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10-30-11 |
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Microfinance, Savings and Credit Associations, microloans….what do these terms bring to mind? Maybe you assume this is a subject for MBA’s and banking executives? Would you ever connect these words with sending poor children to school? We had the privilege of traveling with Hope International to see their work in the Dominican Republic. Our goal was to get a clear understanding of how these concepts can literally transform lives from hopeless poverty to productivity, pride and spiritual salvation.
We were in the D.R. to witness a marvelous partnership between Esperanza, a Dominican non-profit, and U.S. based Hope International. We headed into a small village in the middle of hundreds of acres of sugar cane. The unpaved road seemed to go on forever.
Along the way we passed by little villages where the sugar cane workers live. We were told that large corporations own these fields and the shanties in which the workers live.
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The poverty in the region was typical of the D.R. but this place has a reason to be joyful. Once a week, an Esperanza loan officer makes the trip to this remote place for a meeting. This officer literally brings the bank to these people. We were privileged to observe one of these meetings. The loan group (“clients”) assembles in the one building in the village. The meeting opens with worship and Bible teaching. On this particular day, they were discussing the story of Abraham and Isaac.
Next, the business starts. At this point, clients are able to make loan withdrawals, make payments on their loans, check balances and discuss their account. Basically, whatever you do in the U.S. with your bank teller, they are doing here. Just before business started, the group realized that one of the members of this client group was missing. The policy is that all clients must be present to start the banking business. All of these clients have taken small loans of $30-50 to expand or develop private businesses of their own. If one member is missing, it is up to the group to either find her or cover her payment for that meeting. You can imagine how quickly the group went to work locating her. After about 30 minutes, a well-dressed older woman came rushing into the group. She looked distressed and explained that she had been at a funeral for a family member who had taken his own life. Even in her grief, she quickly went to work making her payment to avoid the group being held up longer. You can see how this accountability encourages responsibility and good stewardship. If one person defaults, the repayment responsibility falls on the shoulders of the entire group. This policy translates into a community holding each other responsible for making good financial and lifestyle choices. Mix in Christian education, prayer, and economic enterprise and you can see how this is transformational! The power of this approach is obvious in the 95% loan repayment rate that Hope typically sees among their clients.
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The clients I spoke with were eager to share their success stories. One woman in particular has a shoe business. Every week she goes in to town and purchases shoes to sell. As we spoke through a Hope employee translator she was asking how big her next loan could be. She was pointing to our American shoes and saying, “I want to buy higher quality shoes like yours to sell”. She is paying back her sixth Hope loan and is ready for more! These small loans have enabled people to accumulate savings (and keep their savings in a safe place) for the first time in their lives. Now, when a child is sick, they have the $10 for medicine, they can pay for school tuition and uniforms, and cover emergencies.
Before they had savings accounts, one household emergency meant financial disaster. Having $50 in the bank can be the difference between life and death in this community.
Over the years I have personally become weary of hand out programs that seem to have no end in sight, creating dependency among the poor and basically threatening local businesses. Hope International provides a productive and creative alternative to that type of short-term help to the poor. If you are looking for transformational work that enables people to lift themselves permanently out of devastating poverty, I truly believe this is the approach to do that.
Learn more at www.hopeinternational.org
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09-16-10 |
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Below is a story from Jim Kramer of the Mid Atlantic Orphan Care Coalition, from their blog:
Greetings Saints!!
Two years ago we asked our supporters to pray as MAOCC was forming and putting together our first 50 Churches/50 Children program with the goal of 50 churches committing to pray for 50 orphans from our area and around the world during November, National Adoption Month. Each church would commit to pray for five children with the goal of ten churches praying for each child and growing the ministry from there.
This is one of many incredible testimonies of what God has done through those prayers as we begin our third year of 50 Churches/50 Children this November.
When the first Sunday in November 2008 arrived, the first child our home church children’s group prayed for was a little boy named Adam from China. We handed his picture out and prayed for him. Watch out when children pray! A day or so later, one of the children’s parents contacted me. It seemed their daughter, Abby, felt God wanted them to adopt Adam from China. They asked for prayer. A few months later, Beth again asked for prayer; you see, there was this little girl in several of Adam’s pictures – they were calling her Megan. Again, we prayed.
This past Sunday, Abby moved up to my Sunday School Class and the children prayed for her, Adam Jiujiu, and Megan Yanmei. You see, as this is being written, Adam, Beth, and Abby Smith are at the airport preparing to leave for China where they will meet Adam Jiujiu and Megan Yanmei and bring these precious children home to be with them! Love those Godincidences!
I encourage you to go to their blog to read a letter from Beth’s mother about Adam and Megan; Kleenexes needed. beth-waitingforadam.blogspot.com – it’s as moving as anything you’ll ever read.
On the first Sunday in November 2010, when we again focus as a church on 50 Churches/50 Children, the first child our church prayed for, Adam, will be with us as a part of our Bible Fellowship Church in Newark along with Megan, with more on the way! As a direct result of prayer and God using the 50 Churches/50 Children outreach, Adam and Megan now have a forever family.
If your church is not involved in our 50 Churches/50 Children outreach, please prayerfully consider having your church join us in ministering to and providing forever families for these very precious children.
You can learn more by exploring our website and you can sign your church up here, or feel free to contact me; I would be more than happy to talk with you.
Have a great day with Jesus. We can’t wait to see what God does next!
Until Every Child Knows,
Jim and Karen Kramer
Matt. 19:14
James 1:27
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11-19-09 |
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 This summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Zimbabwe with Ryan Keith of Forgotten Voices. The experience was overwhelming in so many ways, both good and bad - the total economic desolation, the desperate need of the people, a temptation to feel hopeless in the face of so many problems, but also the amazing beauty of the country, the wonderfully unhurried pace of interactions and conversations, and the tremendous generosity and hospitality of everyone we met.
The most memorable part of the trip by far, though, was the two days we spent with a 14 year old girl named Neatness and her family. She lives in Mtshabezi, a rural area where the needs are among the greatest in the country. She and seventeen relatives live together in a small collection of huts, near a Brethren in Christ Church mission which Forgotten Voices supports. The mission provides schooling, medical care, and food assistance to thousands of people in the surrounding area, including Neatness and her family.
Three years ago, Neatness lost her father to AIDS. Today, there are four others in her family who are infected - her mother, her grandfather, her uncle, and her eight year old brother. Neatness has taken on many of the household responsibilities as a result, and takes care of her siblings, nephews and nieces, in addition to attending school at the mission. If not for the help of Forgotten Voices, her family would not have been able to pay for school fees and supplies after her father’s death. She would have been forced to drop out, effectively erasing any possibility of a better life. Without an education, Neatness and children like her have few options other than scraping by on what food they can grow and any assistance they can find.
Thanks to the graciousness of the family in opening their home and their lives to us (and to Ryan’s very talented photographer friend Darren), we filmed a day in the life of Neatness, which starts before dawn and ends not long after sundown. We also interviewed her, and she also told us her story. You can see the video by clicking here. As you will see, her cheerfulness, poise, and maturity in the face of so many difficulties are incredible. I think what struck me most about Neatness, and the many other children we met, is that she is not looking for anyone to fly to her rescue and make everything better for her and her family, she just wants the opportunity to go to school, study hard, and find a job. It broke my heart that these simple wishes feel like an impossible dream to countless Zimbabwean kids.
We all fell in love with Neatness, but we also know that she is one of thousands of equally remarkable children in the same situation or worse. Right now, the Mtshabezi Mission is struggling to raise funds to keep 5,000 children in school for the coming term (starting in January) because fees have just been increased. To make this possible, Forgotten Voices will need to raise $50,000 by December 15 - more than they’ve ever raised in such a short time. We believe that God will provide, and that these kids will not have to drop out and lose sight of the better life they’ve been working so hard to attain. If you’d like to help, you can do so at www.forgottenvoices.org, but in the meantime please get to know Neatness by watching her story, and please join us in praying for her, and a better future for Zimbabwe.
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01-12-09 |
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The director of Forgotten Voices International is a friend of mine. He became a friend after I was introduced to his ministry. His name is Ryan Keith and right now he’s in southern Africa to deal with some of the headlines that we only read about: the astronomical number of children orphaned by AIDS, poverty, chronic malnutrition, disease and starvation. The reason I write this is because I want you to know that my family knows Ryan. He and his wife Katie have stayed in our home, gone to church with us, played with our dogs and our kids. We eagerly awaited the results of Katie’s first marathon (she finished in under four hours!) And now he is working his way through Zambia and Zimbabwe to help the children there.
Part of his trip to Zimbabwe is personal for me. Two years ago, my in-laws went on a missions trip to a small village there. We learned of the suffering there as they tearfully showed us their pictures. They befriended a local man and we had the privilege of having lunch with him when he visited the US. He appears to be the only source of support for this impoverished village due to his connection with US relief organizations. He has promised the villagers there that he will not leave them, even as conditions continue to deteriorate. Ryan is going to that village to see if Forgotten Voices can help them. With God leading, I know they will. You see, Forgotten Voices is one of the most effective non profits I have come upon in 10 years of foundation work. Their Board member list looks like a who’s who list of committed, highly educated experts in a wide array of disciplines. Ryan and the Forgotten Voices staff have worked hard to equip the Zimbabwean church (many, many of them, actually) to meet the needs of the people of Zimbabwe. The programs they support educate and feed thousands of orphans, provide employment and to hundreds, and bring hope to the African pastors desperately trying to shepherd and rescue their flock. I know he’ll be able to help those villagers. It’s funny to think of a guy who’s capable of all this playing soccer with my husband and kids in the back yard (and doing monkey impersonations!)
In America, I think most of us have no idea just how bad the situation is in Zimbabwe and how many hurting children live there. My extended family has been there, seen it, and we are so grateful that Forgotten Voices is courageous enough to make a very dangerous trip to one of the most desperate places in the world on behalf of hungry, lonely children. Our family is praying that God will bless him while he travels.
Please consider learning more about FVI and following Ryan’s travel at www.forgottenvoices.org
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10-29-08 |
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In honor of National Adoption Month and the millions of kids waiting for forever families, I want to draw your attention to this excerpt from an article by Anthony Bradley. It’s quite convicting I think.
Why Does America Have Orphans If It Has Christian Churches?
America has nearly 115,000 orphaned kids in foster care waiting to be adopted. Some wonder how this is possible in a country with Christian families. Surely, there are 115,000 missional families in America, right? Missional families, for example, embrace the redemptive mission of God and practice “true religion” in their local communities (James 1:27). Missional Christians in America could eliminate the foster care system tomorrow if we would stop “shootin’ up” with the American Dream in order to get high on a lame life lived for the sake of comfort and ease.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world,” writes James (1:27). As a matter of fact, the Bible has over 40 verses mandating God’s people to look after orphans and the fatherless for various reasons.
According to the American Religious Identity Survey, conducted by the City University of New York, there are over 224 million Christians in the United States. So, why are there 115,000 orphans in a country that has over 224 million Christians?
[…]Let’s break this down further. The Washington Times reports that there are about 65 million evangelicals in America. So, again, why are there 115,000 orphans in America’s foster care system? Does this mean that there are 65 million people missing huge sections of their Bibles?
[…]If your church is not cultivating an ethos that practices “true religion” it may not be missional at all. It may be dying or sinking into a consumeristic, entertainment quicksand where people come to have their “felt needs” stroked. Your pastor might wear “cool” clothes, have a “cool” blog, or be in the process of trying to make God and Jesus androgynous but God seems to care that his people are being led by capable men who lead the rest of God’s people in bringing the Kingdom to their local neighborhood in all its forms.
While not all Christians are gifted or equipped for taking in orphans it’s pretty convicting that 65 million American evangelicals can’t rescue 115,000 kids from an unstable hell. If the pagans in our neighborhoods aren’t struck by how our churches are applying the Word of God to the needy it’s possible that we aren’t the real deal yet. May we all pray that our churches are soon as mature as James commends. The revolution continues…
Anthony recommends: Bethany Christian Services (a Christian adoption agency operating in the US and abroad; www.bethany.org) and Adopted by God: From Wayward Sinners to Cherished Children by Dr. Robert A. Peterson.
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“We need your help.
We are seeing more and more people coming to our food cupboard for help. We need to be there for them. Our financial cupboard is almost bare. Your gift in any amount will help us keep our lights on and refrigerators running. Please donate now so we can continue helping the people of Chester County who need us the most. Thank you.”
I saw this plea on the local food pantry website this morning. I have never seen needs at this organization like I do now. As our economic crisis deepens, the hardest hit will be that segment of our community that was already struggling. The poor will be poorer. Food pantries will experience a significant decrease in giving. As their donor base gets more protective of their pocketbooks, the needy will be increasing in number. In other words, they will have less resources to serve more people.
This doesn’t seem like a flashy and upbeat way to launch a website but it is my goal to present real needs to the community so that we can work together to meet those needs. I desire to “Speak up for those who can not speak for themselves, for those who are destitute” (Proverbs 31:8). You’ll see a lot of God’s word on these pages. I want it to be clear that God cares tremendously for the vulnerable and needy among us and desires to show His heart to the world in the way we serve and love each other. We can be the hands and feet of Christ in this hurting world. Please join us in “Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves” (Matthew 22:39) I look forward to working with you.
Serving together,
Suzanne
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