Vocational Training in Guatemala City

Woodworking

One reason for high youth unemployment across the world – and particularly in developing countries – is a growing mismatch between the supply and demand for skilled workers.

This is an even more serious problem for third world orphans, where many leave homes without marketable skills training or transition support. The result is an alarming failure rate and children who resort to crime, prostitution and gangs simply to survive.

That's why the World Orphan Fund is so committed to supporting vocational and transition programs wherever and whenever possible.

Since 2007, Tim and Sharie Martiny’s Skills for Life Foundation has provided vocational educational training to orphaned and impoverished children in Guatemala City. The couple serve as missionaries, and their goal is to provide students with practical life skills that enable them to achieve a better quality of life and acquire gainful employment.

Culinary Arts

Their model, like ours, has no administrative costs, overhead or salaries. 100% goes to help orphaned children reach their full potential.

Last month they asked for our help to expand their vocational training efforts, and we were pleased to offer them a matching grant of $3,000 to support programs including woodworking, culinary arts and pre-engineering.

The funds will be used to purchase equipment and pay for the supplies for the courses they teach.

A Special Appeal

Preparing older orphans to be successful in the outside world is critical because the outcomes can be grim when they reach adulthood. Studies show that 60% of girls will prostitute themselves and 70% of boys will become criminals to survive.

It doesn't have to be this way.

With your donations we've been able to provide funding for vocational teachers at Casa Bernabe in Guatemala City. The program gives the 42 children enrolled in it a better chance to succeed when they leave the orphanage. But they don't have the $3,000 they need to purchase supplies for welding, cooking, computers, carpentry and sewing classes for the next year. Will you help?

Please consider making a tax deductible donation today. 100% of your gift will go directly toward funding the program. Thank you!

The Missionary Calling

This morning I received an email and the testimony below from Tim Martiny, an amazing missionary we first met in Guatemala City in 2012. He and his wife Sharie live and serve there with their family and are making a difference in the lives of orphaned children.

The Missionary Calling

By Tim Martiny

I never cease to be amazed at how God works. From the simple seemingly mundane things in life, to the marvelous workings of the universe, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9

When we first came to Guatemala 12 years ago, a part of me thought it was going to be like an extended mission trip in which we would spend four months serving and then return to our normal lives.

How different things turned out. As I look back over the years at the many places we have served, the people we have helped, the classes we have taught and, most importantly, the individuals we have helped to walk closer to Christ. What to some may seem like a discombobulated, random trek, I see as an amazing journey whereby each task built upon the last and each challenge better prepared me to me the next. The obstacles and impossible situations I faced, were in actuality God working to build my faith so that through His power I might be willing to take on seemingly unfeasible undertakings with limited resources, and succeed, because at the end of the day I was simply following His plan and understood that the work I did was His and His alone and that I served only to accomplish His will and to glorify Him.

When we started serving in Guatemala, there was one thing I knew, I wanted my service to matter, I wanted to serve, and serve well. "Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;" Romans 12:11. I wanted to give the best I had to those who Christ placed in my path. Over the years that has meant many things, delivering food, feeding the hungry, giving out clothes, building furniture for orphanages, painting walls in schools, teaching classes, setting up vocational training programs, helping other missionaries with their projects, assisting and transporting mission teams, engaging in mass evangelism, speaking on TV, praying with people, praying for people, sharing the Gospel on a personal level, teaching Bible studies, and in each and every case, sincerely trying, with my whole heart to do the best job I could at the task set before me.

There have been many times over the years when I have thought that the particular ministry I was involved in was the best way to serve, and if I only had more resources and better support, it would change the world.

Tim on Father's Day card at Fundaninos

Last week the teenage girls from the orphanage Fundaninos were in our home for the youth meeting and Bible study we hold. They surprised me with a father’s day card and shared about the impact I had had in their lives, they thanked me for being there for them, for teaching them, spending time with them, caring for them and loving them. In that moment, I truly saw the fullness of the ministry God that had given me. It wasn’t in the excellence of my classes or the perfection of my programs; it was in the hearts of the girls before me. Of all that I had done for them over the years to prepare them for life and teach them Gods word, the true value of the work I had done, was in the relationships built with the abused, orphaned or abandoned young ladies who now saw me as a father.

One cannot demand such a title, and I never did, I never tried to be “their father”, I never tried to be “their dad”, but in all my interactions with them, I treated them with respect, I listened to them, I prayed with them, I cared for them, I engaged them on the topics they enjoyed talking about, I didn’t tell them I loved ... I showed them I loved them. At the end of the day, that is much of what a father does.

Yes, I’m still passionate about my projects, I want to setup and run effective vocational training programs where we can teach these kids valuable skills that can enable them to earn a good living, I want to create jobs and business that provide good employment in a Christian work environment that pays a living wage to orphaned children who lack a viable support structure.

I want the orphanages and schools I work at to not just provide good care, but to strive for excellence in caring for those they are responsible for. I want to see the heart of the Church broken for the fatherless and believers giving of their time to care for the needy.

But, regardless how many of my other dreams come to pass, I know the essence of my calling, and it is the same regardless of what I do. My mission is to love the unloved with a love that flows from a God of love, my duty is not just to preach Gods love, but to demonstrate Gods love, my passion is to see to it that God is glorified in all we do, because we are doing what He would have us do, how He would want us to do it.

Christ says in Mark 12:30-31 “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

I have known that verse since I was a child, but the power of that verse is not just in knowing it, it is in living it. And, at the end of the day, if we have embodied that love in whatever we have done, we will have accomplished what truly matters. 

If you'd like to help Tim and Sherie with their ministry you can visit their donation page. 

Vocational Training at Casa Bernabe

Many orphanages have all the work they can manage keeping children fed, clothed, healthy and safe. What happens when these children become adults? How will they care for themselves?

Preparing older children to be successful in the outside world is critical because the outcomes are grim for orphans when the reach adulthood. Studies show that 60% of girls will prostitute themselves and 70% of boys will become criminals to survive. It doesn’t have to be this way. That’s why we feel a strong calling to create and support vocational training programs wherever possible and in particular those that help girls become self-sufficient.

When we first visited Casa Bernabe in Guatemala City, we were surprised to find unused, fully- equipped classrooms to teach skills like welding, hair styling and cooking. But they hadn’t had a program in years. Why?

The classrooms sat empty because they didn’t have enough money for teachers. So with help from our donors we began providing the funding for three teachers at a total cost of $12,000 annually.

Now, eight boys head down to the welding class after school every day. They have made a candelabra, elaborate tabletop candleholders, three tiered fruit and breadbasket holders and security bars for windows. Their instructor, Elias, keeps them at their skill level until they master each step. He is a very good teacher.

Elias is also teaching the boys Carpentry. It has been wonderful to see as they have started to make some of their own furniture and cabinets for other people. They are learning how to use all of the power tools and work with wood cutting, sanding, staining, as well as hinging and design. 

The Beauty Salon is always full each day after school. The girls usually ask the visitors if they can do their nails and hair and have worked on straightening and curling hair and up-dos as well as color and cutting. They receive classes from an instructor from Monday to Saturday, and on Wednesdays they have an instructor from the government who will certify them.

Cooking classes are daily and an instructor is currently preparing 8 girls and 2 boys to be chefs. On Wednesdays an instructor from the government arrives to teach baking. For their trimestral exam they held a themed event where they cooked for their guests showing off the abilities they have acquired.

Finally, four girls are in the sewing program. They began with the basics and have now learned to make a bag, a shirt and a skirt. One of the objectives of this workshop is for the girls to learn to make practical things they can sell in the future as well as how to run their own business. 

Currently Casa Bernabe is empowering 42 teens and plans to place the older children in jobs during their vacation at the end of this year.

Tweeting at J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling

I received an email from a Washington D.C. based organization called Disability Rights International last week, asking us to reconsider our mission at the World Orphan Fund. I found it quite odd they would contact us given we're a fairly small outfit. Most likely it was a reaction to our tweet to J.K. Rowling praising her efforts at the Lumos Foundation  (Rowling is an advocate for the immediate elimination of orphanages and has 4.7 million followers on twitter.)

I'd never heard of the group, and while their message was a bit cryptic it was consistent with a sometimes militant attitude toward closing down orphanages at any cost. As many of you know there are many underlying reasons for the "orphan" population in places like Central America - poverty and violence against children topping the list.  There is no social safety net in many cases and often an orphanage is the safest and only option for those children.

Some advocate outright elimination orphanages without a clear path to placement or a system that accomplishes that goal with the necessary accountability. While the movement toward family preservation,  extended families, foster care, adoption and other means of creating or maintaining a family environment is always desirable, ignoring the existing reality is irresponsible.

Simply put, we must have well thought out alternatives in place before disassembling the current means of caring for millions of children. Honduras recently shut down it's government run orphanages causing a population boom at many privately run orphanages. Without those orphanages children would be living on the street much as they did in earlier decades. More often than not survival in that environment involves crime, the sex trade and gangs. The fate of many special needs children is even worse.

Changing the current system requires cooperation, commitment, and in many countries literally creating a foster care system from the ground up. Sometimes there are steps that can be taken along the way. For example, earlier this year we provided funding for a program at Casita Copan where three families have been created for 13 orphaned children. But there are 153,000,000 orphans worldwide and it's going to take time and resources to shift the paradigm on a global scale.

Organizations like Lumos are working on orphan prevention, but we have a different role. Our primary focus is on emergency, transformational and essential funding that addresses the here and now - providing critical funding for needs such as housing, medical care, skills training, transition and psychological support for children with no other options. We continue to pray for the day where what we do is no longer necessary. Then, and only then, will we reconsider our mission.

Africa 2015

All in God's time. That's what we kept reminding ourselves when it came to visiting Africa.  Central and South America were closer and we had a steep learning curve in our first four years. We have visited 38 orphanages primarily in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico. We still have much to learn and our work will continue there. However, with literally hundreds of requests from Africa, a growing group of volunteers, amazing donors and an established process to evaluate orphanages we believe now is the time to add Africa to our mission. The need there is enormous.

In July we will make our first trip to Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania with a mission team including board members and new volunteers who have joined our cause. In those four countries alone there are over 10 Million orphans. We know that it will be a completely different place than we've ever visited. The culture, the AIDS epidemic, the wars, the famines are a world apart from our work in Central America. With God's grace we will continue to seek the path we believe He wants us to follow. We are ready, and we will begin by visiting five orphanages in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania.

AHOPE Orphanage

Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Director: Mengesha Shibru
Number of Orphans: 205
ahopeforchildren.org/

We were first introduced to AHOPE via Julie Wadler, who owns a fundraising company in Virginia. In 1997, there was a need for facilities to care for orphans in Ethiopia. More and more of the orphans in care were testing positive for HIV. In 2002, a home known as the ENAT HIV Children’s Center was established exclusively for the care of orphans infected with HIV. At the same time, Kathy Olsen started a non-profit charity to assist in the funding of the home for the HIV positive children. That group is AHOPE for Children.

AHOPE stands for African HIV Orphans: Project Embrace. On July 12, 2004, the ENAT HIV Children’s Center was closed and replaced by a new NGO, AHOPE Ethiopia. The children at ENAT now lived at AHOPE Ethiopia.

Thanks to President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR),in September, 2005, the first pediatric program to provide lifesaving antiretroviral medications in all of Ethiopia was establish at AHOPE Ethiopia. AHOPE partnered with Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO) and the program was administered through WWO’s newly established mediator AIDS clinic in Addis Ababa. The focus of care and outreach changed dramatically with the arrival of ARVs; what was once considered a hospice program which anticipated death AHOPE became a program of hope for a real future for every child.

Urukundo Home for Children

Location: Gitarama, Rwanda
Number of Orphans: 41
Director: Arlene Brown
hopemadereal.org/

Lisa Martolotta reached out to me in 2014 asking that we make a visit and support projects at the orphanage. She is American but currently lives with her husband and daughter in Switzterland. She spent two years in Rwanda and is chairman of the board.

Arlene Brown began her life in Africa in 1996, at the age of 65, as a relief worker in refugee camps following the Genocide. In 2004 she made a permanent move to Rwanda to work with non-profits for children. In 2006 she began her current work creating a home for children.

Hundreds of thousands of children who managed to live through the 1994 genocide and its aftermath in Rwanda are struggling for survival in desperately impoverished situations. Due to AIDS, disease, and poverty many younger children have become orphans or throw away children. 

The number of vulnerable children in Rwanda is not decreasing. They are without help. Most of them live in loneliness, neither loved nor cared for. Many children have been traumatized and the psychological consequences of invisibility and powerlessness is devastating. These circumstances overwhelm them. Most, feeling hopeless about their future, end up wandering and begging in the streets where they are routinely exploited, girls in particular. Hope Made Real believes that all children are precious and are a sign of hope for Rwanda's future.

Rift Valley Children's Village

Location: Campi, Tanzania
Number of Orphans: 92
Director: India Howell 

tanzanianchildrensfund.org/

Former Ambassador to Tanzania Mark Green recommended we visit the Rift Valley Children’s Village (RVCV) which currently provides a permanent home for 92 orphaned children. 

The Children’s Village staff works with local village leaders to identify the children in the surrounding community most in need of the safe haven RVCV can provide. From the moment they step through the gates, these children become permanent members of the RVCV family. They prepare them to become informed, resourceful, and responsible citizens in their community and throughout Tanzania.

A team of Tanzanian social workers, international staff, and volunteers work with each child to ensure that they are physically and emotionally cared for and that they have the opportunity to learn and grow into responsible, happy, healthy adults. When they arrive, their children often suffer from malnutrition, weakened immune systems, and emotional scars. However, almost immediately, the healing process begins. Living together – doing chores alongside the Tanzanian housemothers and reading books with the volunteers – the children become members of a unique community which balances laughter and learning in equal measure.

Organized around a family model, the children live together in houses of twelve, with three Tanzanian house-mothers, one Tanzanian student teacher, and two international volunteers. 

The Village of Eden

Location:  Busia, Uganda
Number of Orphans:  24 full time
Director:  Jessica Matthews                            helpinghandsmissions.org/

Planning for the village of Eden was begun in 2008 by doctors Brenda and Richard Kowalkse of Gainesville, Georgia. Eden began with a school and is a larger ministry with an orphanage. It has a strong and vibrant base of support in Gainesville with Gainesville First United Methodist and First Baptist, churches that of were the backbone of our World Orphan Fund Gala there in 2013.

Their vision for the 133-acre complex is a Village/community with the Church at the helm of leadership. Currently they have 4 children’s duplex cottages, each with 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms (each housing 4 children), a common area, a bedroom for the housemother, and a kitchen. The cottages are home for the children, a place where they “belong,” and are loved, as well as held accountable for chores, grades, and interaction with other family members. A senior person oversees the housemothers, which are trained up widows. They are allowed to send one of their kids to school. And stay 3-4 days at a time. There are 7 housemothers.

Village of Eden Christian Primary currently has a Nursery School to Primary Four; and over time they plan to a offer secondary school, technical training, and Bible training. 100 children from the community and orphanage attend the school.

The future vocational school will encompass several programs including farming (animals and crops), baking (commercial), sewing, cosmetology, auto mechanics, woodworking (crafts), carpentry (building), cabinets/furniture, and metal/welding shops. Training in these targeted areas will help the senior children learn a trade and to produce items so that the complex can be self-sustaining.

Construction of a medical clinic began September 2014; it will be staffed by local health care providers, who will provide acute medical care for the children, staff, and surrounding community. Initially, we will offer primary care for children and adults; prenatal and postnatal care; immunizations; laboratory services; and wound care. During Phase 2 of construction, they will add Radiology Services, minor surgery, and in-patient care. 

Bright Kids Uganda

Location:  Entebbee, Uganda

Number of Orphans:  98
Director:  Victoria Nalongo
brightkidsuganda.net/

We were asked to visit Bright Kids Uganda by Carly Wilson, a Canadian volunteer working at the orphanage. BKU houses, feeds, and educates 98 children who are orphaned or otherwise desperately needy.

It wasn’t until 2000 when Victoria Nalongo was serving as Chief Commissionaire for Scouts in Uganda, when  she came face to face with the reality that actually most street kids longed for what they would call home and loving arms to run into. Victoria saw that her role could be more effective if she began her own orphanage to care for the children of Uganda and as a result she started Bright Kids Uganda. then called Sunrise Children’s Village, in April 2000.

Bright Kids Uganda provides a home and education forchildren who have been affected by violent conflicts in Northern Uganda, HIV/AIDS, poverty and abandonment.

A Note from Montana de Luz

I received a note today (below) from Montana de Luz, an orphanage for children affected by HIV/AIDS in Honduras. As you may recall, earlier this year we able to fund surgeries for three children and replace a Van that had been totaled in a crash. 

They do amazing, life altering, life saving work. To our donors who have allowed us to help this amazing mission, thank you.

Dear Friends,

Since April of 2001, Montana de Luz has been a place of refuge for 65 children with and affected by the ravages of HIV/AIDS. Since accepting the first three children in 2001, we have loved cared for, buried and celebrated the life of these precious and vulnerable children.

Just this past year, we have welcomed three new children! Four year old Erick came to us when he was orphaned  after his mother died of AIDS.

Cristal, who is eight, came to us when her mother who worked in the watermelon fields for $6 a day, could not afford to care for her. She sacrificed here own anti-retroviral therapy so that Cristal would receive the live lifesaving medication. She could not afford to send Cristal to school. The child spent her days locked in the dark and dank shack they called home, built into the side of a mountain, waiting for her mother to return. When Cristal told her mother than men were trying to break in the door while she was home alone, Cristal's mother asked MdL to take her in.

Then there is Samuel, who is eleven but looks to be about seven. When his parents died of AIDS, his aunt and uncle took him in but they were too poor to send Samuel to school. His uncle who is an alcoholic would often beat him and Samuel begged the neighbors to take him to an orphanage. When he found out he was coming to Montana de Luz he ran up and down the streets telling the neighbors he was doing to live in a happy place!

With the love, care and support Montana de Luz provides, Eric is receiving the lifesaving medication he needs, has settled in and his extended family visits regularly. Cristal is now in school and shyly shared that she received her first Christmas gift this past year. Samuel is being homeschooled and with support is working through his emotional pain and becoming more resilient every day.

With your support we are able to be a place of refuge for these children and others like them who are finding the way to the Mountain of Light. Your contribution makes this work, God's work, possible!

On behalf of the children, gracias!

Erica