Who Benefits from a Family Sponsorship in Kore?
We know that the idea of a Day Care among the poorest of the poor can be hard to imagine. It can be even harder to imagine without a face or name and a story of who would benefit from what we are going to be offering. So, over the next week or so, I’d like to share with you the stories of 4 people who have lived in Kore or who currently are living here and how they could benefit from a family sponsorship.
Today’s story is of a young woman who lives in Kore. We’ll call her Tsige (while that’s not her real name, but rather a name that means Grace). She is 18 and she has a 1 year old son. Last year she had a gracious sponsor who offered her a scholarship to further her education post high school. This is potentially her ticket out of a cycle of poverty. She has been raised in Kore and without outside intervention there is little hope that she will make it out of Kore and find good work that will sustain her and her family in the future. Without others graciously intervening in her, life there was a good chance that she would have ended up living her life in Kore…underemployed or unemployed and continuing to pass on a generational cycle of poverty. But, now she has hope.
However, there is a problem in this scenario. This young woman has a 1 year old son, and she has no family who can watch him while she goes to school. She asked around to her friends, but could find no one who was willing to watch him while she furthered her schooling and tried to find a way out of poverty for herself as well as for her son. Stuck, with no one to watch him, she had to drop out of classes before they even started.
It is directly into this kind of situation that our project aims to provide support. Our plan is that we would be able to watch this child while his mother goes to school. While she is furthering her education, we would be providing a clean, safe, caring environment for this little boy. We would be providing him an early education that would give him a head start when it was time for him to go to school – something that the poor can’t afford and therefore the cycle continues. We would be providing nutritional meals, clothing and healthcare for him so that he could be healthy. At the same time, we would be supplementing this young woman so that she could pay attention to what is vital at this time in her life – her education. We would be providing her with food, healthcare and other supports so that she is well enough and healthy enough to concentrate at school…and emotional, relational and spiritual support, too.
She is dreaming of a different future for herself and her son, and she’s got a plan to get there. All she needs is a bit of a supportive hand along the way, and we think she’s going to make it. She is embracing hope…and we think that we can help to facilitate it.
Please pray for this young woman and her son…and also pray for us that we can get our gov’t approval soon so that we can put this practical plan into action for young women like her and their children. And, while you are at it, please prayerfully consider becoming a family sponsor. Your love and support can help other young women and children like Tsige embrace hope in all of life.