, and mortality rate witnessed among many families in Togo. Poverty, illiteracy and the lack of adequate health care caused the loss of many of his friends, losing his own father due to a preventable asthma attack. Komi went to school in a small town in Togo from Pre-K to graduation, then went on to graduate from the University in Lomé Togo in 2002, he speaks Mina, Ewe, French, and English fluently. He later moved to the US where he attended the University of OU at Tulsa, to become a US physician. Now Dr. Folly is a full-time Internist at Saint Francis and works as a hospitalist at Saint John Hospital ICU.
In 2011, Komi returned to Togo to visit an N.G.O.- Global Pad, that he had been supporting financially. During the visit to his home country, his internal calling to help his people became very strong. He met a woman that was ready to give birth. Her husband had been killed months earlier in an accident. The time came for her to give birth, but complications from a ruptured uterine artery causing a massive bleed. In a U.S. hospital, the condition would have been serious, but handled by an OBGYN surgical team. In Togo, the story is markedly different, conditions that are easily handled in the U.S. are the opposite in Togo. The clinic she was at did not have the basic equipment to save her life. The 20-minute window to save her became a time of helplessness, there was no equipment to save her. The staff had to stand there and watch her bleed out from child birth. In 20-minutes her new born child became an orphan. During that time Dr. Folly found a note that he had written as a child of 11, some 30 years earlier. The note stated the simple thoughts of a child that became a physician, to always help the people of Togo. A year later in 2012, Dr. Folly created Light in the World Development Foundation. Today, LWDF partners with the Togolese government to improve the lives of people living in Togo.
From 2012 – 2017, Light in the World Development Foundation (LWDF) has built a clinic, which will eventually grow into a fully-functioning hospital, on land donated by the government of Togo. Medical equipment has been donated to equip the clinic and other existent hospitals. Medications and eye glasses have been purchased and distributed during a medical mission in 2016. LWDF built a school large enough to accommodate 150 children and donated the school to the community in Togo. A water well has been drilled and is functioning to serve the area near the clinic, along with solar energy that will support the clinic.
Now that the building blocks of health care, education and clean water have begun to stabilize the community, LWDF continues to look forward. With the help of the world community and technology, the new website outlines a plan to stabilize the area even more. The plan now is to create a sustainable process that can be duplicated in communities, so that the people of Africa can sustain life on their own. LWDF wants to be the light at the end of the tunnel, connecting the dots of donors, other agencies and the government to achieve results that can be measured, even at a glance.