Empowering Disadvantaged Communities

The most effective way to break the cycle of poverty, is to strategically empower whole communities, with sustainable holistic models that are reproducible, transforming large areas, family by family, village by village.

"One billion children in the world live in extreme poverty, deprived of the material, spiritual and emotional resources to survive.

Over half a billion children are struggling to survive on under $1 dollar per day.

30,000 children die each day due to poverty.

21% of children in developing countries are severely water deprived, living without a safe water source within a fifteen minute walk of their homes" (UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2005)

Long term sustainable solutions look at the whole systems of a community and work on each level to develop and resource them in such a way, that the community is then able to resource and keep on transforming itself.

For Example: we know that education is one of the key elements to help a community break the cycle of poverty.  But in areas of great poverty, the children are often the work force of a family helping it survive.  Adding a school feeding program to a local school, encourages parents who are struggling to provide food for their children to send their children to school.  Having a  vegetable garden  attached to a school or orphan project, where the children participate in growing nutritious food for themselves and their community, encourages families to have their own garden plots and educates on longer term healthy eating.

Providing safe water  through wells built alongside local schools, makes the school a center of learning for mothers and other community members.  Having a clinic beside the school that provides health care and teaches nutritional, sanitation and health care, decreases the  infant mortality rate, and increases the health of the members of the  community.

Empowering mothers of the children through education and providing micro-loans to help them develop small cottage industry, empowers the whole community. In the developing world, very often it is the mothers who drive the passion for their children to have enough food to eat, to get further education and to develop the resources available to the whole village.   Put all these things together, encourages the fathers to allow their daughters  access to further education and career development rather than marrying them off at 12 or 13 years old... and  as the cycle continues, the community gets long term systemic change.

On these pages you will be introduced to several excellent projects we have partnered closely with, helping them develop their models and funding large parts of their programs, and to help them become sustainable . Each is working within local communities and with young people to empower them to transform their own families and communities. We are very excited about what we have been able to accomplish on the ground through these partners in the Developing World.

Step Up, be an Angel... Help Impoverished Communities...