Our mission is to be a voice for forgotten children domestically and abroad. We want to shed light on the fact that right now there are half a million kids in foster care throughout America – and less than five percent of those children will ever have permanency thru adoption. Through Points of Hope Chapters, which you can start in your own area, we host programs that raise awareness and donations for local foster kids as well as events to help raise their spirits and inspire them to dream big.
We also work very hard to care for poverty-stricken families and orphans in Ghana, West Africa. In fact, I founded Point Hope after discovering that 140 acres made up a Liberian refugee camp which was home to more than 60,000 people living in poverty and without hope. The camp, located in the middle of a village called Buduburam, was only equipped to handle 4,000 people. What I saw when I first stepped into the dirty camp broke my heart. It was over-crowded, full of litter, without fresh water or proper sewage. The people often struggled for just one meal a day, and too many of them died from malnutrition or disease. I was motivated to take action and help.
One of our biggest initiatives was to produce a source of fresh, flowing water inside the camp and the surrounding Buduburam village. Residents were relying on dirty drinking water trucked in and sold at a high cost or they would try to “filter” rainwater and other runoff from gutters, gullies and trenches through sand and rock – drinking water that was unsanitary and disease-ridden. Point Hope constructed a water tower, a pumping station and laid underground pipes to pump fresh water to spigots throughout the camp. It took four years, a lot of time, money and volunteers to see our project complete, but the improved health and smiling faces are worth it!
That’s not all. Point Hope worked with Ghana Health Services and other partners to supply the camp clinic with doctors and nurses to treat more than 500 people a month – who otherwise would have no access to healthcare – and have supplied enough equipment that surgeries can now be performed at this location. We pilot a garden project to produce fresh vegetables for our nutrition feeding program as well as train the parents of malnourished children to farm and feed their families and provide a means of income. We provide additional skills training for sewing, baking, beading, fabric art, and carpentry to men and women. We run a nutrition program for foster kids and three daycares for malnourished children where they get at least three meals daily. We care for pregnant and nursing mothers, and also send hundreds of children to school, equipping them with the proper educational tools to succeed.
Liberians are no longer “official” refugees, the war in their country is over and many people have returned home. Many people, however, don’t have a home to return to and are now displaced – but Point Hope is still on the ground trying to help them build a future. And we have bigger plans. We have purchased 40 acres of land to build Point Hope Village. It will be home to widows, orphans, children rescued from human trafficking, abandoned babies, unwed teen mothers and children with chronic illnesses and special needs like my son Sammy whose story you will read about later this week. We will continue doing all the things we have been doing and more. We want to build a progressive, sustainable, healthy community for the next generation.
Go to PointHope.org and get to know us a little better, and learn how you might be able to help us care for those in need. If you do nothing more than forward an email, or post about us on your Facebook page or spread the word about us to others, that blesses us more than you realize.