International Orphan Network

Visit: African Hope Trust Safe House (IT2171/2009)

2011-06-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

Recently we had the privilege of attending the opening ceremony for the African Hope Trust Safe House in Masiphumelele. After many months of planning,setting up a trust, drawing up plans, interviewing for a house mother, - they started to build and now this beautiful house is finished. The housemother Rachel is just an inspiration and already their first little one clings to her legs and follows her everywhere she goes.

Though the first house is complete this is by no way the end of this project's vision and goals. They are starting to build their second home in June 2011! We were amazed at their progress is and how they hope to impact the lives of orphaned and abandoned children in the area.

As you can see, Sean all dressed up for the event! That doesn't happen too often:)

Of course the newspapers were present (as they should be at such a special moment) and I decided to include their write up of the event in the False Bay People's Post written by Daleen Foche

The African Hope Trust, a Christian-based NGO that aims to address problems faced by vulnerable children and orphans in the Fish Hoek Valley and surrounding areas, opened the first of two safe houses in Masiphumelele last week.

The two houses, which opened on Saturday 21 May, aims to create a home environment for vulnerable children who have no family.

Each house will accommodate six children and have a house mother who will take on a parental role. The houses are situated in Skinna Road, Masiphumelele.

The completed house already has its first resident, Simphiwe, a 20 month old boy who cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony on Saturday.

The principle around the workings of these facilities are based on an internationally recognised model, developed by Home from Home, an established foster care group where the house mother is encouraged to raise the children "as her own".
Don Sayers, a trustee of African Hope Trust and facilitator for the two homes, says construction on the second house will start next week.

He explains the trustees of African Hope Trust opened one house at a time to ensure that they can handle all the challenges that come their way.

"So far it has been a very easy process,' says Sayers.

He says children can stay in the home indefinitely, or until a family member adopts the child, or the child's own home environment changes for the better.

Sayers explains that the African Hope Trust follows Department of Social Development guidelines when accepting a child into a home.

"It is very tempting to receive every child that comes to us", he says. But Sayers says only children with no other viable accommodation alternative will be accepted. Sayers has experienced first hand that some parents just refuse to take responsibility for their child.

The African Trust Fund is sponsored by several churches in the United States and Canada. It will also receive a small grant from the Social Development for each child in its care.

Sayers says the homes need volunteers willing to donate their time. He says, like any other mother, the house mother sometimes needs to be in two places at once.

He says they need people who are willing to look after the children when the house mother takes a child to the clinic or does other chores.

For more information about the safe houses and the African Hope Trust, contact Don Sayers on 084 900 6898 or Bill Eames, the chairperson of the trust, on 072 220 1115.

I have gotten to know some of the team and they are truly remarkable people. They have a passion to serve our local communities and they are soooo organised. I don't remember being this organised at this early stage. My children have fallen in love with this home (I think they miss the children of the previous home we helped with) and so they have decided that they would like to volunteer on a weekly basis. I love the fact that they want to do this and I know that Don and the rest of the team are going to need all the support they can get. I believe that fostering a desire to serve in our children is so important in their understanding the worth that others have -putting aside their own desires and needs for the needs of others!

Organisation Website: Part 1: Online Donations

2010-08-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

Your website is the tool which takes you across the world to people who have never met you and are browsing the web and hoping to make a difference in the lives of orphans - and then they find you or not?

There is so much to cover on this topic that I will continue to do it in parts. Each part can be implemented with the right skills (if you have a content management system like Joomla!, Drupal, Wordpress, Chasimba and Plone - these are not the only ones but they all have a very similar functionality) or if you have the right person (a web designer) or you can compensate with alternatives which we will discuss too.

Websites are funny things, owners want them to be "pretty". Now there is nothing wrong with a well designed, graphically appealing website but if you can't be found by the search engines and there's no life on the site - potential donors/ volunteers/ funders will lose interest very quickly. Placeholders or sites that contain just enough information to get by and whose information never changes will not bring any return.

Online Donations Option

In my experience 50% of our donations have come through random acts of kindness. (of course also on the fact that the public is able to find our website easily and then likes what they read - which we will cover later - like I said there is a lot to learn). It also means that when volunteers have left us/ on the way to us or someone hears about us - without having to pick up the phone or log into their bank account, they are able to make a donation. 80% of people, according to statistics ( and I don't know how accurate those statistics are) want to pay with a credit card online. After all what person who is based in Canada wants to arrange an international transfer? This way in the comfort of their home they can then make their payment.

With an online donations option - you can refer people to your website for donations even on social networking sites like Facebook. You can use the same technique in your newsletters or any online Internet based options. It doesn't mean that you take off your bank details but you want to make it as easy as possible for individuals to make a contribution.

Now I DO NOT advocate any of these products or get a commission from them, I am purely listing them for information purposes only. Some online payment systems include the following:
Paypal
Monsterpay
Payfast
Setcom

There is some administration involved like verifying that the bank account actually belongs to the organisation, normally some identification documents, but once its done - you have a tool of fundraising that happens with very little effort.

Let me know what type of online payment system you use and what your experiences have been.

Questions to guide your discovery?

2010-05-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

The monumental task of trying to analyse where your organisation or ministry is at, can at times be overwhelming and confusing. We have created a simple online form which you can fill in and based on your responses, we will be able to assess prior to our arrival what we need to be aware of. The more information you can share prior to our arrival, the more we are able to plan ahead and prepare ourselves.

You can view the form here.

How it started?

2010-05-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

We are often asked how all of this started and I have been slow to write purely because sometimes these type of experiences happen in the privacy of our hearts and not in the public arena – however for many people, they want to understand our motives, understand who we are and mostly find out whether we are truly people of integrity. So this is our story.

This was not a project that happened overnight but was birthed years ago when Sean and I read a book on George Mueller – a remarkable man who transformed a country’s orphan crisis. Our hearts were stirred in the same way and as we talked we realized that something irrevocable had been done to our world perception.

In the years that followed, it kept resurfacing, dreams of children dying in their mother’s arms, poverty and the devastation in the lives of these special children. It wasn’t until we had our daughter Savannah that we heard the call loud and clear. She was born with a genetic disorder called Trisomy 18. In fact we were told that she would not live longer than 48 hours. We spent 9 special months with her. In fact during that time, though we never knew when, we knew we would lose her.

What I found though was that as I held her, I thought to myself ‘this is what a mother feels like when they have a baby with an incurable disease – you know the most precious gift in your eyes could slip away at any moment’. We loved beyond the physical (her body was misformed and was a tiny 2kg – in fact she never got much bigger) and we loved her without restraint. We finally said goodbye to her 9 months later.

As we read newspapers about orphaned and abandoned babies our hearts cried for them as we considered these precious lives who deserved to be loved and cared for as much as any other child. Who needed the love and care of a mother’s arms, who deserved to be protected and seen as precious.

We started researching how to go about setting up a home for orphaned and abandoned babies (iKhaya LikaBaba) with the support and encouragement of 2 very special people – Alex and Michelle van Laren (our then lead elders of the church Thandaza where we fellowship). They encouraged us to run with this project. After all the research, setting up a committee and meeting with other organizations we decided to take in our first baby in December 2007. This was a big decision as it would be into our own home. We had no finances, no staff, and could not wait any longer. Our first baby arrived and was the most precious child. In fact I had to restrain myself from adopting him myself.

Baby no 2 arrived in March as did baby no 3. By the time we took in baby no 4 we realized that this was no longer sustainable and was affecting our family life in a big way. With 3 boys of our own, homeschooling and running our own business, we were finding the pressure too much. We had at this point, hired one full time staff member and one part time one to help us at home.

Wanting to help us , Thandaza Covenant Church offered us a piece of their newly acquired land. It was a small 2 roomed house which needed LOTS of work but it was something we could work with, something that gave us a chance to regain some of our family life back. We built, we fixed, we painted – we moved all the babies and staff into the home in July 2008. From then this ministry has just grown from strength to strength.

Under the new leadership of Mark and Cindy Neumann who took over from Alex and Michelle (who planted a church in Holland), they have gathered support and built a team who have been truly remarkable in increasing the capacity of the organisation, accountability and momentum. We know that in their capable hands, God's heart will continue to be reflected through iKhaya LikaBaba.

As we prepare to leave Empangeni and head to Cape Town, there is a new building which can care for many babies, a volunteer house and a fantastic leadership team who will take this ministry further. Our purpose was always to pioneer this home and hand it over to the church - which we did. Our season has now drawn to a close and we know that we have been called to be more effective and help others do what we have done and so much more. We know that iKhaya LikaBaba will always be our "baby" but this relationship does not end here. We are establishing an International Orphan Network (ION) which is about mentoring and equipping the church to take care of orphans. Its will be built by invitation, relationship and support. We do not believe in sharing information but sharing God's heart and the expression of that heart in everything we do from recruiting volunteers to how we interact with our communities.

The Principles of Multiplication

2010-05-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

After having established iKhaya LikaBaba - home for orphaned and abandoned babies in Empangeni , 3 years later - the church has taken ownership of this ministry and we have moved from being Sean and I to a ten strong management team who carry the heart of God for orphans and have a vision and desire to run and grow and establish even greater things than I could ever do.

Sean and I have spent many hours talking about our new season in God and we have realised that there is still so much to do. The deposit that God put in my heart 3 years ago is a permanent one, not one that I can run from or supress but use for God's glory.

God has been speaking to me about "mobilizing the church" . We have learnt so much in the process and have made many mistakes and in God have had fantastic successes and so this new season will be one of mentorship and equipping. It was suggested that I would be some kind of consultant but the term "consultant" sounds so much like a marketing term and so for my own peace of mind I would prefer to use the word - mentor. I know that God is calling me to draw alongside churches and offer the rich deposit of skills, experience and insights. After all, isn't that what our gifts and talents are to be used for - the edification of the church.

This is an exciting season of changing gears and a real sense of God increasing our influence and extending our tent pegs. I know that this blog is necessary for those of you who would read this and be thinking "yes our church is feeling stirred to care for orphans but how do we do this?", or "we have a ministry that touches the lives of orphans but we need help, we need training, we need equipping". By blogging hopefully you will catch the Father's Heart and you will get to know me just a little bit - and maybe even build up a little credibility along the way;) I am passionate about saving lives and changing destinies and I want to help others do the same.