Photo: The girls from our Cebu girls home express their thanks for your love and support.
As we head into Thanksgiving week, we have so much to be thankful for at Peace Gospel and She Has Hope.
While our teams and local communities where we operate have struggled immensely under pandemic lockdown restrictions and resulting economic impact, many positive stories have emerged thanks to your generous support.
We’d like to take you on a “gratitude tour” of our programs around the world…
RURAL UGANDA
Extreme lockdowns have finally started to ease in Uganda and we’ve now been able to reopen our rural boarding high school.
Thanks to your support, we were able to make several renovations and improvements to the school facilities before classes resumed.
Our henhouse project was severely delayed due to pandemic restrictions but we have now finally received our permit to buy the 1000 young hens that will populate the henhouse, and we expect to have the new business underway soon.
Doing their best to follow the coronavirus prevention measures, our students can be seen here happy to return to class!
KAMPALA, UGANDA
Thanks to your support, our Kampala team was able to relocate to a new home for the 21 orphans under our care.
While our Executive Director was not able to make his annual Uganda visit due to pandemic travel challenges, we reached out to a local photography friend who was able to visit and take some photos on our behalf. Here’s a great shot he took of the kids in our Kampala orphan care program!
INDIA
Conditions have really been turned upside down in India with continuous lockdowns this past eight months along with extreme community fear over the virus bringing normal life to a snail’s pace.
The government forced us to temporarily close our boarding school so we had to find foster care arrangements for our boarding orphan students where we continue to support all their needs.
But recently, finally, the local government allowed us to gather some of our girls and their foster care guardians for a meeting at our campus. We were all so happy to see their smiles again.
We were able to hold a very simple groundbreaking ceremony for our forthcoming Technical College. Now we are just awaiting one more permit to come through for the main construction to begin. We are expecting it to clear any day now.
15% of the seats at the college will be reserved for our graduating high school students. Scholarships will be generated from tuition received from the other 85%. We can’t wait to keep you posted on upcoming developments.
Here you can see our India Director, Samson, happy to break ground on the new college!
NEPAL
We’ve recently moved our orphan home to a new location. Thanks to your generous support, we’ve been able to start construction on a new dining hall and kitchen structure, garage shed for our vehicle, and shade covering for the rooftop terrace where the children like to do their homework in the fresh air.
Our “Hope Collective” initiative is off to a strong start with several new members donating monthly toward our plan to strengthen the “Restoration” phase of our trafficking crisis response strategy.
We’ve been busy charting our plans for the launch of our first retail storefront— a tailoring business that will employ recent graduates from our Nepal trafficking rehabilitation home and trade school.
MYANMAR
In yet another move, we finally shifted our main orphan home to our new campus on acreage outside of Yangon. The children are enjoying the fresh air and much more land to spread out and play on.
This new land also contains farmland space in addition to our existing rice farm in another location. We’re growing various fruits and vegetables to stock our three orphan home pantries and generate extra funding from the sale of surplus harvests.
Here are some of our girls happy to show you a recent banana harvest on the new campus…
MANILA, PHILIPPINES
Because of your support, we’ve been able to equip our urban Manila team in their response to the recent Typhoon Vamco which caused the worst flooding Metro Manila has seen in 11 years.
We’ve been distributing fresh cooked meals and drinking water from the high ground of our Children’s Hope Center, helping to support over 400 families made homeless by the flooding.
CEBU, PHILIPPINES
Finally, our Cebu Island team has been fast at work with several repairs to the girls home, making improvements to the farmland, and continuing their support of hundreds of children whose families are struggling from the economic impact of pandemic lockdowns.
The girls from our Cebu girls home are excited to show part of their farmland’s recent fish harvest, which quickly sold out to the local community. The fish is always in high demand because it is known to be of good size and quality!
It has been a very challenging year for all of us but we hope these updates and smiles remind you how much hope is left in the world, and how you have been essential in bringing that hope to these souls we’re serving.
We hope you’ll be able to count many blessings as you reflect on Thanksgiving Day this year.
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