Where do we go from here?

June 20, 2010


That Saturday evening after the celebration was our last night with Paul and Christopher before we headed back to the States, so we decided to finally get serious about making plans for the future. One of the core principles of Huruma House is that we want to develop a model of orphan care that is self-sustaining and reproducible, so we have been trying to focus on income-generating projects that will enable the local community to support more orphans and widows with less external assistance. So, one of the ideas that we are definitely going to implement about February of next year is to purchase a pair of milk cows. Paul says that it will only take about one acre of napier grass to support them, and these two cows should provide enough milk every day to supply an excellent protein addition to the diets of all of the children we support.

We were also very excited about the possibility of building a Kenyan "strip mall" on the new land. Part of the new land for Blessed Family Center is on a corner lot, so we are thinking about building a series of little shops on that corner. One shop would probably house a posho mill; another would house a bakery. Part of the structure would be used as a storage building to hold grain so that we can stock up on food commodities during harvest time when prices are low and save quite a bit of money. This little series of shops would provide some employment opportunities for the community and decrease the cost of feeding the children and widows by allowing us to grind our own grains and bake our own bread.

One final idea for the future is to begin supporting a feeding program at the local primary schools. It only costs about $25 per year to feed one child lunch at school everyday, but there are a total of about 1600 children in the schools we may be serving. Basically, we would be emulating the work of Steve Peifer. He already has feeding programs at dozens of primary schools in Kenya in the Rift Valley area, so we have an excellent model to follow. The idea is that about every three months Chris and Paul would deliver enough maize and beans and rice to each school to provide each child with lunch every day for three months. The schools are responsible for cooking and serving the food, and if they run out of food before the end of the three months, everyone knows whose fault it is.

Steve Peifer has found that these school feeding programs reduce the dropout rate to almost 0%, greatly improve educational outcomes (since the kids don't have to learn on an empty stomach), and also increase the number of children wearing shoes (because our picking up the lunch tab allows the parents to divert their scarce resources to providing for other needs for their children).

Unfortunately, this new, ambitious, school feeding program looks like it is going to cost about $40,000 per year to implement which is far more money than Huruma House is currently capable of providing with our current funding sources. And if we want to try to make sure all the children have desks to sit at, it's going to be another $2,200 to build 220 additional desks.

Keith Gafner has suggested that we begin an agricultural training program at the primary schools in Bwaliro that enables the schoolchildren to learn more modern farming techniques as well as offset the cost of the school lunches and make the program more self-sustaining.

Stephen and I came away from Bwaliro with a new understanding of the incredible level of desperation here and with a new understanding of how much work remains to be done. Obviously, there are still a lot of widows and orphans in this corner of the world who are falling though the cracks and who are in dire need of someone to reach out to them in love and mercy and reveal to them the heart of a loving God.

And we also came away from Bwaliro convinced that God has already led just the right people to work in the heart of this crisis, Christopher Otsieno and Paul Bwire. They and their wives are faithful children of God upon whom He has laid an enormous burden of mercy as well as the divine strength to bear it. They are the ones who visit the lonely widows and hold the fatherless children on their laps. They are the ones who spring into action when a child needs an emergency trip to the hospital in the middle of the night. They are the ones who look into the faces of God's hurting children and touch them with His healing hands and show them that they are loved and valued. They are men and women of remarkable courage who, day after day, throw their own bodies between God's hurting children and the forces of darkness.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Because if there is one thing I learned from my few days on the other side of the world, it's that there is a race marked out for us and that I've just been taking it at a nice, easy jog. Huruma House is on the right track and we are moving the right direction, but it is way past time to stop idling and kick it into gear.

We just started a new Facebook cause for Huruma House. If you are interested in running this race with us, joining the cause is a good place to start. We have some huge fund-raising goals ahead of us, so we are going to get some hard numbers and start prioritizing the needs over the next few days. In order to meet the enormous needs before us, Huruma House is going to have to quickly grow beyond being a group of a few friends with a heart for Africa. We are going to need to reach out a bit farther and, by the power of God, harness more of the vast untapped power of His Kingdom.

O God, empower and strengthen us for the journey. Amen.