Ground Breaking-Precious Legacies

My father (our late CEO, David Board) was never much of one to simply give a hand-out… at least not unless it resulted in a hand-up. That was pretty much his unspoken, but obvious rule.

Don’t get me wrong. He was capable of great compassion. That was always the initial catalyst. He was without a doubt one of the most giving people I have ever met in my life. It’s just that he didn’t believe in simply handing someone money or things without expectations that it would make a permanent change; as opposed to a temporary change that would likely require more benevolence in the future and a cyclic reoccurrence. That was his choice. The way he chose to make a difference in people’s lives.

Over the years, growing up, I watched him do the same thing over and over again. I watched him hire people in our businesses when we didn’t really need employees at the time. We simply had to find more business to justify it financially after the fact.

He even started businesses simply to give people jobs during a time when there were few to be had. People who were ill. People who were just down on their luck.

He also invested in other people’s businesses when they couldn’t obtain the financial resources necessary to be successful in their start-ups. He loaned money so family members could buy homes; helping them remodel them and raise the value of the property so they could then get the final mortgage themselves and then pay him back.

Without a doubt, he followed the “teach a man to fish” principle… believing that constructive investment in others lives was much better than a one-time gift. A hand-up, not just a hand-out. It’s therefore no surprise that he ended up becoming one of the co-founders of Orphan’s Lifeline International. It’s clear that he had been practicing the principles of helping others in careful and pragmatic ways for a very long time.

From the beginning, it was our goal to develop programs that were just that… a hand-up and not a hand-out. And as the years have passed, we have continually expanded, not just the scale, but the scope of our programs as finances and opportunities have allowed us to do so.

So, it is a fitting and well-deserved tribute to him, and his life, that we announce the beginning phase of the construction of the David Board Vocational Training Center in Liberia. This center will be overseen by John Travis, the Director at Safe Home, also funded by Orphan’s Lifeline.

This center will become a critical educational offering for young orphan adults from Safe Home and the area in general whose lives did not allow them regular attendance at schools, and also for those who simply didn’t perform well enough to qualify for college. The Training Center will offer certification courses in Agriculture, Auto Mechanics, Carpentry, Sewing and Home arts.

With these skills a living wage is very likely. This translates into the ability for them to care for their own family while also providing a valuable service to a community where such skills are in short supply. This, much like college, is one of the key elements required to break the cycle that creates orphans in the first place.

Conversely, without college… without vocational skills such as will be taught at this facility, the odds are very high that the cycle of poverty that creates orphans will continue. The needless suffering will continue. The hunger, crime and hopelessness will continue and be passed down to their future children and so on.

We live in a country where there are many resources for those who suffer from the effects of poverty and a poor education. We also live in a country where there are many opportunities to earn a living wage even without a higher education. Unfortunately, that is simply not true in many developing nations. The alternatives for those with a poor education are few and generally are hard-labor related. Hard labor jobs in these nations do not provide a living wage. Not even close. It is generally less than two dollars per day.

Now it might seem strange, but the statistics back this next fact up. That is that individuals in poverty don’t just have their children earlier in life, they also have more children. Usually twice as many children. That’s twice as many children living in heart-breaking conditions. Twice as many children going to bed hungry on a dirt floor; most often without even the comfort of a simple blanket. That is why it is so critical that we be sure that the help we give them is not a hand-out, but a hand up. It is the only way that we can be relatively certain that we are effecting lasting change.

God gave us all a mind, a body and a soul. Each has its own requirements to be healthy and yet each is integrally connected with the other. Together, if properly fed and nurtured, they are what makes us whole persons. When one of those are neglected, the sad truth is that the whole being is broken.

As I have said many times over the years, the good we do for the orphan children of the world is exponential and generational in nature. When we help an orphan child become a whole and successful adult, they pass the attributes that made them successful on to their own children. They give them a comfortable home and feed them good nutrition. The send them to school. They teach them about Jesus and the steps to salvation. They save them from repeating the same life of suffering and hopelessness they knew as a child.

This is critical because just as the good is exponential and generational, so is the bad. The orphan children of the world who don’t have the help they need, that even survive, will do so through means that are not acceptable or productive. Those means include begging on the streets and crime. These learned behaviors of survival will be passed on to their own children, and as mentioned before they will have twice as many children and they will have them 6 to 8 years earlier. The prevalence of disease and illness will be much higher as well.

As Christians we have a huge opportunity to make our world a better place to God’s glory. We have a huge opportunity to use Jesus’ example of love and teaching in our own actions. We have an opportunity to make a life-changing impact in the lives of the most innocent who suffer the most.

The David Board Vocational Training Center will become a new tool in our ever-growing toolbox to combat the suffering of innocent children. There, we will mold the minds of young adults and give them skills that will help them truly have a chance when they go out into the world on their own. They can do so without the fear and uncertainty that is so inherent in the lives of those who don’t receive such help as young adults living in poverty. They will have confidence. They will have hope.

We are so thankful to each and every one of you whose prayers and gifts allow us to continue to grow in scope and scale to create more precious, living legacies in God’s name and to His Glory.

We will be breaking ground soon for the construction of the David Board Vocational Training Center. He would be so honored for such a place to bear his name and for the many young adults whose lives it will change. It is truly a ground-breaking addition to their community and to their young lives.