While in the Kisumu area with Unite 4 Africa last week, we visited the Redeemed Gospel Church in Mamboleo. Having been trained in church leadership principals by U4A, the church is now reaching out to the community around them via church planting efforts and programs of relief and compassion that are meeting the practical needs of suffering community members. There is a large population of widows and orphans in this area and it was encouraging to see the church sacrifice lower priority needs (emphasis on lower not low priority) in order to invest in programs that provide some level of immediate relief and are also designed to develop and empower both the widows and orphans in the community to eventually meet their own needs. A concept that I have come to believe in strongly is the idea of actually empowering orphans. I was familiar with the model of empowering widows but the idea that we can actually empower orphans was a concept that U4A introduced me to last December.
You can make a minimal financial investment in addition to the typical monthly child sponsorship fees that help pay for food, shelter, and education and that investment is used to buy a goat for an orphan. The child learns to rear the goat and sell the milk to earn income that helps provide for his or her own needs. The goat can also be bred and the offspring raised by the orphan eventually providing more milk to sell thus producing more income. In a relatively short period of time, the child has enough goats to trade for a dairy cow which can create even greater opportunity for sustainable income. These programs provide practical teachings for the children that they can leverage for the rest of their life and also helps to reestablish some value and purpose in a child who otherwise can feel like a burden to the extended family or community that is trying to care for them since the loss of their parents.
This same concept is effective when investing in a single chicken or cow. I was amazed by how strategic the program is.... the community leaders buy in volume, perhaps 100 goats at at time, which allows them to negotiate better prices. Those 100 goats are given to the children they have identified as the neediest. Later when the goats are bred, the first offspring is given back to the community leaders so that it can be given to another orphan thus maximizing their investment. This may seem like a simple solution to a complex set of problems but the truth is.... its working. We have witnessed that it is making a difference in the lives of many of these precious children by bringing them hope and helping to secure their future.
