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Give a Child a Chance
Bado
Néblima, a great friend of mine and a member of our church, started an
organization with the goal to help impoverished children, many of whom are
orphans, go to school. Burkina Faso is
considered one of the poorest countries in the world. French is the official language but about 70% only speak their
tribal language. Very few can read,
probably about 15%. Even though this is
slowly changing, it is very sad.
I was
talking with my mother, Mary Anne Shumaker, about what Mr. Bado was trying to
do. She told me she would like to help
and would try to get a few others to help. She was able to raise about $1500
for the 2005-2006 school year. The
2006-2007 school year we were able to help send 40 kids to school. We also were able to give back packs, pens,
pencils, erasers and notebooks to about 160 kids.
God has
given Mr. Bado and I a great vision to help these kids in two ways. The first has already been stated. We would like to help give children a chance
to succeed at life. Without an
education, they are trapped and will always struggle. The second, which is the most important, is that we can see many
of these children accept Jesus Christ as their Savor.
By the
grace of God we would like to continue to help send these children to school,
but God has increased our vision. We
would like to create Christian schools each year. For the 2007-2008 school year, we would like to build a school
building with three classrooms and an office. This way we could start the first 3 classes. This building will cost us about $14,000 to complete. The 2008-2009 school year we would like to
have completed another 3 classrooms that would allow us to have 6 classes. This would give the children a good basic
education and the thing that I like best is that we would be able to teach them
the Bible also. So many people in this
country are hindered in their spiritual development because they can’t even do
something as simple as reading the Bible. By learning to read, they can study and memorize the Bible on their own
and one day teach others the Word of God as well.
If 50
people would give $25 a month we could build classrooms each year and we could
also send many kids to school. If you
would like to help, please write me an e-mail at keith@theharvest.net I wish you could have seen how happy these
children were to receive a simple backpack, pens, notebooks, etc. and have the
chance to go to school. My motto is: We can’t help all but we can help some. A little bit goes a long ways. Below are some of the pictures from
2006-2007 school year.
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