History of Ministro

John Toth, a retired nurse from Canada, is the founder of the Ministro Humanitarian Foundation. In 1993, John was a maternity clinic volunteer in Smokey Mountain, located in metro Manila’s Garbage City district. Seeing a great need, John returned to the Philippines in 1996 and then every year from 2000 to the present. John used his medical and organizational gifts to implement outreach clinics in some of the Philippines’ most impoverished communities and jails. Funding for the clinics came from Canada and from local Philippine medical and civilian volunteers. The project became a model for health, hope and empowerment that resulted in a tremendous outpouring of appreciation from the Philippine people, which led John to initiate Ministro’s seed organization in 2003: “Mission Possible Medical Outreach”(Philippines). In 2005, the organization grew to become the Canadian-based charitable organization, “Ministro Humanitarian Foundation” (MHF), with a Philippine branch charitable organization called “Ministro Humanitarian Association” (MHA).