I met 2 young widows today. One cares for 17 people in one household, including 11 children. The other one cares for 6 of her own children. I also met 2 sets of grandparents, both caring for their children's children - about 13 on average. Their average income for the month is around $30! Where am I? Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR).
As Ed Luminati and myself (Matt Storer), went from house to house visiting the orphans in our program, our goal was to sit and talk with the caregivers and learn more about social, health and educational issues they face.
You see, in Central African Republic, the VisionTrust program in partnership with ICDI, works purposely to keep orphans living with their single parent if they still have one, close relatives or Christian families in their community. Why do this instead of building orphanages? The primary reason is to encourage children to grow up in a "family" environment and participate in the community activity like normal children. This concept is natural to most African communities (the orphanage was introduced by European and Western culture). This "Community Based Care" program is also less expensive to operate and therefore allows more children to receive assistance. For example since late 2004, we've been able to open 11 locations that serve 729 orphans. The program registers and pays for schooling and provides for food, health care and spiritual mentorship.
While this solution is ideal, it requires very good supervision by local staff to monitor the orphans, much like social workers in the USA. We continually work to improve the health and well being of the orphans. This is why Ed and I are here in CAR now, investigating how we can solve some tough community issues like mitigating the spread of disease including malaria, TB, and AIDS.
Please pray for us while we continue to complete our research from now until Sept 24th.
Thanks!
-Matt Storer
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