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Christianity Today, January, 2009 |

SPEAKING OUT

How to Help Orphans

Orphanages are not always the best answer.

Roger Olson | posted 1/05/2009 09:01AM

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 ...

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Matthew Storer www.VisionTrust.org

Posted: January 15, 2009 3:37 PM

The key to this article is how to care for children without causing more damage to an already broken situation. I am the President of www.VisionTrust.org and we work among extremely poor orphaned or abandoned children throughout the world. While there is no "one size fits all" model to caring for orphans, the idea of helping the local community to care for their own children seems to be the most optimal economically. It also scales and maintains culture and relationships. We seem to have better results with emotional stability and social integration. So why do so many people gravitate to the orphanage model instead of community based care programs? In many cases, people default to the known orphanage because it is easy to understand and set up while a community based care model is more complex. Christian workers have less control in a foster situation than a 24x7 orphanage situation. This is why we encourage people to partner with groups like VisionTrust to get the proper assistance.

Renee

Posted: January 08, 2009 12:14 PM


Well written article. People often think of quick fixes and short term solutions to major world problems. Thank you for explaining how we can work on long term solutions.

Patrick Gann

Posted: January 08, 2009 7:35 AM


Dean: Not exactly the most flattering comment there. Attacking the author's father is hardly of any help at this point. Even had it been a better story to tell, perhaps there were more extenuating circumstances than you presently know about. That said, I'm in with Jim. The American military empire is the cause of much widow- and orphan-making. Unhappy with these policies, I am.

Dean	Posted: January 07, 2009 1:08 AM

I find it disturbing that the father of these two children would work 60 hours a week and be gone for days. Especially at a time when the children needed their father the most. Friends, family, and church members should have stepped in to relieve this pastor by taking on pastoral responsibilities so that he would not neglect his parental responsibilities. That I think would have been a better story to tell.

Jim	Posted: January 06, 2009 3:04 PM

US Evangelicals can start by stopping all their orphan-causing support for all these satanic wars in the Middle East. Do they not know that AIPAC controls Washington, and AIPAC calls the shots? Do they not know that the Bush family is particularly oilistic, and Iraq has the second-highest oil reserves in the world? Jesus said, 'Blessed be the Peacemakers'! Not, 'Blessed be the anti-Christian Zionist warmakers'! He said, 'Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!', not 'Blessed be the violently racist but antiracist Zionist Pharisees!'

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