Sustainable Family Communities- Answers to Life's Important Question

Where are the orphans?

 When I first started volunteering to help at an orphanage, I thought all the children there were orphans. It took a while before I learned that most of them were not.  So when we help an orphanage by putting in a well, or building a school, or giving them clothes, who are we really helping?

 While a few had lost their parents or had been removed from abusive families, it turned out that the majority of the children were there because the parent or parents were so impoverished that they could not take care of them. Some mornings, we would wake up to find one or more children who had been left at the gate. The parents knew that the children in the orphanage were eating every day, going to school and had people who would watch over them (or so they assumed).

 With poverty being such a major reason why kids end up in orphanages, why are there not more serious efforts to address that cause?  To create more jobs, teach job skills and provide micro-enterprise development so the parent(s) can afford to take care of their children?  

 The Sustainable Family Communities project is addressing that cause. We are working to create the businesses, jobs, training and community support that parents need to be able to keep their children and provide a decent quality-of-life while preparing them for their own and their country’s future. And you are helping us to be able to provide that for them. 

 We are doing the right thing! This week we received direct confirmation in the form of a meeting with Lynn Hammond, a Rotary Foundation Trustee and Past Rotary International Director.  

 We are moving forward, and have the thoughtful power of Lynn and many others behind us as the next part of our project gets underway.

Best, Bob Miller