my final product (orphans)

How to Help Orphans (20/20)

My mother died when I was two. For the next few years, until my father remarried, my brother and I were what child welfare advocates now call "single orphans." We had a father, but he worked as a pastor about 60 hours weekly and could be absent for days. I am glad there were orphanages in case we had needed them; fortunately, a succession of extended family and church members raised us.

That experience made me especially sensitive to orphans' needs. Evangelicals have a stellar track record of caring for vulnerable children at home and abroad. People of my generation grew up hearing stories of great evangelical founders of orphanages. Our heroes were George Müller in England and Amy Carmichael in India. During the last decade, numerous orphanages founded by evangelicals have sprung up, especially in AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa.

And the needs of at-risk children, including orphans, are immense. Children worldwide face severe threats due to HIV and AIDS, armed conflict and displacement, living and working on the streets, disability, abuse, and trafficking. The UNICEF report The State of the World's Children 2005 warns, "Over half a million women die from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth each year, and 15 million women suffer injuries, infections, and disabilities in pregnancy or childbirth. … Without a concerted effort to save mothers' lives, millions of children will be denied maternal love and care during childhood." Other alarming statistics: "Over two million children under 15 are infected with HIV. Based on current trends, the number of children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa will exceed 18 million by 2010."

While orphanages will always be necessary for some, child-welfare advocates say that as many as 50 percent of children in sub-Saharan African orphanages have known relatives who are willing to raise them at home. But they cannot afford to step into the breach.

Not surprisingly, many churches in African communities want to support families so that related children (and others) can live with them. In addition, many other families would be willing to take in orphans if they could. They know what social science studies claim: Children raised in foster families and especially by relatives fare better developmentally than children raised in even the best orphanages.

Thank God for a growing movement of developing partnerships between churches in the United States and Africa to find these homes, support them financially, and place parentless children in them.

Three organizations are especially prominent. The Better Care Network (BCN) promotes efforts by secular and Christian child-welfare organizations to improve standards of care for orphans in developing countries. Viva: Together for Children is an evangelical group that supports family-based orphan care and has created innovative foster-care models in developing countries. Willow Creek Community Church of suburban Chicago, meanwhile, is leading the way among evangelical churches in establishing supportive relationships between American and African churches.

Extended Families, Extended Blessings

Orphanages can serve as valuable bridges between homelessness and family-based care. But they should not be the end of a child's journey, unless there are no other options. World Vision helps orphans live with their extended families. "In too many cases, the institutionalization of orphans is a short-term fix with long-term issues," vice president Steve Haas says, "while its counterpart of placing unaccompanied minors in families is deemed difficult on the front end but has been found to provide profound blessings as the child matures."

OSSO (19/20)

The need...
In Ecuador there are hundreds and hundreds of abandoned and disadvantaged children living in orphanages. Often these children are in the orphanages because of poverty, societal conditions and political unrest. The good-hearted staffs of these orphanages are struggling to meet the individual needs of these children because their limited resources are strained and they can抰 provide everything they抎 like to. Because of having to deal with limited resources, when infants are not held, talked to and touched, some become socially impaired and unable to form loving relationships. This lack of attention may also lead to poor physical, emotional and intellectual development.


Orphanage Support Services Organization (OSSO) is a nonprofit charitable organization that provides volunteer opportunities to serve in orphanages in Ecuador in over 10 orphanages for the purpose of providing them with various types of support. Under the direction of our local Project Directors, volunteers (led by volunteer leaders) form the backbone of OSSO抯 orphanage support program. Volunteers provide one-on-one nurturing to these disadvantaged children who might otherwise never realize their potential. Because our volunteers provide thousands of hours of service every week in the orphanages we抮e in a unique position to understand the material and financial needs in the orphanages and are in an ideal position to see that donated funds and items are used most efficiently in the orphanages.



The children are unquestionably benefitted from this help and support, but volunteers and leaders are also benefitted and changed as they make a difference in the life of a child in need.


Where did the name OSSO come from?
OSSO is an acronym derived from 揙rphanage Support Services Organization� and is pronounced OH-so (in addition, 搊so� in Spanish means bear, so we抮e also doing a play on words with our logo). We call our logo the angel bear and feel it depicts exactly what our loving volunteers are doing while serving with OSSO: acting as angels while holding and loving little children.

orphanage care and language (18/20)

Over 88% of  internationally adopted children are raised in orphanages (Johnson & Dole, 1999).  Some countries such as Korea and Costa Rica provide foster care for a number of orphans prior to adoption.  However the majority of children adopted from China, Eastern Europe, Latin America and other third world countries will have their initial language learning experiences in orphanages.   Study after study documents that orphanage care results in growth failure and developmental delays.  Growth failure occurs frequently in internationally adopted children.  Johnson and Dole (1999) found that 48% of all children evaluated in their international adoption clinic had low birthweights, likely due to poor prenatal care.  Orphanage care after birth leads to further lags in growth.  Romanian, Chinese and Russian children raised in orphanages lose approximately 1 month of linear
growth for every 3 months in orphanage care (Albers et al., 1997; Johnson, 2000; Johnson & Dole; Miller & Hendric, 2000).  Although specific figures vary, at the time of adoption children are frequently below the -2 standard deviation for height (32 - 51% of all children studied), weight (18 - 34%) and head circumference (24 - 45%) (Benoit, Jocelyn, Moddemann & Embree, 1996; Johnson; Miller & Hendric; Rutter, 1998). Growth failure leads to more than just petite children.  Growth failure after birth is highly correlated with lower intelligence and poor language abilities. In addition to health concerns, children raised in orphanage environments are at high risk for developmental delays including language (Johnson, 2000; Judge, 1999; Miller & Hendric, 2000; Morison, Ames & Chisholm, 1995).  Reviews of medical records of orphans in Eastern Europe indicate that delayed language development occurs frequently (Gindis, 1999). Dubrovina et al (1991, as translated and noted in Gindis, 1999), found that 60% of orphanage children ages 24 to 30 months were not talking, a year later only 14% were reported to use two word phrases.  By age 3 and 4 the children were described as having limited vocabulary, receptive language delays, and unintelligible speech.  These patterns of institutional delay are not limited to orphanages in Eastern Europe.  Orphanage care was relatively common in the United States in the first half of the last century.  Province and Lipton (1962 as cited in Johnson, 2000) studied the development of children in U.S. orphanages and noted that infant speech development "showed signs of maldevelopment early, became progressively worse, and was the most severely retarded of all functions that could be measured" (Johnson, 2000, p. 141). Delays in language development are directly related to lack of adequate stimulation in the orphanage.  No matter how caring or well-equipped an orphanage appears to be, placing a large number of children in the care of a few adults is a recipe for delayed language.  I observed this first-hand when adopting my daughter from Russia.  Due to circumstances, my husband and I were not able to take her from the orphanage for several days.  Although we would have preferred to adopt her more quickly, the situation provided us with an opportunity to enter and observe her world.   We visited with her daily in the Baby Home over an 8-day period from 9:00 in the morning until she was put down for her afternoon nap.  My husband speaks Russian, which provided us with eyes and ears to fully observe her situation.  The orphanage was bright, clean, and had a 1:5 ratio of caregivers to children.  These children were well-fed, our daughter was even on the chunky side though her height, weight and head circumference indicated growth failure.  She was in a group of 10 toddlers, ages 14 to 23 months, with two caregivers providing care.  Although the caregivers were physically loving towards the children and provided basic needs, little language interaction with the children occurred.   What follows is an overview of what was observed. Children were segregated into groupings based on age and ability.  They were rarely allowed to play or interact with older children who might have served as language models.  Although two caregivers were present at all times, the caregivers changed from day to day.  During an 8-day period, there were 7 different caregivers on the day shift.  We assumed that different caretakers also rotated through the evenings. Older toddlers ate independently at small tables with no adult interaction during meals. Younger children who needed help to feed were fed by caregivers.  However the caregivers rarely talked to the children and spent most of the time talking to other caregivers. When children were carried, they were often held facing out, away from the caregiver.  This limited interactions between caregiver and child. Staff were busy attending to basic needs of the children and could not easily monitor the children as they played.  Although children were down on the floor and allowed to freely roam the room, toys were limited to small rattles and plastic blocks scattered around the floor.  When larger toys were provided, children had to be closely watched to make sure older children didn't accidentally hurt other children with them.  Because staff didn't have time to provide this monitoring, appropriate developmental toys were placed out of reach most of the time. The children spent all of their time in the orphanage sleeping/play area, or outside in a small section of the playground.  They were only taken to other rooms in the orphanage for medical checkups, or for therapies.  They were never taken outside the orphanage compound. When children were talked to, it was typically in the form of simple commands such as "come here," "sit down," "don't do that."  Across the 8 days of visits, there were only 3-4 instances of interactions where the caregivers described objects, actions, or provided other types of "teaching language" experiences.   When children have limited exposure to language, and limited opportunities to interact with caregivers, language delays result.  The children in my daughter's group were all language delayed.  These children ranged in age from 14-23 months, therefore the majority of them should have been saying a few words, and  the older children should have been saying lots of words.  Of the 10 children, only the two oldest were talking and they only produced 2-3 words each.  None of the younger children were talking.  In fact, the younger children rarely vocalized, babbled, or made any vocal noise.  Considering that 10 toddlers were in the same room, the children were eerily quiet.  These delays in language development are considered "normal" by professionals who work in the orphanages.  When the Medical Director of the Baby Home was asked questions regarding my daughter's development, she replied "of course her language is delayed, it is to be expected." Despite the lack of words, most of the children had good non-verbal social interaction skills.  They smiled when adults spoke to them, made good eye contact during interactions, pointed and reached to indicate what they wanted, pushed away toys or items they didn't want, and brought toys and other items over to adults to show and share.  When new toys were presented, such as a new Busy Box, the children were curious and spent time learning to manipulate the features of the toy.  They were also quick imitative learners.  I gave them several sets of stacking cups to play with.  Within a few minutes one child began to bang two cups together. After a few more minutes all of the older children had found two cups and were happily banging away, creating an impromptu percussion symphony (much to the dismay of the caregivers). The few children in the group who did not have good non-verbal social interaction skills appeared to have significant delays affecting more than just language abilities. Since that experience, I have traveled to other Russian orphanages and have observed similar patterns of caretaking, and language learning.  There are differences in orphanages, with some providing better nutritional, physical, and emotional care than others.  However no matter how ' good' the orphanage appears,  when children lack sufficient adult language models, appropriate play experiences, and enriching community outings, delays in language occur.
In summary, parents should expect children raised in orphanages to have mild to moderate delays in spoken language development. However, nonverbal social interaction skills appear to be less affected by the orphanage environment.  These social interaction skills should be the primary focus during the pre-adoption process.  The Pre-Adoption Questions section explains how to judge social interaction abilities when making adoption decisions.  After adoption, the focus of concern shifts to determining when and if children catch up in language abilities.  TheInfant & Toddler and Older Adopted Children sections describe typical patterns of language development following adoption.

Nicoleta's Story (17/20)

My name is Nicoleta Mandru, and I am very happy to be able to share some of the most important events in my life through this letter.

I was born on March 31, 1984, in the city of Bacau. I come from a family of 10 children, and I was the seventh child born to my parents. I lived in Botosani, at the Hand of Help orphanage, and I am very grateful, along with the other children, for the wonderful living conditions that are available there.

In 1984, my father died and my mother was no longer able to provide for us. This is how I came to live in Botosani, in this wonderful orphanage, with these wonderful people. I came here in 1996, along with three of my brothers. I thank God every day for giving me a new father and mother which show their love for me every day. They are wonderful people, blessed of God, who give their best for all the children living in the orphanage. In the orphanage, the children, along with the teachers, and the other employees are a united family.

They are wonderful people who teach the good path of life, how to have an appropriate attitude in society, in the family, and in the church of God. I went to the church, which is located on the orphanage grounds, where I sang in the choir, and enjoyed the presence of God during every service.

May 6, 2001 was a day of blessing for me. It was the day I was baptized, and the day I decided to serve my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ all the days of my life. From that day forward my life has changed radically, and I thank God for my new family in this church as well.

I consider myself a very happy and blessed person for being in this orphanage. I had everything necessary in order to be content and happy. I had food, clothes, heat, gifts, and all these I received as from the hand of God.

Through the hard work of people I have grown to love, like the teaching staff, the medical staff, and everyone else working 

there, God has molded me into a person with a new perspective concerning life, and one who has a blessed future. May

God bless them all!

I would once again like to thank God, as well as all those working with Hand of Help. Last but not least, I thank my mother Virginia Boldea whom I love dearly.

With love,

Nicoleta Mindru

Health Care at a Rwandan Orphanage (16/20)

This project was originally intended to examine an orphanage in Rwanda for evidence of malnutrition and introducing the use of growth charts so that the

staff could earlier detect problem cases to seek treatment. However, due to a needs assessment at the orphanage, the focus of the project shifted to developing a general health care plan for the children at the orphanage.  Orphans are particularly vulnerable for health problems, including malnutrition,

HIV/AIDS and other diseases of poverty. It is therefore necessary to establish and maintain sustainable health care programs for the children who will be institutionalized in orphanages in Rwanda and other developing countries. 

L’Esperance Children’s Village is an orphanage on Lake Kivu in western Rwanda.  As a children’s village
(rather than a traditional institutional orphanage), the 100 children live in one of four family units that have children of both sexes between the ages of 2 and 21.  There is a house mother for each family unit that is in charge of feeding, cleaning and the other daily needs of the children.  In addition, there is a baby house with eight infants between 20 weeks and two years old.  There is no electricity or running water at the orphanage, and most of the food is grown in the orphanage’s fields, so the diet is heavy on potatoes and cassava root.  

The components of the plan included:

1) HIV testing all of the children at the orphanage 

2) Creation of medical files to be used by visiting health professionals and which the children can take with them to the hospital or health clinic when they visit

3) Creation and stocking of first aid kits for each family unit

4) Training of the house mothers in basic first aid and wound care

5) Arrangement for a Rwandese pediatrician to make annual visits to the orphanage to conduct exams on all of the children

6) De-worming and anti-fungal treatment of the children at regular intervals throughout the year

7) Training of the orphanage staff in taking of height, weight and head circumference measurements and the use of growth charts at regular periods throughout the year

 

I am continuing to keep in touch with the orphanage.  They haven’t scheduled the pediatrician visits yet but are otherwise on schedule and

Improving Orphans Health and Nutrition Project (15/20)

Activities of the provinces’ orphanage (Social Sponsoring Centres) is dependent on the national budget, and it is difficult to improve the living conditions of the children living in this centre without additional funding. Unfortunately, the orphanage has not been able to attract much investment from domestic or foreign charities.Lai Chau is a mountainous province in the northwest region of Vietnam. It is amongst the poorest provinces in Vietnam. Prices of basic necessities are 1.3 to 1.7 times higher than the average of highland provinces. Lai Chau was also badly affected by Tropical Storm Kammuri which resulted in loss of life, property as well as thousands of acres of workable agriculture fields. As a result of the high poverty rate, lack of food and health services in these provinces, the people most adversely affected are the orphans, elderly and homeless.

Each child living in an orphanage receives an allowance from the Vietnam Government of 15 USD per month, which is 0.50 USD per day for food, electricity, water and fuel. As consumer prices are rapidly increasing in the Lai Chau province, this allowance is not enough for basic expenditures. Lacking farmland, capital, and knowledge, the orphanage is unable to improve the living conditions for the children through planting trees, gardens or raising animals.

The Social Sponsoring Centre (SSC) of Lai Chau will be caring for 100 children by the end of 2010. Most of these children are poor, have no working ability, and no income. They live on the allowance of the Government and the occasional intermittent aid from non-profit organizations.

The project aims to improve the health, life skills and livelihood of each of the children living in the centres. Each child will be responsible or 3 chickens and a small plot of land and will be trained in nutrition, raising fowl and planting vegetables through the FAITH (Food Always In The Home) Garden principle, the Chicken Principle and the CHE based life skills education program (see attached addendum for more information on the principles). It is hoped that these chickens and vegetable gardens will also provide a sustainable food source for the Support Centre.

Choosing Adoption - Developmental Impacts of Orphanages Versus Foster Care (14/20)

An overview of developmental impacts of children adopted internationally from oprhanages and institutions. How and why this may differ from children adopted from foster care.

Orphanage is the general term I use to cover institutional care and includes social welfare institutions, group homes, or baby houses. No matter what the name, orphanages are lousy places to raise children. Every child deserves prompt consistent care, lots of verbal and physical stimulation, and love. In short, children need parents, not shift workers. The quality of care varies greatly by country, region, and even within the same orphanage, but evening the best of situations, communal living is not conducive to providing the degree of care infants and children need. This fact alone is why some families choose a country where children are in orphanages in order to provide a home to a child who really needs it.

While most children available for foreign adoption live in orphanages, foster care is available is some countries, most notably Korea and Guatemala. Other countries, such as China, are making some progress in placing children in foster homes rather than institutions. Unfortunately, foster care does not automatically guarantee quality care, but it increases the odds.

Dr. Dana Johnson, from the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic, says that the chance that a child adopted from an orphanage will be completely normal (whatever that means) when she first arrives home is essentially zero. Growth and development will both be delayed. For growth delays, the rule of thumb is that a child will lose one month of linear growth for every three months in an institution. In a study comparing Guatemalan children in foster care and orphanage care, the children who had resided in an orphanage before adoption were significantly smaller in height, weight, and head circumference (Miller at al, 2005). Similar growth delays were also found in Chinese and Russian orphans adopted from institutions (Miller and Hendrie, 2000, Albers et al., 1997).

Developmental delays are also common for children who lived I an orphanage before adoption. A large study of children adopted from China showed "gross motor delays in 55% of the children, fine motor delays in 40%, cognitive delays in 32%, language delays in 43%, social emotional delays in 28%, and delays in activities of daily living in 30% (Miller and Hendrie, 2000). Forty-four percent had delays in three or more of these areas. Interviews with international adoption doctors and researchers reveal that developmental delays were common for children who resided in orphanages in other countries as well (Albers et al., 1997).

Most parents accept that their child will arrive home with growth and developmental delays, but their burning question is will their child make up these delays with loving care. Research clearly indicates that love and nutrition do wonders for a child's physical and developmental growth. The gains made in this area post-adoption have been described as miraculous (Ryan and Groza 2004; Bledsoe and Johnston, 2004; Judge, 2004). Motor skills delays are often the first to improve, while language and social skills may lag behind, especially for children who spent more time in an institution. The younger the children, the great the chance that he will make up any growth and developmental delays, but whether your child will completely catch up is impossible to tell. One research, Dr. Victor Groza, categorized the children adopted from Romania several years post-adoption as follows: "the resilient rascal" (20 percent) showed little long -term effects of orphanage life; "the wounded wonders" (60 percent) were making good progress but had some delays; and "the challenged children" (20 percent) continued to struggle. These children came from extreme deprivation and arrived home significantly delayed, but other researchers have seen similar results in other countries. 

Dr. Dana Johnson said in an interview, "With love, 70-80 percent of the children adopted from orphanages will do quite well; unfortunately, it is impossible to pick out in advance with certainty the ones who won't."

Better orphanages have the following:

• Consistent care (low turnover among caregivers, caregiver assigned to care for the same children each day)
• Fewer children per caregiver
• Adequate nutrition and medical care

It is impossible to generalize about orphanage care for an entire country, but once you have selected an agency you can ask specific questions about the quality of care in the institutions they work with. You can talk with other parents who have adopted from the same region of the country, and it may be possible to find parents who adopted from the same orphanage. Your agency may be able to give you names, and yahoo.com has some groups formed around certain regions. And remember, institutionalization is not an automatic sentence to physical, cognitive, or emotional health problems; many children come home and thrive despite having spent their first years in an orphanage.

Orphanages Stunt Mental Growth, a Study Finds (13/20)

Psychologists have long believed that growing up in an institution like an orphanage stunts children’s mental development but have never had direct evidence to back it up.

Now they do, from an extraordinary years-long experiment in Romania that compared the effects of foster care with those of institutional child-rearing.

The study, being published on Friday in the journal Science, found that toddlers placed in foster families developed significantly higher I.Q.’s by age 4, on average, than peers who spent those years in an orphanage.

The difference was large — eight points — and the study found that the earlier children joined a foster family, the better they did. Children who moved from institutional care to families after age 2 made few gains on average, though the experience varied from child to child. Both groups, however, had significantly lower I.Q.’s than a comparison group of children raised by their biological families.

Some developmental psychologists had sharply criticized the study and its sponsor, theMacArthur Foundation, for researching a question whose answer seemed obvious. But previous attempts to compare institutional and foster care suffered from serious flaws, mainly because no one knew whether children who landed in orphanages were different in unknown ways from those in foster care. Experts said the new study should put to rest any doubts about the harmful effects of institutionalization — and might help speed up adoptions from countries that still allow them.

“Most of us take it as almost intuitive that being in a family is better for humans than being in an orphanage,” said Seth Pollak, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the research. “But other governments don’t like to be told how to handle policy issues based on intuition.

“What makes this study important,” he went on, “is that it gives objective data to say that if you’re going to allow international adoptions, then it’s a good idea to speed things up and get kids into families quickly.”

In recent years many countries, including Romania, have banned or sharply restricted American families from adopting local children. In other countries, adoption procedures can drag on for many months. In 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, Americans adopted 20,679 children from abroad, more than half of them from China, Guatemala and Russia.

The authors of the new paper, led by Dr. Charles H. Zeanah Jr. of Tulane and Charles A. Nelson III of Harvard and Children’s Hospital in Boston, approached Romanian officials in the late 1990s about conducting the study. The country had been working to improve conditions at its orphanages, which became infamous in the early 1990s as Dickensian warehouses for abandoned children.

After gaining clearance from the government, the researchers began to track 136 children who had been abandoned at birth. They administered developmental tests to the children, and then randomly assigned them to continue at one of Bucharest’s six large orphanages, or join an adoptive family. The foster families were carefully screened and provided “very high-quality care,” Dr. Nelson said.

On I.Q. tests taken at 54 months, the foster children scored an average of 81, compared to 73 among the children who continued in an institution. The children who moved into foster care at the youngest ages tended to show the most improvement, the researchers found.

The comparison group of youngsters who grew up in their biological families had an average I.Q. of 109 at the same age, found the researchers, who announced their preliminary findings as soon in Romania as they were known.

“Institutions and environments vary enormously across the world and within countries,” Dr. Nelson said, “but I think these findings generalize to many situations, from kids in institutions to those in abusive households and even bad foster care arrangements.”

In setting up the study, the researchers directly addressed the ethical issue of assigning children to institutional care, which was suspected to be harmful. “If a government is to consider alternatives to institutional care for abandoned children, it must know how the alternative compares to the standard care it provides. In Romania, this meant comparing the standard of care to anew and alternative form of care,” they wrote.

Any number of factors common to institutions could work to delay or blunt intellectual development, experts say: the regimentation, the indifference to individual differences in children’s habits and needs; and most of all, the limited access to caregivers, who in some institutions can be responsible for more than 20 children at a time.

“The evidence seems to say,” said Dr. Pollak, of Wisconsin, “that for humans, we need a lot of responsive care giving, an adult who recognizes our distinct cry, knows when we’re hungry or in pain, and gives us the opportunity to crawl around and handle different things, safely, when we’re ready.”

This is the background of the children in our care (12/20)

1. Some are victims of the aftermath of war:

Rainbow Orphanage is located in an area of northern Cambodia which was a major area of conflict between Phnom Penh Government soldiers and troops of the Khmer Rouge. Most of the young men of that time (1979 - 98) were recruited on both sides of  the civil war. Many became victims of this war and now live in the villages as cripples and amputees. After the war they  returned to their villages, but lacking either wealth or education,  resorted to living in the forests, cutting wood or living off other resources.  - and many succumbed to malaria and other water- borne diseases or were killed by land mines left behind from the war. Many children were left fatherless. 

Also, until recently, the mortality rate among women in childbirth was very high - with no access to western medicine, and many children were left motherless.

Adults often drifted to towns seeking menial work as cleaners and laborers but often the little money they earned was squandered on drink or in the local brothels - many engaged in unprotected sex, developed HIV and either died  or didn’t return to their village at all,  leaving no support for their surviving family members.

2. The poverty of families and subsequent migration from the homeland

The Pol Pot period and the subsequent years of civil war saw a massive dislocation of the population and hence the disruption of normal village life. Many moved to other parts of the country or to neighboring countries to survive. A large number did not return.  Some women returned to their villages with children but no husbands - others simply left unwanted children with other village people and returned to the life they knew in the cities. Relatives or grandparents often had little interest (or money) to provide education for the children, some were ashamed of the status of the children - many were neglected, ignored or abandoned.

3. The strict traditional nature of Cambodian Society

Cambodia is a very traditional society - in its values and in its regard for the customs of marriage and the bringing up of children. According to custom, the parents approve and choose partners for their children - and most young people follow this custom. The parents then provide the marriage with support, with inheritance and even help to set the new couple up in business. By contrast, if the young people break this custom their parents provide no support and often disown the couple. They ‘lose face’ in their own community and are not willing to accept responsibility for grandchildren - who are then often abandoned.

4. Unemployment and bank debt

About 85% of people living in the country are farmers - with no education and not enough land for cropping- and there is very little alternative unemployment. Many get heavily into Bank debt (sometimes inflating their income prospects to borrow money and perhaps start a new business.)  But with little experience, they inevitably become bankrupt, the property they have defaults to the Bank- so with no inheritance at all to give to their children - they seek refuge in a neighboring country like Thailand. Once again, the children are either abandoned or left with ageing grandparents.

Rainbow Orphanage has been established in this area to deal with some of these problems to assist these children and their families. We try to supplement the minimum Government  services needed and provide care, food, shelter and education  for these very vulnerable children. We are pleased to say that already the first group of children has progressed to years 10 -12 and we hope that, given the opportunities to become nurses, health workers, teachers, they can become partners in contributing to, and rebuilding, the local communities.

Orphan’s stories (11/20)

Cambodia is located in Southeast Asia, and enjoyed a prosperous culture and civilization during the Angkorian Era. Geographically, it is situated along the Mekong River on wet land favourable for agriculture.

The majority of Cambodians are famers who are honest, hardworking and traditionally friendly and supportive of each other.

However, war and the Pol Pot genocidal regime have severely shattered the country. The national social infrastructures, culture, tradition and social morality which used to be good,have severely declined. Trauma, the loss of spouses, children and relatives, and in particular, the deprivation of their right, dignity and honor have been in the heart of the Cambodian population for a full generation.

These are causes affecting the daily livelihood of Cambodians’ of all ages in this generation, Physically and mentally disabled people, orphans without any support and poverty are the legacies which the social affairs sector has to deal with.

Many visitors to Rainbow ask how the children came to the orphanage - and the kind of life experiences which have brought them to this place of refuge.

The children are drawn from three districts: Puok, Angkor Chum and Angkor Thom - all in Siem Reap Province. Some are orphaned, some abandoned - some simply poor and vulnerable  who have no stable and caring family environment to support them, neither parents nor relatives - but who wish to live and study at the Orphanage and have an opportunity  to complete their schooling. These children have a chance to develop into contributing members of society as their confidence and self esteem are nurtured in a secure, caring  and stable  environment with committed staff.

Orphan Train History (10/20)

Between 1854 and 1929 an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children were placed out during, what is known today as, the Orphan Train Movement. The name is derived from the children's situations, though they were not all orphans, and the mode of transportation used to move them across forty-seven states and Canada.


When the orphan train movement began, it was estimated that 30,000 abandoned children were living on the streets of New York City.

Two charity institutions, The Children's Aid Society and The New York Foundling Hospital,determined to help these children.

The aid institutions developed a program that placed homeless children into homes throughout the country. The children were transported to their new homes on trains which were eventually labeled “orphan trains.”


This period of mass relocation of children in the United States is widely recognized as the beginning of documented foster care in America.

Ways to help our orphanage - donating to charity - India (9/20)

Making a Donation –

One off Donation – donate either by post or online internet banking to our orphanage.

Monthly donation - a quick and simple way to donate a regular amount. This method helps us plan ahead. Either by online banking or download the Direct debit form from our donate page.

Pay Pal or Credit Card - securely processes donations.

Fundraising – There are many ways to get involved in fundraising activity to help raise funds and awareness for Joy Home for Children. Giving up a little bit of your time to raise some money can be really rewarding. You'll feel a real sense of pride for helping to improve the lives of orphan children. We offer personal interaction with our fundraisers with events listed on our website.

Mycharitypage is a website which provides a unique combination of functionality for fundraisers and event organisers and let people make donations online to charity. Mycharitypage, uses social networking features such as videos, blogs and forum discussions, to let people build a network of friends to raise awareness of their fundraising event online.

Corporate Sponsorship – There is currently no corporate sponsorship funding the work we do. A corporate sponsorship deal would help fund advertising, marketing/exhibitions, administration costs as well as the costs involved in running our UK based operation. As 100% of the donations (after bank fees) are directly spent on the children, sponsorship deals would be an essential for the daily running of the charity.

Press Advert/Publication Space – Complementary advert in trade/national publications, just to fill a space. Full/Half and Quarter page adverts have been prepared and are ready to email to publishers. Also looking for opportunities for free editorials.

Promoters/Event Organisers – If you are planning a charity event or have an event whereby you would like to donate a percentage of profit to charity, get in touch with us - we would include your event on our website.

Schools – You could support our charity with events organised through your school such as sponsored walk, jumble sale or a summer fair. These are all great way to raise funds as well as the profile of the charity.

Leaflet Distribution – (UK only) A6 size charity leaflets are available - Require means of distribution. Anyone that has access to regular letter/parcel mail out whereby leaflet can be added or even leaflet placement opportunities would be ideal.

Viral Marketing Campaigns – Utilising social networking sites and email is essential to generate website traffic. Join our Facebook Group and then invite all your friends to join.
As no donations are spent on Marketing, alternative means of free marketing is essential. By spending a few hours promoting our charity online, you will generate interest and this may lead to fund raising opprotunities as well as donations.

Marathon – The Worlds Major Marathons - London_Marathon, Boston Marathon, Chicago Marathon, New York Marathon or Berlin Marathon.

Visiting Hyderabad – Our offices are in Secunderbad. We would welcome anything which would improve the well being of our children. Visiting the orphanage is only permitted strictly with prior booking.

Web Site Link/Banner – Publish a complementary website banner on your website would greatly help us raise the profile of Joy Home. Any size banner available.

Fund Raising Search Engine - With Easysearch, you can turn those searches into funds for our orphanage. So how does it work? By switching from Google to Easysearch, supporters can raise half a penny for Joy Home with every search you make. An average easysearcher raises around £25 each year - multiply that by your number of supporters and the potential for donations is enormous! All you need to do is click on this banner and and make it your home page or add it as favorites as your search engine.

Shop Online (UK) - You can now raise funds for Joy Home For Children every time you shop online. Choose from over 2000 of the UK's best-known retailers including many popular names such as M&S, Argos, Debenhams, John Lewis and HMV, and up to 15% from every purchase you make will be donated to Joy Home at no cost to you!

Others – If there is any other way you can help us, we'd love to hear about it, so get in touch.

Over 50 Ways to Help an Orphan (8/20)

1. Make a general donation to Families Saving Orphans by credit card to sponsor a specific project or child.
2. Donate through the mail by check.
3. Donate stock. Email us to discuss it.
4. Sponsor a child.
5. Set aside an amount each month and donate with your debit or credit card.
6. Participate in "7 Days of Nothing" and donate the money you save.
7. Become a "Saving Sponsor" by donating $1,000 to the Families Saving Orphans project and have your adoption or orphan story featured on our website. Click here for more details.
8. Sacrifice one or more things in your life and donate what you save to help an orphan. Even one dollar can make a difference in the life of an orphan. Examples of things you might sacrifice: cable T.V. subscription, soda addiction, cigarettes, Starbucks coffee, fast food meals, full price movies (go to the dollar theater instead) dessert, manicure/pedicure.
9. Ask for donations from others. Send a letter to family members and friends and let them know you are trying to raise funds to help orphans. Ask them each for $10 or more if they can. Set a goal to get 10 donations.
10. Donate airline miles to Families for Orphans to help defray travel costs for our project managers as they travel to arrange medical care or help for orphans. Email us to set it up.
11. Go in person to local businesses and ask them to donate to Families for Orphans.
12. Arrange with Wal-Mart to set up a table where you can tell people about Families for Orphans and ask for donations.
13. Organize a pancake breakfast or a spaghetti dinner with the proceeds going to an orphan project. Ask businesses, friends and family to donate the supplies. Raffle or auction off donated items during the dinner, and encourage attendees to bring along items they can donate. Think about the people you know and what they could offer you. Do you have family who own a timeshare or condo or cabin? If so, auction off a weekend! Do you have a dentist in the family? Auction off a free exam and cleaning! Can you or a friend sew or quilt? Raffle off a custom quilt or blanket!
14. Sell unwanted household items on eBay and donate the proceeds.
15. Have a yard sale. Get friends and family members to donate items for you to sell, especially big items like serviceable furniture. Advertise well, listing specific high-demand items in your newspaper ad.
16. Use a credit card that gives you cash back on purchases and donate the cash back to help an orphan.
17. Organize a "Hoops for Orphans" event where children get sponsors to donate a specific amount for every basket they make at a special event you organize.
18. Organize a golf tournament with the proceeds going to help orphans.
19. Request that your birthday gifts be donated to help orphans.
20. During the holiday season request that those who traditionally give you gifts donate to help orphans instead.
21. Instead of sending a gift to someone, donate the amount of the gift you would have given to help an orphan and inform them of the donation being made in their name.
22. Organize a "Service Auction for Orphans" where family members and friends donate a service to be auctioned off with proceeds going to help orphans.
23. Share your orphan story. If you have had a positive experience with adoption or helping orphans, share your story with others by clicking here.
24. Conduct a Families for Orphans drive in your neighborhood by sending a personal letter to 10-20 friends and neighbors asking for a donation to help orphans.
25. Dollars for Orphans. For one month ask everyone you come in contact with for $1 to help an orphan. Explain that most orphans live on less than $1 each day.
26. Hold a birthday party for an orphan and invite your friends to come and each bring $10 to donate to help an orphan who has probably never had a birthday party.
27. Consider adopting a child.
28. Hold an "Orphan Awareness Night" in your home and show the Families for Orphans DVD and request donations.
29. Sign up for the free "Orphan Watch" newsletter and encourage others to do so too. Send out the link to the sign-up page to everyone in your email address book.
30. Send out an email to everyone in your email address book inviting them to come to familiessavingorphans.org to sponsor a child or an orphan project.
31. Consider contacting our partners at Legacyglobal.org to purchase a charitable annuity.
32. Put Families for Orphans as a recipient in your will.
33. Ask someone else to put Families for Orphans in their will.
34. Contact local businesses and invite them to match your donation.
35. Challenge family members to match your personal donation.
36. Hold a Families Saving Orphans barbecue and donate the proceeds.
37. Organize a "Walkathon for Orphans."
38. Do an "eBay Scavenger Hunt" and ask neighbors and friends to donate items from a list you create of items that could be easily sold on eBay. Then auction them off on eBay.
39. Encourage your school to conduct a "Dollars for Orphans" project where each child is invited to bring in $1 to help an orphan. We can match up a school with a specific orphanage or project.
40. Organize friends and family to do a "Car Wash for Orphans."
41. Ask your pastor if you can pass around a "Dollars for Orphans" collection plate to your congregation to gather donations.
42. Ask your church to sponsor an orphan or project.
43. Cancel your newspaper service and use those funds to sponsor an orphan.
44. Ask your dentist, doctor, orthodontist, chiropractor or anyone you regularly pay to receive services from to see if they will donate a portion of your payment to help an orphan.
45. Email your friends and families the link to "Compelling Orphan Stories" so they will be motivated to help orphans as well.
46. Take up a collection from co-workers ($10 each) to donate to Families for Orphans.
47. Put a link to familiessavingorphans.org on your business, family, or personal website and invite people to learn about the needs or orphans.
48. Start a blog and tell people about Families for Orphans and send them to our Web site.
49. Contact families that you know who have adopted or who are considering adoption and send them to familiessavingorphans.org, and invite them to share their stories with us or to become a "Saving Family" and have their story featured on our Web site.
50. Dedicate a percentage of the profits of your business each month to Families for Orphans and advertise your support of this project.
51. Send out a flier to your neighbors, friends, and family offering a paid service informing them that the proceeds will go to help orphans. Ideas for services you could offer: babysitting, housecleaning, baked goods or yard work.

How to Get Help Starting an Orphanage (7/20)

Setting up an orphanage can be daunting even for the most motivated of people. A lack of funding, language barriers and foreign red tape can hinder the setup process, and this can be frustrating when you're eager to get started. If you're setting up an orphanage, it's important to ask for help. Where people might not be able to donate any money to your cause, they might be willing to donate their time

Instructions

1. Decide where you want to locate the orphanage. You might have a specific country or area in mind already, or you might be open to setting up anywhere. This decision will dictate what kind of help you need, your start-up costs and the laws you will have to consider.
2. Find a project coordinator. This might be a job you can do yourself, but unless you are willing to work on the orphanage full time or, if the orphanage is abroad, move to a new country, you will need a coordinator to help you with details of the project. Advertise in the orphanage's local area for someone with managerial experience. If you can't find anyone local, advertise the position as a volunteer role for college graduates or those looking for a career change.
3. Calculate how much money you will need for initial setup and long-term operating expenses. Include the cost of food, clothing, education, electricity and staffing. Setup costs might also include purchasing land or buildings and making renovations. Once you have calculated your short-term and long-term costs, you will know how much money you need to raise.
4. Write a business plan. Not only will this help clarify what you need to get the orphanage started, it will be useful to present to potential sponsors or donors. Specify the amounts you need for tangible things, such as "X dollars will enable us to provide 10 children with education for a month." This will give investors a better idea of what they are putting their money toward.
   
5. Begin fundraising as early as possible. In addition to cash, you can ask people to donate building materials or books, or volunteer their help. If you can find someone to volunteer his teaching services for six months, you will save the cost of a staff member for that time. Advertise your charity as widely as possible and ask people to give time or money.
6. Research government grants, sponsorships, partnerships and charitable donations. The availability of these resources will depend on where your orphanage is based. Some U.S. organizations fund international projects. Also consider using the orphanage land to produce goods, for example by turning it into a fruit or fish farm. Not only will this produce food for the children, but you can sell surplus produce for income.
   
7. Find an international lawyer. She will help you with local laws and requirements for setting up an orphanage. You will also need to register your organization in the United States to receive charitable donations. You can also ask lawyers or law students to volunteer their time to reduce your costs.