The kids at "Kind Hearts" in Ethiopia will soon be getting brand-new playground equipment!!!!
In January 2010, every child at Kind Hearts had been matched with a sponsor family, whose $34 monthly committment ensures that their sponsor child gets nutritious meals every day, as well as clothing, medical care, education and Christian discipleship.
But our goal for Kind Hearts is not only to provide basic needs for these kids. Instead of being a place to survive, we want the kids at Kind Hearts to thrive!! With that in mind, we are focusing on several capital projects to develop Kind Hearts so that the care-point becomes more self-sufficient and can serve even more children and add more grade levels.
One of our capital projects is playground equipment for the kids. A beat-up teeter-totter and a rickety swing-set (pictured above) are the only "toys" the Kind Hearts kids have - and they are shared between all 68 kids. Playground equpiment provides a much-needed place for a kid to just be a kid!
In May, one of our sponsor families, Alisa and Vince Martin, did a Mother's Day card fund-raiser that put us within $300 of our goal to purchase playground equipment for Kind Hearts. Last week, another one of our sponsor families, Robin and Chris Wyatt, led a Vacation Bible School (VBS) fund-raiser for Kind Hearts, from their church, Bel-Ridge Baptist, in Belvedere, South Carolina.
Robin wrote to me after the event, explaining, "We showed a few pictures of the Kind Hearts kids every night and talked about the different things the kids needed. The kids at VBS were really touched. The idea of two swings being shared between 68 kids really baffled them! One little girl in the second grade was in tears later that night and she said "It is so sad those kids don't have shoes and don't have anything to play on." Robin and Chris sponsor a little boy at Kind Hearts named Tesfaye, and the kids in South Carolina knew they were helping Tesfaye and his friends in Ethiopia.
At the end of the week - the VBS program at Bel-Ridge Baptist Church in Belvedere, South Carolina raised a total of $528.60 for the playground equipment at Kind Hearts in Ethiopia!!!! That actually put us over our goal by a few hundred dollars, so perhaps the kids at Kind Hearts will even have a few extra swings!!!
What an amazing impact we are making, together, for the kids at Kind Hearts in Ethiopia!!!
This is a photo of the kids and directors of the VBS program at Bel-Ridge Baptist Church in Belvedere, SC. The sign reads, "WE LOVE KIND HEARTS!".
2 comments:
Way to go South Carolina...my husband and i are new sponsors and are from Columbia. So happy to see the success of raising $ for new playground equipment!
WAY TO GO SOUTH CAROLINA!...my husband and i are new child sponsors and we are delighted to see other South Carolinians open their hearts for these wonderful children. We are in Columbia SC :)
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