The pages of our 2013 Annual Report tell many of the ways the Lord blessed our ministry last year. We hope you will enjoy seeing the big, beautiful pictures, reading the transformational stories that accompany them, evaluating the statistics and celebrating the substantial growth we’ve experienced over recent years. We also hope that you would pass our Annual Report on to friends, family, co-workers, and basically anyone that you’d like to introduce to ORPHANetwork.
You can click on the image above for a special message from our Executive Director, Dick Anderson, or click here to go straight to the report. Enjoy!
Hope Park Church is an ORPHANetwork church partner located in Nashville, Tennessee. Through their relationship with Soles 4 Souls, a non-profit also located in their hometown, Hope Park has hauled down countless suitcases of shoes for our children in Nicaragua. Most recently this partnership enabled us to give all of the children we serve in Nicaragua a new pair of good quality shoes, and the following is the story of how suitcases filled with shoes evolved into a shipping container filled with shoes.
As our relationship with our church partner, Hope Park grew Tom Weiglein, our National Program Director, asked for shoes specifically for our orphanage partner, Casa Bernabe, in Puerto Cabezas. Casa Bernabe “Port” is home to about 110 children, and as you might imagine, shoes are always in demand. Through our partnership with Hope Park and theirs with Soles 4 Souls, we were able to get shoes for our children in Port as well as for all of the children (about 350) in our partner orphanages.
In addition to serving hundreds of children living in our six partner orphanages, we also serve thousands of at-risk children through our Local Church Initiatives (LCI). The purpose of the LCI is to reach the community through holistic methods such as food, nutrition, health assessments, and education. The LCI empowers the pastors to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with their community and provide much needed hope where there once was none. In 2011, we joined forces with a new strategic partner in Nicaragua, On Eagle’s Wings Ministry, which serves about 7,300 children living in some of the most remote areas of the country. From 2010 to 2012 our ministry expanded from serving about 2,500 children to serving almost 12,000 children!
This growth enabled us to make a much larger request from Soles 4 Souls, which in turn led them to reach out to Skechers to fulfill each of our children’s needs for good quality shoes. Skechers was able to donate 18,600 pairs of shoes to ORPHANetwork through their BOBS line of shoes! Skechers’ BOBS program was inspired by the idea of gifting a pair of shoes with every purchase made.
When the container full of shoes arrived to Managua we distributed them to each of our partners in just one day. Over 400 pairs of tennis shoes for the children at our orphanage partners, about 4,600 pairs of shoes for the children served through our LCI partners, and over 9,000 pairs went to the children served by On Eagle’s Wings. We were even able to share a few thousand pairs of shoes with a fellow Nicaraguan NGO, Father Fabretto, and our US partner, Feed My Starving Children.
The video below captures images of our Nicaraguan partners, the precious children they serve, and the great need that these wonderful partnerships made it possible to fulfill.
ORPHANetwork partners with two fantastic organizations, Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) and Stop Hunger Now (SHN) that specialize in packaging large numbers of nourishing, enriched meals for hungry children all over the world. One of the coolest things about these incredible organizations is that all of the meals, no matter where they are packed, are packaged by volunteers.
Last week over 190 Nicaraguans joined in service and packaged 7,560 meals for FMSC that will feed hungry children in Nica. ORPHANetwork had many partners (from as far away as Leon) and staff members that made this event a great success. We hope you’ll take a moment to share in the joy of service by viewing the slideshow below.
We work in communities all along the East Coast, in places at-risk of Malaria. Places like Tasbapauni, and Krin Krin. There are hundreds of children in these communities, many of them sleeping without any sort of proper mosquito netting. ORPHANetwork is committed to changing that. It’s going to be World Malaria Day (more on that here) on April 25th. We’re getting in on the action.
These communities along the East Coast have their own governments, languages, and currencies. The region is unlike any other in the country. There is no electricity, running water, or motorized vehicles in many of the communities. Nearly everyone is illiterate and every community struggles to grow enough food to survive. The climate breeds malaria-carrying mosquitos and other similar tropical diseases like dengue fever.
At the same time, the people are beautiful in every way. The children laugh and want to be held, the parents are talkative and open. The Meskito Indians who populate many of these communities are hard workers; dignified in their jobs, joyful to support their families.
Verbo Ministries has planted churches in a few of these communities, and ORPHANetwork knows and partners with many other indigenous churches throughout. Last summer, we took a mission group to Bluefields and spent a day traveling north up the coast. We had the opportunity to see not one, not two, but three different churches, and play with their children! What a joy!
For more information on ORPHANetwork’s provision of Mosquito Nets, head over to our website here!
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A family up the Rio Coco from Puerto Cabezas
A lone house sits on stilts in one of the river communities along the Rio Coco.
Kids from Tasbapauni sitting along the wall of the Church
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