New Reality International and Bring Love In

We've been supporting these two ministries for some time now and I thought it was about time to share them with you. I'm sure I've shared information about each of these on Facebook, but I'd like to devote a whole post to them this time. 

Orphan care. It's a big deal, of course. But it's something I was really naive about even just a couple of years ago. I simply pictured orphans as children who had lost their parents to death and who were being raised by other family members or in a worse case, an orphanage. Some get adopted, others live out their childhoods in a psuedo-family of other orphans and then what? I just didn't really think about it too much.

But now...now I know about the restavek children in Haiti. Now I know about families who sell or give up their children to adoption agencies because they simply can't afford to support them another day.

"We saw that many of these children had loving parents who at one time went through a rough season financially, their crops failed, or they were laid off and were forced to take their child to an orphanage because they knew that at least they would be fed there." Levi Benkert in his post Stupid Reasons Why Children Become Orphans

This just breaks my heart.

I am so thankful for Bring Love In working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and New Reality International working in Trou du Nord, Haiti. Let me tell you a bit about each of these organizations:



Bring Love In has two main goals -- first, to keep families together if possible and second, to bring orphans and widows together forming new "forever families". The orphan prevention program [Keep One Home] takes care to give only enough support to get these families back on their feet, while not creating dependency. You can sponsor a family for $39/month, keeping the children in school and meeting their family's most basic needs. Forever Families are created when 6-7 orphans are matched up with an older widow and they become a brand new family.
I loved this post describing what it is like to be a mother to former orphans.

Bring Love In is transparent and efficient in their operations. They employ many local staff and put donor money directly into the projects. In this post, Levi answers questions like "where do you find the widows?" and "what about father figures?"

We received an email introducing us to our sponsored family -- a five year old boy and his mother. She is able to send him to kindergarten because of the monthly help she gets from Bring Love In. We're so happy to help.



New Reality International had been working in Haiti mostly doing medical and dental relief work when they learned of a small group of Christians who were making great sacrifices to care for as many orphans as they could. It became clear that NRI was to become involved with these brave prayer-warriors and to build a village for orphans.

Right now, NRI is employing local workers to build homes on the land donated by the government. The plan is to have the first twenty-five children move into their new homes by the end of January 2014 and more homes to be built throughout the year. There are more than eighty children on the waiting list, some living in situations of slavery, who desperately need the freedom these homes will provide.

NRI's dream is to have a sustainable village with flourishing crops, vocational programs, and plenty of love to go around. Each home will twelve children along with their house parents. Read the story of Project 7 here.

I'm excited -- especially since I've been given the opportunity to work on NRI's team. I'm the staff writer, putting up blog posts and keeping the social media flowing. You can follow NRI on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Thanks for letting me share a bit of my heart with you. Join me in supporting these worthy ministries -- spreading the great love of Jesus and following the command to care for the widows and orphans.