Mission trips
Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven't earned it, who haven't even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.
Upcoming Missions trip scheduled for Summer 2022
Lake Volta in Ghana is the largest human-made lake in the world.
It is the source of life for scores of small settlements that cluster at its banks: entire communities make their living on the boats and in the fish markets.
But hundreds of fishermen (or, more accurately, fisher boys) are not there by choice. Instead, they’re trafficked into the horrors of child labor on the lake; their families deceived, their former lives as distant as dreams.
On Lake Volta in Ghana, tens of thousands of children, as young as six years old, are trafficked on fishing boats. This dispute is centered around the disturbing statistic that an estimated 7,000 to 40,000 children work in this industry. To some, it is seen as apprenticeship, to others child labor and slavery.
According to the nonprofit organization Free the Slaves, more than one-third of the 1,620 households surveyed in and around Lake Volta housed a victim of child trafficking or someone held in slave-like conditions. Yet this is not an ancient, entrenched tradition in this place: Lake Volta was only created in 1965 when the forestland it now covers was flooded during the construction of a hydroelectric dam to provide Ghana’s electricity supply.
Lake Volta is the world’s biggest man-made lake, and trees rise above the water’s surface. Fishing nets can become caught on the limbs, and children are made to dive into the water to untangle them. Unable to swim, many children drown.
These children are often brought to work on fishing boats by traffickers who manipulate vulnerable families.
Children are prized for their small and nimble fingers, able to untether and mend nets.
Children as young as five are forced to work up to 18 hours a day, with no pay, in dangerous conditions.
Lake Volta is the world’s biggest man-made lake, and trees rise above the water’s surface. Fishing nets can become caught on the limbs, and children are made to dive into the water to untangle them. Unable to swim, many children drown.
The more fortunate children are rescued, and find refuge in a shelter.
These children are often brought from all over Ghana by traffickers. Lake Volta’s fishing industry is a significant element of Ghana’s economy, but it’s built on the backs of vulnerable children, most of whom are younger than 10. The trafficked are given the most dangerous and difficult jobs.
In 2021, designated the International Year of Child Labor by the United Nations, it is timely to re-dedicate ourselves to raising awareness about exploitative child labor practices. Revisiting the images I made of enslaved children in Lake Volta, I am mindful that the International Labor Organization estimates there are 20,000 children living and working in slavery in the Volta region and surrounding fishing communities. It is not acceptable to shut our eyes, to ignore this horror. Child forced labor is dangerous, illegal and yet pervasive around the world.
The past year of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement called broad attention to racial and social justice inequities, not only in America but around the world. The ravages of the pandemic have made starkly apparent how unequal access to education, healthcare, housing and gainful employment have had devastating, too often deadly outcomes for the poor and disadvantaged everywhere.
On a positive note, this has resulted in heightened awareness of shared humanity that surpasses divisions of race, ethnicity, class, and geography. If we act together to demand change, we can make and change laws and re-envision policies and practices to better the world.
If we look into the eyes of these enslaved children, maybe that compels some to donate funds; to call on their government to engage in fair trade, vote to support laws regulating child labor, pressure big businesses and government agencies worldwide to enforce improved labor practices — perhaps registering boats and licensing fishermen on Lake Volta. These are some of the practices that enslaved workers will be freed and protected, how children will return to school. It’s time to step up and speak out, take action.
Venn Diagram of Labor Exploitation, Child Labor, and Labor Trafficking
Mission trip of 2019
We had an opportunity to visit Kijabe, Kenya in January 2019. The team assisted the preschool in the community to build a multi-level chicken coop on the site of the preschool. This was so that the school could raise their own chickens which would produce eggs for the students who attended the preschool as well as for the community. This experience has enhanced the preschool to increase their self-sufficiency. The following are pictures which were taken during our stay in Kijabe.
Mission trip of 2019
Naomi’s Village is a holistic care organization that positively impacts every stage of life for the children they serve. All Kenyan staff works together to bring change, hope and redemption to children living full-time at Naomi’s Village Home, and also to children and families in the community they serve through education and community outreach.
WHO they SERVE
Naomi’s Village Home provides complete care for almost 100 Kenyan children left parentless by terrorism, AIDS, disasters, and domestic violence in the Great Rift Valley.
VISION
Our vision is to raise a group of children as leaders to help end Kenya’s orphan crisis through similar work of their own one day, creating a compassionate ripple effect. To do so, we must give each of them the intentional nurturing and care needed to develop fully and dream unhindered by limits.
HOW they ACCOMPLISH THIS
Naomi’s Village Home provides more than just basics – we provide excellent healthcare, balanced nutrition, a rich education at LEAP Preschool and Cornerstone Preparatory Academy, leadership training, spiritual care, and counseling to every child. We’ve made Naomi’s Village a love-filled place, the kind where broken children heal and thrive.
Our team immerses older children in community outreach to the needy, shaping leaders who value empathy. We do all this believing our kids will one day rise up and multiply the power of active love for Kenya’s marginalized, and help bring lasting solutions to its orphan and education crises.
Mission trip of 2019
Cornerstone Preparatory Academy exist to provide a holistic education to Kenyan children, both from Naomi’s Village Home and from community families struggling with the burdens of generational poverty.
VISION
Cornerstone Preparatory Academy was founded in 2013 to help end Kenya’s education crisis, beginning with an innovative, research-based school strategically located in the Great Rift Valley. We believe that provided with a transformational education, young Kenyans will learn, grow, and become the agents of necessary change in their country.
HOW they ACCOMPLISH THIS
Their incredible Kenyan teachers and staff help children find their worth and discover their own unique gifts. With state-of-the-art facilities, engaging curriculum, character training programs, and built-in community outreach initiatives, our children will emerge hopeful, confident, and equipped to impact their community and nation for good.
Missions trip July 2016 to Antigua, Guatemala
We were blessed to be able to serve the people of Guatemala in medical services.
Our services were providing basic services such as providing over the counter eyeglasses, dental teeth cleaning training, general health services (blood pressure check),providing over the counter medication, making recommendations to local physicians for ongoing health care issues, and craft activities with the children of the community.
We received support from the local (bomberos) volunteer fire department. They were an amazing group of men & women. They took us out to several outlying communities where there are limited services and set up an outreach program, which was well received by the community.
It was truly a blessing to be able to support the families of Guatemala.
Attached are a few of the photos from our wonderful experience!
