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BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« on: April 04, 2018, 11:09:10 AM »
Hi all,

As some of you may know, one of our main programs is orphan hosting. It's an amazing program where we bring kids from Poland (and hopefully Burundi this summer) to the U.S. for a "reverse mission trip" where American families host the orphans in their homes, and the kids learn English, experience the love of Christ through a Christian family that exemplifies Him, and they get dental and eye exams, etc.

The kids significantly increase their self esteem through this program, thereby decreasing their chances of going into prostitution, becoming criminals, or committing suicide (all very common among orphans who age out of the system in Eastern Europe). 15% of orphans will commit suicide before their 18th birthday, 60% of orphan girls will become prostitutes and 50% of orphan boys will become criminals if no one intervenes in their lives to show them that they can have a future. Hosting mentorship, plus sharing the love of Jesus gives these kids the hope they need for a better future.  Also, orphan hosting significantly increases a child's chances of getting adopted (by about 50-70% depending on the country's adoption rules).

I would like to ask if Bible Pay would sponsor a few "hosting scholarships" for Polish orphans to help offset their airfare to come here on the hosting program. My research shows that kids who have scholarships are 75% more likely to be hosted.

Five one-time scholarships at between $500-1250 each would help us place 7-9 more kids this summer, including hard-to-place sibling groups! If that is too much to ask, we can certainly reduce this number. To give you perspective, I have 45 Polish kids to place right now, but no scholarships from donors yet, so you'd be really making an impact. I have only placed 5 so far with families, so there will be many heartbroken kids if we cannot boost this number thanks to scholarships.

The benefits of sponsoring a scholarship are that I will directly send updates on how the child is doing in their host family while here in the U.S., including pictures, and you only have to fund it ONCE instead of worrying about ongoing monthly sponsorship funding. And it's exciting to know you literally brought a child out of their orphanage, possibly for the first time in their lives, to get to know the love of Jesus and love of a family, also for the first time ever. Of course, I would give another shout out to BBP as the sponsor on Facebook and in our next newsletter.

The only downside is there would be no letter writing involved, since we don't tell the kids that someone sponsored them (other than their host family).

Here is a breakdown of the hosting costs per child and how significant BBP's impact would be:
Total hosting cost: $2995
International Airfare: $1000-1200 (BBP contribution 50%)
Domestic US Airfare: $250-500
Food for child in airport/during in-country transport: $20
Medical Insurance: $100
Chaperone travel fees (approx 1 chap for 10-15 kids): $200
Social worker home visit: $150
Child's visa: $160
Child's passport: $100
In-country travel for child to get to airport from orphanage and to embassy (2 trips): $60-80
BLOOM in-country coordinator fee: $100
In-country paperwork chase for child's travel docs/coordinator transport: $50-60
Program shirt/lanyard/ID card: $20
Interview trip/BLOOM US coordination fees: $330
Airline Escorts: $50
Emergency budget: $40-120 (depending on above costs being higher or lower than expected)

In sum, I'd like to ask if BBP would sponsor the following (non-recurring):
Three $500 scholarships for individual kids=$1500/750,000BBP
Two $1250 scholarships for sibling groups of 2 or 3=$2500/1,250,000BBP
Total: $4000/2,000,000 BBP


If this is too much for the budget right now, I will revise and reduce as needed, but, this would give between 7 and 9 kids a chance at knowing Jesus this summer as is.

Thank you for the consideration and let me know if you have any questions!

April Wareham
BLOOM Executive Director



  • jaapgvk
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Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2018, 03:13:50 PM »
I'm just going to look at the economics for the moment.

CameroonONE is going to select 14 orphans that we're going to sponsor for a year. I wanted to collect 4000 dollars in total for that, and I requested 1M BBP in the last superblock. Between the request and the selling, the value went down and we got 1800+ dollars in the end. So I was planning on making other proposals in the next months to get to the full 4000 dollars eventually. So maybe ask 500.000 BBP each month until we get to the 4000 dollars.

We want to pay ahead for at least half a year for Compassion before sponsoring more orphans there, so a lot of BBP has to go there.

Your previous proposal (for the sponsorship of 13 children) was for three months if I'm correct, right? So next month you'll have another proposal for recurring costs?

Apart from the economics, I think this is a noble goal, and just because these scholarships are expensive, that shouldn't mean we shouldn't consider them. I was surprised reading about the statistics on suicide/prostitution/criminality, and would like to live in a world where these things don't happen to those in a vulnerable position/time in life.

I don't know if it's too much. I do think it quite a lot considering we haven't yet payed ahead the six months for compassion.


  • togoshigekata
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Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2018, 04:12:03 PM »
You have my vote!

Next proposal superblock has 15,375,000 BBP,
50% goes to charity (7,687,500 BBP), so assuming $0.0022 per BBP, thats about ~$17,000 for charity

I assume for Compassion at least half of that will be requested, ($8,500+)
and sounds like CameroonONE still needs a little bit ($2,200)

Given that there arent any other charities creating proposals at the moment, that still leaves $6,000 open, so I think we are totally fine.
But yeah there is risk that value of coins could go down (or they could go up!)


Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2018, 12:21:00 PM »
Thank you Togo for clarifying what's available in the budget and for your support! Hopefully we can make this work without compromising our commitments to Compassion or others such as Cameroon One.

Jaap- Thanks for your thoughts as well. I'm excited that CameroonOne is going to have a group of kids sponsored! That's great news and congrats!

Regarding your question about the previous sponsorship, for BLOOM kids, yes, I planned to submit the next proposal for the next 3 months in May, which is why I thought this month might be a good time to see if any hosting scholarships might work out without overlapping with next month's proposal for the continuation of the 13 BLOOM orphan sponsorships.

Of course, again, if there isn't enough in the budget for this at the moment without compromising prior commitments, I can reduce. Just let me know if anyone sees a problem.

Also, Thomas replied on the forum, and I wanted to post my reply to him here, as he asked some great questions. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.new#new

The Polish orphans will be with the Christian host families for 5 weeks this summer. The transformation you see in them from week 1 to week 5, and in their mentorship after they leave via email/skype/facebook after that is so impactful. When my family hosted an orphan during Christmas in 2016-2017, and we talked about Jesus and the Bible just in casual conversation, she would say "I do not believe in these things." We said, "ok, no problem, we do believe and it makes us happy that Jesus loves us. We want to honor him in our home. But if you ever want to talk about it, just let us know." Then a week or two later, Christmas rolled around, and we gave her her first Bible in Polish (thank you ebay). She opened it, CRIED, and said "wow, no one has ever given me scriptures before. I want to learn more." And by the end of the 4 weeks, she went to church with us and smiled the whole time. The program truly plants seeds and gives families a chance to live God's Word by example, which is the most powerful thing one can do.

(Thomas asked for photos). I cannot show the Polish kids' faces publicly, due to Poland's strict governmental rules against posting their pictures online without them being password protected. We do have a site for that, but it is reserved for families who fill out an application with us so we can screen them for eligibility. If you guys want to see photos (with the kids' faces covered for privacy) and hear brief anecdotes about the kids who are eligible for the program, you can follow us on facebook at www.facebook.com/beloveorphanoutreach . During the program, I often post kids with their host families (Polish kids' faces covered) to share stories about their experiences. I emailed Thomas a couple pictures of Ukrainian kids we have served in the past with their host families though. Ukraine doesn't have rules against it. I can't figure out how to insert an image on here, as it just says and I don't know what goes in between there to add a pic as these are not hosted online anywhere. You are welcome to reply and post the pics I email you on this feed.

If anyone would like to read more about the hosting program, you can visit www.bloomworldwide.org/hosting . Thank you and please feel free to ask any other questions! :)


Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #4 on: April 08, 2018, 12:33:00 PM »
Looks like some of the attachments work! Let's try more!


Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2018, 12:35:55 PM »
Last two! This big family just brought 3 of those kids home from Poland through an adoption after hosting them on our program, so I'm allowed to post those kids' faces now. I believe all 3 kids have special needs. <3


  • jaapgvk
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Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2018, 06:28:07 AM »
Thank you for the story and photo's April! Really heartwarming to read that those three kids got adopted through BLOOM's program.

I hope this proposal get's passed with the currently requested BBP.

We'll then have 2M for your proposal, 0.5M for CameroonONE, and the rest (about 5M?) for Compassion. And if we spend any leftovers in the budget on Compassion also, then we'll probably got everything covered for this round and also have budget to pay some premiums for Compassion.


P.s. The Facebook link didn't work for me :(


Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2018, 02:26:18 PM »
Sounds good, thanks Jaap! Sorry the facebook link didn't work for you. Not sure why. I tried again and it worked. You could also go to facebook and just search our full name, and our page should come up. :)


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Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2018, 02:56:39 PM »
Sounds good, thanks Jaap! Sorry the facebook link didn't work for you. Not sure why. I tried again and it worked. You could also go to facebook and just search our full name, and our page should come up. :)

Also tried searching and it also didn't come up. I then set my VPN to the U.S. and the link worked, so it seems someone can only find you guys from the U.S.?

I tried different countries from all over the world, and the link only worked when I set my VPN to the U.S.


Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2018, 11:27:49 AM »
Wow that's good to know! I had no idea about the only searchable in the U.S. thing.