DAVID ADAMS reports…
An ambitious plan to empty Rwanda’s orphanages of children was unveiled by Saddleback Church – home of high profile Christian identities Rick and Kay Warren – in the US last week.
The initiative was announced to mark World AIDS Day, held on Saturday, 1st December, and will see the more than 3,100 children now living in orphanages in Rwanda found homes outside by 2015. It has been designed to supplement the UNAIDS ‘Getting to Zero’ strategy which aims to have zero babies born of HIV, zero AIDS-related deaths, zero new HIV infections and zero discrimination surrounding the disease in the same time period.
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The Orphan Care Initiative website “The church has the largest participation, widest distribution, simplest administration, fastest proliferation, longest continuation, strongest authorisation and highest motivation to help with this health crisis. For that reason, the local church is key to getting to zero.”– Kay Warren, founder of Saddleback Church’s HIV&AIDS Initiative |
In a statement released last week, Kay Warren – who founded the church’s HIV&AIDS Initiative after becoming “seriously disturbed” by the plight of those affected by HIV and AIDS, says that while the goal is “audacious”, “we know in God all things are possible”.
“The church has the largest participation, widest distribution, simplest administration, fastest proliferation, longest continuation, strongest authorisation and highest motivation to help with this health crisis. For that reason, the local church is key to getting to zero.”
Elizabeth Styffe, director of the Californian-based church’s HIV&AIDS and Orphan Care Initiatives, says the initial aim of the project will be to reunify children with their families if they can be located.
“What many people don’t know is that many of the children who are in orphanages…have family in the community,” says Ms Styffe, who spoke to Sight late last week.
The separation can be due to a wide range of reasons including illness such as AIDS, extreme poverty, or because of war.
For those orphans whose families can be found, Ms Styffe says local churches – who are partnering with Saddleback in the initiative – will then identify whether or not it’s possible for the children to live with their families. “Sometimes they just need some help or some training.”
For those whose families can’t be found or who are unwilling or unable to care for the children, local families will be whether they would be willing to adopt the children.
While international adoption from Rwanda was formerly possible – Ms Styffe, and her husband Glenn have adopted three children from Rwanda: Noah, 14, Cynthia, 13, and Erica, nine – the African nation presently doesn’t allow it. That may change again in the future but Ms Styffe says the first target of the initiative is to get the children into immediate, non-institutional, care within the country. “Children are in a hurry,” she says.
And while the initiative will focus on the 3,100 orphans currently living in orphanages, it’s estimated that there are as many as a million orphans in Rwanda, a country of some 11 million people. Some of these are now adults, but Ms Styffe says recognising that they are orphans – in some cases as a result of the 1994 genocide which took place in the country – is still important to them. Besides, she adds, working initially to get children out of orphanages is a good place to begin. “It’s a place to start and it’s a wonderful model for every single country.”
Ms Styffe says that given the idea of adoption stems from God – “we believe that adoption is God’s idea, that the reason He made the universe was that so He could adopt”, it was time for believers to ask why, instead of finding homes through the church, children have been placed in institutions when scientific data was increasingly showing institutional care is harmful to children.
“We’re made for a family, that’s the way we’re wired…It really is the Gospel walking around when we do for the orphans physically what God has done for us spiritually…Christians uniquely believe in adoption because we were adopted. And, oh, by the way, it happens to be the best thing for a child.”
Ms Styffe says that increasingly, governments were now turning to churches and asking them to help find, train, educate and support parents. In Rwanda, this has meant training lay social workers within the church to help parents and their families.
While orphanages might serve as a transition home in a time of conflict or in an area affected by a natural disaster, Ms Styffe says “whatever we’re doing with orphans, let’s begin with the end in mind”. This means always looking toward a future when the orphan lives in a home.
“(I)t is Rwanda and the Rwandan local church that initiated and is leading this charge. And it happened to be that it is also the passion of our heart. So they decided…as a country that ‘We are going to empty of orphanages’ and then they looked to the churches in Rwanda and said ‘And we can’t do it without you’.”– Elizabeth Styffe, director of Saddleback’s HIV&AIDS and Orphan Care Initiatives |
Saddleback – one of the largest churches in the US – has had a long relationship with Rwanda, sparked when the president of the country, Paul Kagame, met with Saddleback founder Mr Warren, author of the best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life.
Ms Styffe says the Saddleback model – a “private, public and faith partnership” – involves empowering the local church.
“So, interestingly, actually it is Rwanda and the Rwandan local church that initiated and is leading this charge. And it happened to be that it is also the passion of our heart. So they decided…as a country that ‘We are going to empty of orphanages’ and then they looked to the churches in Rwanda and said ‘And we can’t do it without you’.”
Ms Styffe says it is a “humble privilege” to work along the local church in Rwanda.
“It is very unique country – anybody will tell you, when you have a country that has suffered like they’ve suffered, God has some very rich mercies. And they know God in ways we do not know Him. They understand forgiveness and reconciliation.”
