Tailor-Made

Some things are just fragile.

Butterflies are fragile. Most things made of glass are fragile. And sometimes even countries are fragile.

Liberia is one of those fragile countries. And indeed, it has been fragile since its inception.

From wars and coups to export sanctions due to governmental corruption, it has never been able to gain the traction it needed to reach even a modicum of its potential.

Sadly, Liberia’s greatest asset and resource is the one that has suffered the most. Its children.

The future of this country literally depends on them, and yet due to the instability that has encompassed their history until very recently, the children, their future, have suffered greatly.

There are a lot of orphans among the 5.5 million people that call this country home. Both true and social orphans who have at least one parent but still have no one caring for them.

They are largely without hope in a desert of despair.

But in that desert, there is an oasis. An oasis filled with the love, hope and opportunity to become what God intended them to be. And within that same oasis, and others like it, lies the hope for the very future of this country that has suffered as one of the most fragile and poor nations on earth for a very long time.

That oasis is a place called Safe Home. And it is far more than just a children’s home. Not only does it provide a loving, safe environment for them, but it also has a school to provide them with their primary educational needs.

And there is more. We also have a medical clinic on site that provides care for the children as well as the surrounding community.

But that is still not all.

I have always believed that success is not a gratifying measurement of the easy things accomplished in life. It is the hard things. The seemingly impossible things. And that is why we have chosen to care for orphans and widows. They truly are the least of these.

When you consider just how broken they are before they receive the love and care they deserve, it is almost difficult to imagine that the broken pieces of their little lives could be put back together to some semblance of what they should be.

But they can. And even more as the very nature of their sad young lives before intervention instills in them the potential to become some of the most empathetic, compassionate and caring people on earth. They just need the right kind of love.

We also know that not all of them will be able to overcome the trauma they have experienced. But the past twenty-five years of doing this good work has taught us that a large percentage of them will not just survive, but thrive and become loving, caring, educated followers of Christ that give back to their communities and the world as a whole. Not just by what they become, but by not becoming what they would have if we didn’t intervene in their broken little lives.

Over the last twenty-five years, our programs have not just grown in scale, but equally important, in scope as your financial gifts have allowed us to do. That increase in scope has made all the difference in the world to the children we care for.

Nothing is more important in our programs than the Spiritual Education component. Giving them God’s Word and teaching them about Jesus and the salvation that only He can provide is the linchpin that makes it all work. Knowing that God is the source of the love and care they receive bonds them to God and Jesus in a way that is difficult to describe but is very eloquently expressed by them in their letters.

Another critical element that has become a large part of our increase in the scope of our programs is the educational component. From providing them with their primary education that everyone needs, to secondary education that truly provides them with what is necessary to break the cycle of poverty that led to them becoming orphans in the first place.

One such place of higher learning, a project of Safe Home, is the David Board Memorial Vocational College, named in honor of our late CEO and Co-Founder. He was a man who believed in the value of education and was driven to see the children in our care truly have a chance at life.

Meet Aquilla T. Sackie, or T-Girl as she is known by friends. She is the young lady in the picture, holding the beautiful dress she has made.

T-Girl is a long-time resident at Safe Home. Her father died when she was just 1 year old. Her mother then left her with her grandmother and older sister who has since also vanished from her life. It wasn’t long before the grandmother could no longer provide for her, and so she sought out and found Safe Home so that T-Girl could survive.

She is now 15 years old, having spent 11 years of her young life experiencing the love, care and opportunity that Safe Home has provided her. She loves God and Jesus and is thankful every day for all that she has.

Now T-Girl has been given her primary education, but simply didn’t have the grades to qualify for college, and certainly that is the reality for many young adults throughout the world, not just in Liberia. But that doesn’t mean she still can’t break the cycle. That doesn’t mean she still cannot become an important part of her community, able to care for herself and contribute to her own future family.

And that is because T-Girl is among the first class to attend the David Board Memorial Vocational college (DBMVC). She, along with a couple dozen other young adults, have begun the second part of their educational journey. And with that, an incredible opportunity to not just provide for themselves, but to provide skilled labor services that are in very short supply in this impoverished nation. They will become plumbers, electricians, communication specialists, farmers, and as in T-Girl’s case, seamstresses able to create clothing from scratch as well as provide repairs.

Her dream is to have her own shop, making cultural clothing and selling it at an affordable price within her own community. I have no doubt that she will. Her classmates will provide services throughout the area and beyond with skills that have become a scarce commodity. They are the most precious resource this country has. They are the future.

And just like the little dress T-Girl holds in her hand will be tailor-made for some young girl, so too are places like DBMVC tailor-made for the hope that can be for this fragile country. And so it remains our intention to provide every child in our care with everything they need to become everything God intended them to be, in His name and to His Glory. I believe we were all tailor-made for this mission.