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Messages - orphandefender

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Archived Proposals / Re: Legal Formation of The BiblePay Foundation
« on: July 30, 2018, 12:11:27 PM »
I'm so excited to see this happen, especially if it is incorporated in my home state of Texas. Praying for a smooth incorporation for BBP. This is an awesome step in the development of the project.

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Archived Proposals / BLOOM Sustainable Farm to Feed Orphans - Uganda
« on: July 27, 2018, 04:45:24 PM »
Hello again all,

Thanks again for the hosting scholarships before- have you seen my impact report in the general discussion section https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=218.0? The orphans you sponsored are doing great here in American on their summer trip!)

Today my proposal is for our newest project - a sustainable farm in Uganda. It is modeled on the "Farming God's Way" method, which has been very successful for African communities. We know this will work well in Uganda, because a little over a year ago, we purchased farmland in Sierra Leone and implemented this method successfully- the land is already growing corn and other vegetables that will help feed the children in the community we serve in Makulon later this year. (Bible Pay currently sponsors 4 orphans in this community, by the way! And we hope once this farm is up and running fully, we will no longer need food sponsorship for those kids).

We now would like to support a long-time friend and partner in Mukono, Uganda, at the Dove Primary School. Pastor Daniel runs this school which serves 240+ children, many of whom are orphans in the surrounding communities. Pastor Daniel Kaggwa is also a regional director of Christian Alliance for Orphans, Africa and Uganda Without Orphans. Because his school has so many kids, we do not have the capacity to set up a sponsorship program there for each child. We also believe the sustainable methods of sponsorship are best, which is why we want to help them launch a sustainable farm to feed the children there, as well as teach the community how to farm using this drought-resistant method. This keeps the community invested in caring for themselves and their own children, as well as re-integrating orphans into extended and foster families where possible once the entire community can sustain themselves through farming (including the school).

I'm copying much of the info about the project below, but please feel free to read about it on our website at http://www.bloomworldwide.org/sustainable-farming-uganda-raffle/

Note: We are currently raising money to purchase this farmland through a raffle (the prize has already been donated), as well as asking for individual donations. We are asking BiblePay to help us as a partner and donor to raise a portion -not to fully fund- this project.

As of now, we have already raised $6,500, and we need $20,000 total for a specific plot of land near the school. Since it is near Kampala, the capital, land is very expensive. We are due to make a deposit of $10,000 by next week to hold the land for final purchase. If BiblePay would be willing to help us get to this deposit goal of $10,000 by donating $1,500 so that we can hold the land for purchase once the project is fully funded, we would be so grateful. We will continue to fundraise to fill the remaining gap, and possibly submit another proposal next month if there is more charity budget available.

In sum, your donation would be $1,500 (718,973 BBP) of a $20,000 land purchase for the farm. I will certainly keep you posted on the farm's development over the next year once the land is purchased.

Also note, once the farmland is purchased, we will bring in a trainer (from Africa) to teach the community how to manage the farm, as well as hire a full time head farmer, just like we did in Sierra Leone. A separate project budget will include these costs as well as the cost of seeds to start the farm. Our partners in Uganda are responsible for raising at least 25% of the cost of the project locally as well. The community fully builds and sustains the farm with local materials once it is launched. 

Please let me know if you have any questions. We appreciate your support as a partner, as always. <3

Sincerely,
April Wareham
Executive Director, BLOOM

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BLOOM’s hosting programs invite orphaned children from other countries to come to America for 4 to 5 weeks. During this time, the child experiences the love of Christ through a Christian family who exemplifies Him while living together in their home.

In addition, through family time together, children quickly develop a basic understanding and use of the English language. In turn, they develop a higher self-esteem and a feeling of accomplishment in many ways! The child also witnesses healthy relationships between parents and their children, which may be the first time ever, that this has occurred in their life!

These basic skills provide tremendous emotional improvements that help the child as they grow up in their homeland, or possibly later, if a child is offered adoption.

BiblePay recently sponsored 5 children to come to the US on our programs, and below I'd like to share a few of their stories while here. These are quotes from their host families, along with photos of the children. Please note that Poland requires us to block the children's faces on public internet postings due to their privacy laws for child protection. Also note that others in these photos are host families and their kids, so please don't share these photos beyond BBP audiences.

Here are the children who BiblePay has made a direct impact on their lives, including the making of these memories!

Arek (12): Photo of him with host mom on couch
"Yesterday Arek came and sat down with me and said he needed to talk with me. He told me his “story” he told me of his bio parents, he told me stories of things no child should ever have to go through. In his 11 almost 12 years of life he has seen so much of the bad that is in this world.
He is tearing down emotional walls, something we thought he wasn’t capable of. It’s taken a year for him to feel like he can trust us.
Please pray hard for him he is learning trust and love of a family. He is such an amazing boy and deserves so much love."
-Adams Family


Paulina (17): Photo of her learning to play Piano
"We had a conversation one night and she was asking spiritual questions and about our church, and firstly we laughed a ton just trying to figure out what each other were saying, and also it was really interesting because apparently the catholic church in poland is way more charismatic than catholic churches that we have heard of. We couldn't believe the things she said they experience at church. Her faith seems very important to her."
-Ralston Family


Kuba and Jakub (brothers - 11 and 13): Photo of them learning to use a water balloon slingshot
"They helped us build a wheelchair ramp for our parents (their host grandparents) since my husband's father cannot walk."
"Seeing fireworks for the first time, they saw a red and white one, and yelled "it's poland!"
-Graves Family


Maja (17): Photo of her teaching the younger kids at Bible Study
"We had Vacation Bible School this week, and Maja led Bible Time with one of the classes one night. She did a great job! We are so proud of her!"
-Booker family


Thank you again BiblePay for making this happen for these kids and families!

Sincerely,
April
Executive Director, BLOOM

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Archived Proposals / Re: Togo - Mixed Bag - May
« on: May 24, 2018, 10:15:46 PM »
Wow, you've been busy! Thank you for all your hard work on BBP Togo!

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Apparently there is a glitch in being able to vote for the proposal. Please email Rob if you still have issues voting!

21
I think it's important to note that there are several definitions of orphans in the orphan care world.

“Double orphan” or “True orphan” – both parents are deceased
“Single orphan” – one parent is deceased, other is not around or unable to care for child.
“Social orphan” – abandoned or neglected by family and removed from the home, usually due to: Drug/alcohol use, Abuse/neglect, Financial problems/poverty.   

Many organizations aim to serve social and single orphans, who may have a living parent who cannot care for them. Perhaps Compassion's underprivileged kids fit into these categories. The children remain vulnerable either way.

Congrats on the huge leap in advance funding for Compassion, Rob! This is amazing progress.

22
Thank you guys! Proposal added to the pool!

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Archived Proposals / BLOOM Orphan Sponsorships - Recurring Expenses
« on: May 21, 2018, 11:14:05 AM »
Hello all,

Thank you for all your support thus far! We have been sending 10 kids to school (with uniforms, tuition, shelter, food) in Uganda and 3 in Sierra Leone with our first round of funding for 3 months of sponsorship. We'd like to continue sending these kids to school and providing their food/shelter for the next 3 months. This is a follow up proposal to my first one where these children were funded.

Here is a link to their photos/thank you notes which is updated whenever we get messages and updates from Uganda and Sierra Leone.

https://biblepaysponsorkids.tumblr.com/post/172037016929/aminata-mohamed-and-foday-are-so-thankful-for

These are the kids that I'm requesting 3 more months of sponsorship for:

Rania- Uganda - 5 yrs old
Hakim- Uganda- 9 yrs old
Favor- Uganda- 8 yrs old
Praise- Uganda - 7 yrs old
Isaac- Uganda- 4 yrs old
Laira- Uganda - 10 yrs old
Musigale- Uganda - 10 yrs old
Sharon- Uganda - 10 yrs old
Sylvia- Uganda- 12 yrs old
Edrine- Uganda - 13 yrs old
Aminata D- Sierra Leone
Foday K- Sierra Leone
Mohammed- Sierra Leone
+1 in Sierra Leone (TBD)

In addition, I've included a thank you video to all of YOU at Bible Pay from our partner in Uganda, Emmanuel, who runs the Side By Side Christian boarding school in Rakai. I was able to visit him during an international orphan care conference in Dallas a couple weeks ago.

https://youtu.be/7z3S_y44EAA

Here's a reminder as to the programs these children are part of:

A. Our Side by Side Ministries Program rescues children from abusive situations in the Rakai, Uganda area where they are at risk of being beaten, raped, and neglected by unofficial "foster" families and other negligent guardians. Our team rescues the child, then transfers them to a Christian boarding school while looking for extended family reunification opportunities or a Christian foster family. The cost to sponsor a child for boarding school is $88 per month and it includes all their private school fees, room and board, uniforms, food, medical care, hair cuts, etc.

I would like to request 733,000 BBP ($2640) to cover those 10 children for 3 more months of this year.

B. Our Sierra Leone Sponsorship program provides 3 healthy meals per day for the children, including while they are at school, every day each month for $36/mo. These children attend a school at the orphanage, so there are no extra boarding/schooling costs for them. These are children orphaned from poverty and the remnants of the Ebola outbreak that happened there a few years ago.

I am requesting 120,000 BBP ($432) to feed 4 children 3 meals daily for 3 months (and send them to school) - I would like to add one more child to the sponsorship in Sierra Leone so that there are 4 children sponsored for the next 3 months instead of 3.

You can read more about our sponsorship programs here
http://www.bloomworldwide.org/orphanchild-sponsorship/

In sum, I'm requesting:
733,000 BBP ($2640) to cover 10 children in emergency status for 3 months in Rakai, Uganda
120,000 BBP ($432) to feed 4 children at the Sierra Leone orphanage for 3 months
Total Request: 853,000 BBP

Please let me know if there are any questions or concerns and thank you again for the support. :)

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Archived Proposals / Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« 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.

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Archived Proposals / Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« 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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Archived Proposals / Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« 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

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

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Archived Proposals / Re: BLOOM Orphan Hosting "Scholarships"
« 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! :)

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Archived Proposals / 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


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Archived Proposals / Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« on: February 19, 2018, 09:00:26 AM »
Hi Rob (and everyone)- I'm finally back from Poland and caught up on everything. Wow, just saw the proposal was funded- THANK YOU!!! I have reached out to Jennifer, and asked her to have the urls set up by March 1st. Is that what you mean by placeholders? At that time I will send you what she created (or maybe I'll send you a couple before that so you can tell me if it's what you need). We should have at least short bios on all the kids already, so I hope to have this all set up for you sooner than end of March. What might take longer is selling at the price we want on southxchange (currently setting sell limits now). I may put some on c-cex to help move it along if needed though. It's good to know we have a bit more time.

I appreciate y'alls consideration and "yes" votes for this proposal. I'm so excited to see how we can work together to change these children's lives. I'm encouraged by this partnership already!

I'll get in touch with Tom to start discussing website verbiage. :)

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