A common, yet heart-breaking situation arises when a community has too many orphans and too few people to care for them. In many villages in Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, war, disease, and poverty leave thousands of young children without family or relatives to provide for them every day. When well-meaning Western organizations see children languishing and suffering, they often want to help.
When children are living on the streets, sick and hungry, the solution can seem obvious: build an orphanage so these children have somewhere to live.
However, organizations like USAID have found difficulties with the orphanage model.
A growing number of developing countries are moving away from the orphanage system entirely, as it faces many challenges. Orphanages can have high costs for building, staffing and upkeep. They remove children from their home villages and this can limit their acceptance back into their community when the orphans return after graduation. Some orphanages face difficulties providing children with life skills, leading some graduated children to return to a life on the streets, begging from their neighbors and passersby. Occasionally, when parents face difficult situations and cannot provide for their children, they may send them to an orphanage in hopes for a better life. Some orphanages manage these challenges with more success than others, but all agree that this capital-intensive system of care struggles to cope with the millions of children left in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other hardships.
In Rwanda, Eve Niyobuhungiro spent her early years in an orphanage after her parents died. Her day-to-day needs were met at the orphanage, but she struggled with the stigma of being an orphan, and was cut off entirely from her village. At this orphanage, Eve learned how to receive – food, clothes, shelter, and a basic education. However, Eve did not learn the skills to provide for herself, such as how to grow food or start a business.
When Eve was very young, she was adopted by an elderly woman who was the lone survivor in her family after the 1994 genocide. Even though she cared for Eve, she didn’t have the resources to properly provide for her. Soon, Eve was on the street, begging each day so that she and her foster mother would have food to eat. They often went hungry when Eve came home empty-handed.
Eventually, in an attempt to improve her life, Eve tried to attend school. However, she was often sick and hungry, wore ragged clothes and had inadequate materials. Her classmates avoided her, and she found herself angry and jealous of those whose parents were still alive. She soon dropped out, discouraged and hopeless, and returned to begging on the streets.
Eve survived in this way for a decade. Then at the age of 17, Eve was invited to join ZOE. She was amazed to meet so many other children just like her. She joined the Duhozanye (translation: “stand by each other”) Working Group of fellow children that lived in her village. When she learned that many of the children in the group had been working for their food each day, she realized how dependent her life in the orphanage had left her. With the encouragement of her group, Eve soon learned the benefits of working for herself and helping others in her group.
Together the Duhozanye Working Group assisted one another to improve their lives. They started a group farm and cultivating their land to grow food. They helped dig toilets at the homes that did not have proper ones. When fellow group members fell sick, they would visit them, clean their home, and tend their land.
By working together with her group, Eve told Zoe Empowers staff, “I began to feel self-confidence and hope for the future.”
After learning the basics of business from ZOE’s staff, Eve received a micro-grant that she used to begin selling bananas and avocados in her village. Her small project was a success, and after six months she had saved enough income to rent small plots of land to grow beans, sorghum and pineapple. Through Zoe Empowers, she received a goat to fertilize her crops. Today, Eve is setting aside income to buy a bicycle, which will enable her to grow her business by transporting and selling her crops in a variety of markets.
Eve says that now she “likes to work hard and get advice from other people.”
Though her foster mother is now too elderly to work, Eve is able to provide amply for both of them. She has learned the skills she needs to be self-reliant, and is proud of what she has achieved in just one year. Zoe Empowers connected her to her village’s church, where Eve now attends regularly. Her old bitterness long gone, Eve says that she “has learned to love all children, even those with parents.”
Sometimes, the simplest solution is not always the one that lasts the longest. Eve, and millions of children like her, need the opportunity to learn to care for themselves and realize God’s hope for their lives. It is only when all the challenges a child faces are addressed with the sole aim of self-reliance that children can truly leave charity behind forever.