Studies show that you don’t like statistics. You’d rather hear a story. Maybe I’m being defiant but today I’ve got the numbers. Now you have to put faces on these numbers or they’ll do you no good. Maybe a quick flickr search of Samfya, Zambia would help. (I’ve made it easy on you and added the link.) Imagine for a second one single mother trying to raise six children. Now what if I told you because of a micro loan, instead of having two sick children a month now there’s only one every other month. That’s a pretty cool statistic right?

Let’s widen the scope. You’ve imagined that single mother in her mud hut trying to feed, clothe and maybe do something a little special for all six children every once and awhile. She’s been scrapping by on 80 cents a day. Now imagine 800 stories just like hers. It’s no surprise that out of the 800 families 84% of them reported improved family relationships after receiving a micro loan.

Let me explain what happens, turns out I’ve got a story or two about this! A couple years ago Josephine was at the end of her rope. Her husband had died and properly caring for six children was impossible. Her church reached out to her and offered help. She received a $20 loan to plant a garden. The garden provided nutritious vegetables for her family and she sold the surplus and made $80. She went back to the church, repaid the her first loan and asked for the second larger loan. This time she was given $120 and by selling pop corn and fritters made $1,000! She wired her house with electricity, bought a fridge and now continues her business but sells cold drinks and popsicles too. She’s making $10 a day now.

These 800 families don’t have to make the hard decisions anymore about what’s more important: food or education? They don’t have worry if their sick child will make it through the night because they can afford the medicine. We’re very excited about the transformation we’ve seen in Samyfa. We’re trying to replicate their success with our other partners in Uganda, India and Haiti. Want to hear more? Sign up for the Poverty Summit October 5-7. We’ll have lots more stories (and I suppose a few statistics too!)

Sometimes I lay in bed at night, staring up at the ceiling, on my comfortable bed and think of the family living under the bridge. The thoughts slowly surface when I visit the four corners of my ceiling. It’s a big room. I have it all to myself. What does it feel like to come home to a four foot high space under a bridge? Does the father feel like a good provider? How does the mother make it feel like home?

It’s hard to grasp global poverty. What does it mean that 1,000,000,000 people live on less than $1 a day? What does it feel like to grow up in an urban slum? What does home look like?

In 2005 Jonas Bendiksen set out on a two year journey to document the life in the slums of four different cities: Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela. He returned and set about sharing his story. Along with a book and museum exhibition in D.C. he published a website called theplaceswelive.com.

I remember seeing it for the first time. It gripped my heart and stirred my soul, birthing a deep desire for justice. I sat and listened to the families tell their stories and panned around their home in disbelief. How could anyone live like this?

Glimpses of reality like this are why I’m involved with Bright Hope. The problem is enormous but when I remember the families I know it matters to them. Check it out for yourself.

What does $1,000,000 worth of medical supplies look like? According to volunteer and project specialist Henry Chu, it looks like Hope. It was Henry who fostered a strategic partnership between Bright Hope and Giving Children Hope.

Uniquely, GCHope resources local clinics, hospitals and orphanages doing their best to serve in areas of extreme poverty. In many of these places, as is the case in Samfya, Zambia, the home of Bright Hope partner, Samfya Community of Care Providers (SCCP), the local hospital is dangerously under-resourced. This summer, Samfya was hit with a large outbreak of malaria and measles that threatened lives as the hospital overflowed with patients.

Making matters worse, the Zambian government is never able to adequately supply the hospital with medicine. Samfya quickly ran out of the drugs needed to fight infection and ward off disease. The health workers felt hopeless against the outbreak.

It was the GCHope medical shipment that saved the day! Because of the partnership, Bright Hope was able to purchase $1,000,000 worth of invaluable medicines that saved lives. On August 8, 2010 this shipments arrived in Samfya and immediately went to work in the hospital. The hospital sends their great thanks to those who donated and made it possible for Bright Hope to purchase the medical shipment.

This year, Bright Hope has been able to purchase three of these medical shipments from GCHope. This partnership has powerfully impacted lives in Haiti and Zambia. We continue to search for more ways to partner together and bring Hope to those living on less than $1 a day.

Bright Hope has found a new friend. I’d like you to meet Water4. They’re an awesome organization with the mission to bring clean water to the extreme poor. Did you know 200 children die every minute from water-borne diseases? But with a $20 copyright-free pump that can be made in any country and hand drilling technology Water4 is beginning to change that statistic.

With kindred hearts for the extreme poor, Bright Hope and Water4 became quick friends and quickly found ways to work together. In Zambia, Samfya Community of Care Providers (SCCP) is using the technology to create jobs, drill wells and install pumps that will water the kitchen gardens being planted with Bright Hope’s micro loan. In Haiti, the $20 pump will be installed in hundreds of wells that were destroyed by the earthquake. Working together we are accomplishing powerful acts of love.

We’re always excited to connect with others working on behalf of the extreme poor. We are certain, day by day, we are making an impact in the lives of those living on less than $1 a day.

In Zambia, Samfya Community of Care Providers (SCCP) sponsors over 807 community orphans to attend local schools. Unfortunately, we have quickly realized that attending school does not mean that the students are actually learning! Even worse, SCCP sponsored students typically perform lower than the already poor provincial standard.

But these results don’t surprise us when we think of all the obstacles these children have to overcome. The weight of feeling alone, the drag of poverty against every concerted effort, the lack of quality nutrition and being stuck in a school system characterized by rote memorization all stack up to make the hurdle of success seem insurmountable.

Enter our heroines, Bright Hope Interns, Courtney O’Connell and Heather Cogswell. Beginning in January they worked with SCCP and our Partnership Developers, Mark and Carmen Brubacher, to craft an after school literacy program for SCCP sponsored students in grades 1-5. The program meets two afternoons a week and has started with 15-20 students. Courtney explained the benefits of a small class size, “It is wonderful to get to know these students and give them one-on-one attention, in a culture where children simply get pushed to the side.”

“One challenge is to try to get the students to think for themselves and to be creative. The teaching method in the schools is to simply copy whatever the teacher has put on the board. So, when we ask students to come up with their own answers, they’re just silent!” explains Heather.

The intention of this program is to use creative methods to help improve the students’ knowledge, understanding, and usage of the English language. The students have been using crafts and games to build their phonetic skills. This is essential as all standardized testing is done in English. SCCP hopes these students will have greater success in future years of schooling.

A team from Hope Community Church in Springfield, IL just returned from an 8 day trip to see our partner in Mathare Valley, Kenya.

Team Member: Rebecca Harbauer (pictured here) returned with these words…

“Abject poverty abounds in Mathare Valley. No combination of words are picturesque enough to describe the sights, sounds, smells and surroundings one experiences as she walks through the slum valley being greeted by tiny extended hands and staring into toddler eyes that still cling tightly to hope. Sounds of loud music…children laughing…visions of grilled entrails…children bathing in small plastic tubs…jagged tin jutting from the roofs of 8 x 8 rusted, tin shanties…mucky water running through the streets….this is how I describe Mathare Valley—not a place one desires to call home.

It would be so easy to return to the United States after eight days and forget what I saw and be thankful that I do not live like this. It would be so easy to remain a tourist in a foreign land snapping pictures and forgetting the names of the people who crossed my path. But, I can’t. And I won’t. I want to etch the experiences into my memory so that God can use me as a vessel of faith, hope and love. And I want to etch the names of the people I met into my heart so that we remain connected.

Visiting the slum and the orphanage had a profound effect on me. But, what touched me to the very core are the stories of the people I was privileged to spend time with. The individuals who run the various churches around the area, the teachers who work in the schools and at the orphanage, the women who are the strong support for their pastor husbands, and the people who have hopes and dreams and aspirations no different from mine. These are the stories that will affect lives…the lives of those in Kenya and the lives of those here at home.

What did we do while we were there? We brought hope and a future as it states in Jeremiah 29:11 through one God…through unity of the Spirit. We did not come with western ideas to fix the African world. We came with a humble spirit and allowed them to teach us what relationships are truly about. I have learned what profound faith is truly about.”

To read more about what Bright Hope is doing in Mathare Valley and for opportunities to Donate: CLICK HERE!

Bright Hope is gearing up to send a team to Mathare Valley from Hope Community Church in Springfield, IL. Jennifer Young is on that trip and wrote us these encouraging words about God’s vision to get her on this trip…

“In January or February of 2008, I went to a movie called “The Invisible Children” that our church was showing and it was about kids in Uganda. God, just really started tugging on my heart. I ended up going to an informational meeting on Haiti and then in February my husband was served with papers to go back to court for more child support and post-secondary education for his daughter.

This meant no Haiti Trip.

God took me out of my comfort zone while on a mission’s trip to an Indian reservation in Minnesota but I kept hearing “Mathare” in the back of my mind. Then when the trip happened last September, I went and heard their excitement about what had taken place. It kind of lit the fire a bit.

Months went by and then there was a little blurb in the church bulletin about an informational meeting coming up on “Mathare”. I thought, what the heck, I’ll go. I went and the fire just started to consume me. I was so excited and then I saw the cost was close to $4,000.00. I thought “no way” but stepped out in faith and filled out my application. It was a huge leap for me!

I prayed about it and left it in God’s hands, telling Him if He wanted me to go He was going to have to help me. In March my daughter gave me my first $100. I sent notes to a few people. In less than a month, I had all the money that I needed to go on the trip and to pay for my shots!!! It blew me away.
God just told me – You have My Love in your Heart, my Holy Spirit – that’s all you need.

I was told at the first meeting to pick a name for myself that represents what God would have me do on this trip. I was thinking encourager but then while praying, God brought me Isaiah 61: 1 “He has appointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to announce that captives will be released and prisoners set free.” My new name: COMFORTER. God told me “You will comfort the brokenhearted.”

Well here’s the end or should I say the beginning of my journey. I was told after I gave up on going to Haiti – “don’t ever let money stand in the way of you going on a mission trip, if you are supposed to go, God will provide!” I believe that now. I still stand amazed. -Jenni”

You can support projects opportunities like Mathare Valley and more by clicking on our Project Map!

This week at Bright Hope, finishing touches were made to allow 1,400 children to be fed in the slums of Mathare Valley in Nairobi, Kenya. Henry Chu, one of our project specialist here at Bright Hope, helped in facilitating this project. Read more details about it by clicking here!

At Bright Hope, we partner with people we call “Extreme Heroes” — people who are willing to put their lives on the line to share the Gospel, serve the poor and stand beside the most rejected, marginalized people in the world.  These are the people you directly support when you partner with us.

Juana Choque Copa is a young single woman in Bolivia who left her well-paying job in the city to return to her grandparents’ home village “in the middle of nowhere,” so she could share the love and hope of Jesus Christ with the 200 people living there. She has single-handedly established a church,  feeding center, educational opportunities and community services to help the people in need.

Jephthe Lucien, our partner in Haiti,  grew up in this severely impoverished country but refuses to leave it behind.  Every day, he and his wife stand up to the challenge of overseeing their network of 23 churches.  He fights for funding to feed and educate the hungry and malnourished children in these church communities.  Jephthe battles daily against this country’s overwhelming poverty and despair.  Yet he never gives up.

Then there is our partner in North India.  He tells me that his life has been seriously threatened nine times, because he dares to stand up to religious extremists who wage war against his pastor training centers.  Yet, he continues to proclaim the Gospel to crowds of people,  hold Bible training classes and visit with his pastors in the rural villages.

Our heroes also defy the traditional definition of the word. They are the grandmothers in Kenya, living in 7×7 foot shacks in large, overcrowded slums.  These elderly women struggle every day to provide for their young grandchildren, following the early deaths of their own children through diseases such as malaria and AIDS. And they are the children all over the globe who come to school in the hope that they may someday become doctors, engineers or teachers. They are the rural mothers and fathers who wake up every morning to farm the little piece of land they have, in their daily attempts to feed their families and hopefully have a little left over to sell.

Our ministry leaders and those they serve are our Extreme Heroes, and hopefully yours as well.  They are our partners, in every sense of the word.  We stand beside them in their battle to survive one more day. Giving them support, encouragement and resources is the driving force for everyone here at Bright Hope.  It’s what ignites us, compels us and stirs us to reach out to you, our allies, to stand with us.

To learn more about our projects around the world and the people who make them possible, click here to visit our Project page and select a Country or Project Category.

In developing countries, the opportunity to attend school means much more than classrooms and textbooks. First and foremost, it represents a glimpse at a future outside the grip of poverty. For many, it means clothing on their back and food in their stomachs, and most important, the chance to experience the love and saving power of Jesus Christ.

The majority of Bright Hope’s projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America include an educational component for children. This is vital in giving children hope and a sense of purpose for their lives. With your help, we are buying textbooks, paying for uniforms and school fees, supporting teacher’s salaries, building dormitories and classrooms, and opening up promising new possibilities for some of the poorest children in the world. These children are no different from our own, except for the opportunities they will or will not have. They have the same kinds of dreams for their future that any child has.

When we speak to them, they talk about becoming doctors, nurses, engineers and teachers. Through their schooling, they start to feel that they may one day accomplish something that will help them to break out of abject poverty and provide for their loved ones.

With your support of our work, we can continue to assist our partners, who frequently operate as the hub of the local school. Children in countries like Peru and Haiti are receiving a midday meal, often their only meal of the day. This meal is critical in keeping children alert enough to learn.

To give to the ongoing work of Bright Hope International, click here.

To watch the Bright Hope Channel on YouTube, click here.