Hope for the Orphans
Harvest is launching the Ethiopia Hope initiative. Ethiopia is one of the top 5 poorest countries in Africa. There are 4 million orphans in the country, and that number is growing fast! In the capital of Addis Ababa there are 250,000 homeless orphans, many of these do not reach adulthood.
Adoptions
Harvest Church and Journey Church (our daughter Church in Bozeman, MT) are partnering with Christian World Adoption to offer hope and life to the orphans of Ethiopia.
Harvest is looking for three kinds of people for this effort:
1) Adoptive Parents - Christian World Adoption will take you through the process of adoption, and we will provide a team at home to walk with you.
2) Personal Adoption Liaison (P.A.L.) - These are volunteers from Harvest who will be trained in the adoption process and the issues of Ethiopian orphans. Each adoptive couple will be offered a P.A.L. to help them with paperwork, support, offer resources and ideas, and pave the way for bringing their child home.
3) HOPE Grandparents - Adoptive Grandparents are those who would like to partner with an adoptive parent either financially and/or physically. Grandparents will help adoptive parents fulfill their dream of adoption and be with them as a Grandparent to be available for the parents if they need a break.
For more information - , , &
Bright Hope School Project
Bright Hope School is a government funded school for 1st through 8th grade. There are 2,145 students, the number of students who are orphans is around 3-500. The teachers pool their income to provide breakfast for 116 of the 1st - 4th grade orphans. There are 16 children in the school who are HIV positive.
The government funds the education of the students, but the extra services provided for the orphans comes through outside sources. The Principle of the school shared his vision of helping these orphans in four phases.
The goal is to establish a fresh water source and a self sustaining food supply for Bright Hope School. The garden/mini-farm is in development at this school for 200+ very poor Ethiopian children. Most the students have lost both or one of their parents to HIV/AIDS or Leprosy. With you partnering with Harvest Church on this project, Bright Hope School can feed the children, teach the children a useful life skill and possibly sell excess vegetables and chickens.
1) Water - There is no water for students! The cost of drilling a well through the unusually rocky ground is $20,000.
2) Chicken farm - By giving the orphans the skills to run a chicken farm they will learn a skill to provide food, extra chickens & eggs to sell, income to pay for a school uniform (without that they cannot attend the school) & medical care. This project would include 3 chicken houses (one for chicks, one for laying hens and one for cocks). The cost includes the purchase of incubators, water pipes, electricity, cereals, chick fodder, powdered gypsum, vitamins and other feed supplies. The cost of this project is $18,000 (this has $6,000 already given toward it!)
3) Vegetable Garden - Restoring 6,000 sq. meters (approximately 1 - acres) of open land for a large vegetable garden. This requires clearing the existing property of rocks and preparing the soil to be much more productive. It will require laying water pipes and electricity, buying vegetable seeds & fertilizers, and then hiring an administrator and part time gardeners. Initial construction and hiring expenses = $21,000 Subsequent years at $5,000 a year for workers and seed.
4) Security Wall - Because Ethiopia is so poor, the first three projects will be stolen without a security wall around the property. There is a wall around the school that has breeches in it which need to be secured. They would like to build an 8' high cinder block wall around the garden and chickens. Cost of building a wall around the entire compound (approximately 13 acres) is $165,000-$190,000.
How You Can Help
Give - You can invest in giving hope and a future to these children.
Work Teams - As funds become available we will send work teams to Ethiopia to help the Ethiopian contractors. The cost for each person will be around $3,500.
For more information - , , &