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Family Empowerment

We believe that child sponsorship is an incredibly effective tool for improving the lives of vulnerable children, but it does not come without limitations. One alternative that combats some of these limitations is our Family Empowerment Program.

Family Empowerment provides education, guidance, spiritual mentoring, training, medical help, and employment opportunities for entire families, not just one or two children.

When you sponsor an entire family, you develop relationships with the parents as well as all the children, and through your support and encouragement you will be able to impact their lives for many years to come.

Family Empowerment is different in another way, too. Our dedicated staff work closely with the parents to help them develop and implement skills that will allow them to be self-sufficient and provide for the physical, educational, and spiritual needs of their children.

Parents and caregivers want to succeed and meet the physical, educational and spiritual needs of their children. By sponsoring a family, you can help them accomplish their goals! You can empower an entire family for $250 per month, or you can choose to provide partial sponsorship for just $50 or $125.

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Shining the Light

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Shining the Light Ministry focuses on bringing hope where there is no hope, and the love of Christ into the lives of the deaf, those living with albinism, the disabled, and those left behind.  In 2020, Shining the Light completed its first course of tailoring which  involved breaking down cultural barriers training those with disabilities.

Future Shining the Light Training Facility

Ugandans have the heart of a fighter, they want to work, they want to learn skills, they want to be busy, they want better lives.  Over the years I have witnessed lives changed.  Hope brought into hopeless situations.  Children starting to dream about what their future could hold.  God and his infinite goodness has blessed the work of our hands.  Women now able to provide for their families, youth are off the streets and busy with new skills, children with disabilities given a chance, not just a handout.  We are breaking down cultural barriers training those with disabilities.

Uganda has a long list of handcrafts and skills: tailoring, machine knitting, pottery, shoe making, basket and mat weaving, soapstone carving and painting, cow horn carving, beadwork bags, bag weaving and crochet.  These skills could change the course of poverty in families and the future of the youth.

God is faithful!  We are doing great things and impacting lives in our community. The ability to buy land and build a facility for skills training  would increase our impact and  many more lives could be changed.  The stories could be endless!

Goal to reach: $23,000

To donate toward training facility, please click here: Every Child Ministries | Kindful 

To purchase craft items made by students trained at Shining the Light, click here.

Hebrews 13:21-” May the God of peace provide you with every good thing you need in order to do his will, and may he, through Jesus Christ, do in us what pleases him.”

Consider partnering with Linda Moore’s ministry to continue teaching skills for the glory of God.

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Sogakope Hope Center

ECM has been working in the Sogakope area in the Volta Region of southeastern Ghana for many years. The work began when we worked with women who were enslaved at the local shrines, helping to free them from that horrible bondage. Eventually, the ministry began to focus on children in the local schools, reaching out to the schools and communities with the gospel, presented via film media as well as personal evangelism. Our staff made frequent visits to local school and churches and conducted follow-up discipleship. This aspect of the ministry continues today.

In time, through this work, it became apparent that many children and families in the community needed assistance in meeting basic needs, including education. The staff also discovered that there are many children in the community with albinism, and their basic needs were often not being met. Because of this, ECM launched its newest outreach in Ghana in late 2020, the Sogakope Hope Center. The ministry will focus on meeting the needs of the most vulnerable children in the community, including those with albinism, providing education, meeting basic medical and physical needs, as well as spiritual mentoring.

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Vocational Education

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Vocational training for “hands on” careers is a part of many of ECM’s programs for street youth, orphans & vulnerable youth, and victims of ritual servitude. Some youth are enrolled in vocational schools. Others learn by being apprenticed to a master worker in the trade they want to learn. Skills that our youth have learned are automotive body work, baking & catering, carpentry, dressmaking, electrical, hair dressing, and mechanical.

 

The vocational option may be chosen in cases where a youth is older and has missed a lot of school, or does not pass the state exams which allow students to go on academically, or simply because vocational skills best suit a youth’s interests and God-given gifts. It has enabled many street youth to establish businesses, and some to have their own homes, to get married & start families.

 

Your gift today allows ECM to continue to bring hope to children through programs like Vocational Education.

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Tororo Hope Center

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The town of Tororo is located in Eastern Uganda, near the Kenyan border, and is the main municipal, administrative and commercial center of Tororo District. Our work in Tororo began in early 2015. It started when one of our ECM workers in Uganda visited her home neighborhood and discovered a few families with albino children that were in desperate need of help! Each of their stories is a touching one that breaks your heart! Just like any other child everywhere, they want to be loved, they want to have friends and they want to go to school! Unfortunately, children with albinism are mistreated, discriminated against, and at times even abused (see Children with Albinism). With your support of this project, their simple dreams will come true!

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The Way Home

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ECM, through The Way Home Project, demonstrates its belief that God made families for children so that they might grow up in a safe, nurturing, and loving environment. Specifically, The Way Home Project works with widows who are raising their orphaned grandchildren.

Because of this belief, we build spiritual and physical foundations so that families might be strengthend.

  • Bible teaching and application for Granny family groups, communities & pastors
  • Food Security: Teaching Farming God’s Way principles to churches and communities
  • Shelter: Our national team builds a sturdy brick home that will remain with the orphans after their Granny is gone

We strengthen families through granny family group weekly meetings which incorporate:

  • Biblical Worldview Training workshops for Granny Families, Pastors & Community on Bible Study & Prayer
  • Encouragement
  • Monthly Health check-up
  • Farming God’s Way follow up
  • Crafts (weaving mats, necklaces)
  • Farming God’s Way
  • God’s Heart for the Orphan

We prepare the widows & orphans to move from barely surviving to thriving by Biblical teaching and life application in the area of preventive health, food security & shelter.

But most importantly, we prepare each one for their eternal home in heaven by teaching each woman and child to know The Way Home forever with Jesus.

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The Mwinda Project

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The MWINDA Project: The Light of God’s Word for Coming Generations in Congo

Mwinda means “light” in two of the major languages of Congo—both in Kituba (Kikongo) and in Lingala. (Say Mween-dah) Psalm 119:30 says that the entrance of God’s Word gives light, and the new generation in Congo is urgently in need of that light to lead them in better paths.

The Kituba-speaking people of Congo have had the Bible only since 1982, and distribution has been limited since a Bible is a major purchase for most Congolese families. Even some Sunday school teachers do not have one! The Bible is a big book, and it’s still new to many Christians.

Many of Congo churches are eagerly teaching their youth the truths of God’s Word, using methods learned from Every Child Ministries’ trainers. Hundreds of thousands of children and youth gather each week in churches in their own communities, all hungry to learn more about the eternal truths of the Bible.  Now the constant plea is for Bible lessons aimed at children and youth.  To meet this need, ECM has now developed the Mwinda Project.

Writing directly in the Kituba language, missionary Lorella Rouster is devoting her time and energy to writing, printing, and distributing such lessons. To our knowledge, these lessons are presently the only ones available anywhere.

Click here to donate to the Mwinda Project today!

Mwinda Project Goals:

The goal of the MWINDA Project is to create a library of Bible lessons for children and youth covering all the major events and teachings of God’s Word, specifically applied to the culture of Congo, in Central Africa. Lorella’s lessons are then translated into Lingala, Tshiluba, French, and we hope to add Swahili in the future, so so we will be offering  the light of the Word to all of Congo and beyond. In Kituba alone, the lessons have the potential to teach 3 million children and youth, and through the translations mentioned, about 42 million.

The lessons are distributed in two ways. For larger churches of means who wish to have their own lessons, they are sold at cost in Congo bookstores. For those in cities with internet access and ability to photocopy, they are posted on ECM’s www.teachingforafrica.com. For poorer, financially struggling churches (which is the majority), they are available through free Teachers’ Resource Libraries that the project is developing throughout Congo. There, children’s Bible teachers can borrow teaching materials—Bible lessons, pictures, and sometimes visualized memory verses. They use them to teach in their churches, schools, and homes, then return them to receive other materials. In this way, Bible lessons are used over and over again. Under good conditions, they can last up to twelve years and be used by multiple churches. Each time a book is taught, an average of about 80 children are given weekly Bible teaching. Each lesson includes the basics of the Gospel and an invitation to receive Christ.

Lesson books are produced in quantities of a few hundred at a time at Every Child Ministries’ Mission Central office in Hebron, IN. Larger quantities of some are printed in Congo.

 

Funds given to the Mwinda Project are used for:

* the materials to produce the lessons in Kituba

* translation into Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili, and French

* their transport to Congo and distribution there, or for printing in Congo and distribution to libraries and bookstores there.

*larger quantity printings (1,000copies or more) in Kinshasa

 

The Mwinda Project distribution goal: To bring these lessons from the Word of God within reach of every village throughout Congo.

Your help is needed to meet the project budget of $20,000 per year.  Gifts of all amounts are deeply appreciated.

 

How to Pray for the Mwinda Project :

* That God would guide Lorella as she writes and Kongolo, Bope, and Elias as they translate.

* That God would help so that the lessons would be engaging, interesting, and easy to understand.

* That the project would always create lessons that are true to Scripture.

* That ECM’s Congo staff may find willing coordinators for the Teachers’ Resource Libraries.

* That God’s Spirit may guide the growth of the project.

* That the project budget may be fully met.

* That many may come to Christ through the lessons.

 

To receive monthly updates, e-mail Lorella at lrouster@ecmafrica.org

Visit the Mwinda Project Website for more information.

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Gulu Hope Center

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When ECM met the children of Gulu in 2006; originally called Tegot Atoo, it was an IDP camp (internally displaced people–sort of like being a refugee in your own land).  The camps were established by the Ugandan government during Joseph Kony & the LRA’s 20 year reign of terror in Northern Uganda.  They were meant to protect the people, but they brought their own problems.  When ECM came in, Joseph Kony had just left the area and things were still fragile and unstable.  However, he did not return, so finally rebuilding began.  ECM “adopted” the Tegot camp, and later the resettlement area around it.  This did not mean we could meet all the needs of the area.  It simply meant that we decided to concentrate our efforts there.  That has proven to be a big enough task.

ECM has sponsored more than 70 children from the area to enable them to get schooling or vocational training.  The war has torn apart virtually every family, but ECM is working to strengthen what remains.  Our sponsoring partners make it possible for staff to regularly visit and counsel families, help rebuild huts and latrines for elderly grandmothers who have taken in war orphans, help families get established in agriculture, and much more.  We have worked closely with the local primary school, where we have developed a library and made other improvements.

Most of the children are slowly recovering from post traumatic stress syndrome and are gradually beginning to find glimpses of joy and find hope for the future.  A program of nonformal education has helped children prepare for school.  One of our greatest joys has been seeing children who are just beginning to read, teaching the alphabet and its sounds to their parents at home, who were unable to attend school because of the war.

Tegot Atoo means “mountain of death,” but now it is becoming a place of life as the Gospel penetrates the hearts of families.  Many were forced to commit horrific, unspeakable acts during the war, in order to survive.  Although they were forced to do it, they still are haunted by guilt.  What sweet release to know that no matter what they have done, they can find forgiveness and healing in Jesus!

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Sunday School Development

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Thousands of Sunday schools have been established in Africa through ECM Training. Previously, these churches had nothing at all to reach children, and we have seen firsthand the excitement of the children. They are just thrilled to have this opportunity, and they show it. The level of excitement in these Sunday schools is indescribable!

These Sunday schools vary in size. One, in a Gospel-resistant area where the church is struggling for existence, teaches only a few children. Many in the cities enroll hundreds. An average for village Sunday schools seems to be about 80 children. This means ECM training is responsible for hundreds of thousands of children receiving weekly Bible training in Africa.

Our goal is not to start Sunday schools of our own, but to empower local Bible-believing churches to reach children through any means possible. Therefore, ECM is careful never to usurp the authority God has invested in the local church. The Sunday schools started through ECM training remain always under the control of the local churches.

Your gift today allows ECM to continue to bring hope to children through programs like Sunday School Development.

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