“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” — Matthew 25:40
Who can be called “the least of these, my brethren” if not the orphans of our world? Children without families become marginalized all across the globe. How do we reach out to them and make a difference? We’re young. We can’t adopt, and we don’t have lots of money to donate to child sponsorship, orphanage work, adopting families, adoption grants, and the many other orphan related caused. So what’s a teenager to do?
Heart for the Fatherless
The desire to help the fatherless budded in my heart when, as an eight-year-old girl, I learned about abortion. That year I asked people to give me baby clothes for my birthday instead of toys. As I grew older, I continued to learn about the overwhelming need of orphaned, poverty-stricken, and unwanted children around the world. The more I learned, the more I wanted to help, but what could I do?
I didn’t know any adopting families at the time, and every opportunity seemed to require volunteering at a distant location or donating lots of money I didn’t have. Discouraged, I did what I could and continued to learn as much as I could for that day when I would be old enough.
Teens Interceding for Orphans
Since then, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had the privilege of observing and learning from several friends’ adoptions. Along the way I learned that there are plenty of ways young people can help after all. (You probably already knew that.) My brother and I have been excited to help raise funds, pray, and support the adopting families we know.
Last month, I came up with a new idea. What if there was a website designed to show teens how they can get involved in orphan care? I started trying to create the website I had hoped to find in past years, and the idea for Teens Interceding for Orphans grew quickly.
Now the site is up and running. All it needs is teens to start getting involved, interacting, sharing ideas, and helping out. Teens Interceding for Orphans includes a list of ideas for ways to help, a page of resource links, videos to inform and inspire, a book list, and more.
There are also several teams you can join. The base team is simply a place where you can share what you’re already doing to help orphans. The prayer team offers a chance to create prayer chains for orphans and adopting families. Finally, for adopting partners you can indicate your willingness to do something like design an adoption blog for a family. Hopefully after people start signing up we’ll be able to start matching volunteers with adopting families who need help.
I’m also hoping that those of you already involved in caring for the fatherless will share your ideas and projects on the blog to encourage and inspire the rest of us.
Come On Over
The projects already shared here on The Rebelution make it excitingly clear that lots of you care about orphans. Whether you’re still searching for a way to make a difference or have successful projects already in motion, I hope you’ll come over and join the team.
Wow! Your website is amazing! Thank you for all the awesome resources as well! Those will come in handy. My family tried twice through two different adoption organizations in our state to adopt, but the farthest we ever got was respite care of one kid. Both organizations thought our family was too big to adopt kids and only wanted foster families. We were all sad it didn’t work out, but I am hoping that maybe it was just supposed to be a learning experience. So this article was extremely helpful in pointing out ways we can help orphans, both national and international. Thank you so much again!
Thanks, Carolyn! That’s sad that your efforts to adopt didn’t work out. It’s so frustrating when organizations discriminate against large families. I hope you’re able to make use of lots of the ideas!
I love your website, Leah! I will tell my friends! We were trying to figure out ways we could help orphans and this helped a lot! thanks!
Thanks for the article Leah! The website looks great. This is an issue I’ve thought about a fair bit and its great to see this caring response to it. You’re probably far more widely read on all the issues than me, but a concern I always have when it comes to caring for orphans is the potential for families to be separated and kids institutionalized when it can be avoided (I realize unfortunately at times there’s not another option). I have friends connected to a Christian orphanage in Indonesia. The kids are certainly looked after with love, but I was disturbed to hear the majority still have at least one parent alive, and are put in the orphanage for better life and opportunities. Perhaps the need for places like this and for international adoption would gradually decrease if communities were better developed. Orphans aren’t always orphans. I have read of a case where an Ethiopian girl with a father was trafficked for the American adoption market- hopefully this is not widespread.(you can read it http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/16/opinion/international-adoption-tarikuwa-lemma-stolen-children/ ). There are a number of organisations that help mothers support themselves so they can support their kids- this is an interesting case study ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUQ6m69dgA ). Again, thanks for all your efforts. I just think this aspect of the issue needs to be discussed at the same time.
This is amazing! I am not only an avid photographer who would love to do photographs for orphanages, but I am also a violin teacher, and im really excited to discover the possibility of teaching at an orphanage free of charge! I’ll have to find a way to raise money for the violins, but I think this is an awesome cause, and you have a really great website, very inspiring, thanks! 🙂
Thank you, Elisabeth! If you ever want to brainstorm a way for your specific group to help orphans, feel free to use the contact me form on TIO. I’ve done it with a few people already and it’s awesome.
OK!
Hi Lindsey! Sorry I never replied to this. I tried to but I must have done something wrong. Anyway, I wanted to give you the links to a couple things that seem to line up with your interests.
http://www.redthreadsessions.com/details is a group I just became aware of that offers photography to families who just adopted.
http://www.heartgalleryofamerica.org/Support_Heart_Gallery/Volunteer.html looks for volunteers to take pictures of children waiting to be adopted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJxxdQox7n0 This is a group that makes musical instruments out of garbage. Seriously. It’s an amazing video. I’m sure it would be of interest to you if you teach violin.
Hope these help!
~Leah
This sounds really cool, I’m excited to go check it out!! I’m so inspired by other teens who “do hard things” and love seeing how God is helping people in this way!