The Teachers’ Association to Cater to Children is a community based organization interested in providing for orphaned children as well as providing an education for the children of families who lack funds for fee-based schools. Essentially this is the group of people who cannot pay and they’ve bound together to provide that education in a school where the parents and unemployed adults work together. Really, the model is a wonderful one. They’re very dedicated to their cause. Last summer I had the opportunity to work through the Entrepreneurship curriculum with this group of 20 members and as a result they netted some very tangible results including redefining their vision and mission more succinctly and a list of goals and objectives to push them toward growth.
First they changed their name from The Teachers Association to Cater to Children (they are not a group of teachers) to Shared Hope for Orphans, which reflects their community and their purpose more succinctly. I’ve written much in previous blog posts about this very passionate organization and my passion for them continues to grow as I watch them actually taking the steps we outlined together in our early sessions. They’ve designed their planned home, gotten quotes for the cost to build, and we just spent another day together learning to write a proposal requesting funds to support the project.
What I love love love about this group is that their leader is respected by the whole group and takes a very serious approach to achieving the goals of the organization. Often people attend courses, workshops, or seminars and listen to the lecturer but fail to actually apply what they’ve learned. This phenomenon seems just as true in East Africa as in America. But Shared Hope for Orphans is motivated to help their community and they do it by following through on the lessons learned in various teachings we’ve done together.