Monday, October 4, 2010

4-C Getting Ready for the New School Year….

    It’s that exciting time of year again! Most children enrolled in school start back this week! A lot of people are aware of BHM’s 4-C Child Sponsorship program. If you don’t, 4-C stands for Christ Centered Child Care. Baptist Haiti Mission has 18 “sponsored” schools. By sponsored we mean that each child in these schools are enrolled in the 4-C program and are eligible to have a person or family sponsor them all the way through elementary school. This is such a blessing to be able to provide this opportunity and a blessing to the child being sponsored! Each of the children in the sponsored schools get: uniforms, books, free medical care, and a hot lunch every day. Donations are also given to a “special event fund” which provides each child with a backpack on their birthday.
    To prepare for the start of a new school term, the 4-C office has been very busy. In a joyous way of course! The office has received several hundred applications of children that are in need of a sponsor. These applications are called Istwa Sosial Elèv; in English this simply means a “case history.” The case history is very extensive with all kinds of information about the child and the child’s family. One of the most valued pieces of information on the case history of the child is the address; this allows for the 4-C office to be able to take the person or family sponsoring the child to visit the child’s home if the donor visits Haiti. So in order to prepare for the upcoming school season all the information from these case histories must be entered into a database; this takes a lot of time and hard work. During this time of year, everyone in the 4-C office becomes a data entry person, while continuing to do their day to day work. The next step will be to visit each sponsored school and take a photo of every child that is up for potential sponsorship and update photos of sponsored children. With the data from the case history and the photo, 4-C constructs a personal story of each child which is given to the person willing to sponsor the little child of God. Another way the 4-C office has been preparing for the start of the new school year is to put together medical kits for each school. Each and every way the volunteers and staff in the office get to serve these schools is a blessing. Elsa Peterson, Sponsorship Coordinator, says that, “Our prayer is that every child that is entered into our database will be blessed with their very own, urgently needed, sponsor.” A big thank you to everyone who already sponsors a child or multiple children! Please consider sponsoring one of our children for under $1 per day and praying faithfully for the 4-C program and for all the schools in Haiti. God bless you!

Elsa, helping to make up medical kits for each school.

Elsa, bagging medical kits with the Haitian 4-C staff; Jean Bernard, Elusmund (Translator & Photography Designer) and Daniel (Translator).

Elsa and Darlene (full-time missionary in Children's Ministries), with the backpacks each child receives on his or her birthday.

 Elsa (Sponsorship Coordinator) with Jean Bernard (Office Manager) looking over a few of the many case histories they have received.
To sponsor a child today or for more information about our sponsorship program click on the following link:    BHM Child Sponsorship Program

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