Home of hope

 We got to share Christmas Day with 110 kids from the Home of Hope – and although we were far from home, it is hard to remember a more joyful, “right”-feeling Christmas. 

Home of Hope provides loving care, food, clothing, safety, and schooling to neglected, traumatized, abused children pulled off the streets of Lusaka. They are at the forefront of care for abused and neglected children in Zambia. Last month the Zambian Parliament tapped them to make recommendations for how the entire system of orphanages and children's homes should work across the country. They are helping to shift the field towards safely reunifying families, and trauma-informed care, and their love for and knowledge of each child in their care is extraordinary.

Turn-over at Home of Hope is high by design. Staff find the children's families and build relationships with them. Over time, with enough meetings and discussion, most boys can be safely reintegrated into their families, or extended families. 

We’ve been getting to know their director, Jasek, since we started volunteering there a few months ago. It was uncanny, the timing of our meeting. During the pandemic, the number of children on the streets has increased - a LOT. Meanwhile, donations have declined as foundation support has shifted to other priorities. They had just lost a $30k grant they have depended on for years. Every other year, on Christmas, they have been able to give the boys a special meal, along with a small toy. But this year, due to their financial difficulties, there was no way the children were going to receive a gift, and the Christmas meal was going to be beans and rice, same as every other day. 

When we met, Jasek had reached the point where he was taking out personal loans to feed the children and praying that none of the children got sick, since there was no money for medical care. Their work is so excellent and their annual budget is so tiny – just $80k all told – all this felt deeply wrong and also like a place where our extended family could make a meaningful difference. 

 

And indeed, our amazing network of family members and a few friends mobilized to pitch in and make sure that each child at Home of Hope received a gift, a giant chicken dinner, and homemade cupcakes and ice cream this Christmas.  Jasek told us that for most of these children it was the first gift they had ever received. Even better, the spill-over from their gifts enabled Home of Hope to meet its budget for 2021, and a few family members are even stepping up to make the kind of multi-year gifts that will help Home of Hope sustain itself. 

 

Let us know if you’d like to get involved! We’ve found a way for donations to go through a US public charity! 

Wrapping 110 presents took a village 

 

This child came to Home of Hope a couple of days before Christmas with a deeply infected injury on his leg that required surgery and possibly amputation.  

Baking 130 cupcakes turned out to be trickier than we’d expected