The well-being of children, especially those who have been exploited, orphaned, or homeless is our priority. We strive never to forget that children are precious in the eyes of God, and entrusted to us to for care and nurture. Yet sadly, many children live in extreme hardship with little food to eat, no access to health services, clean water or even a roof over their heads.

• Every year, nearly 11 million children die from preventable causes before reaching their fifth birthday. Millions more survive only to face diminished futures, unable to develop to their full potential.
• 150 million children in developing countries are malnourished. Malnourished children have lowered resistance to infection; they are more likely to die from common childhood ailments like respiratory infections.
• For those who survive, frequent illness saps their nutritional status, locking them into a vicious cycle of recurring sickness and faltering growth.
• Almost a third of the children in developing countries have no access to safe water.
• Drinking contaminated water is the major cause of diarrhea with about 4 billion cases per year causing 2.2 million deaths, mostly among children under five.
• One in five of all children in developing countries are not able to go to school. Illiteracy and poverty go hand in hand.

Change a life through a current children’s initiative in severely impoverished areas:

• SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA – AIDS/HIV has hit the children of Southern Africa hard. Many have been orphaned and many orphans are HIV positive.Southern Africa remains the global epicenter of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. About 1 in 5 adults are infected and there are almost 1000 AIDS deaths daily. More than 1,400,000 children are orphans due to AIDS in South Africa alone. Traditional orphan support systems are overwhelmed. Hundreds of thousands of orphans have nowhere to turn for help. They have to fend for themselves and younger siblings foraging for fuel for fires and herbs and insects to eat.
  
  It would be difficult to overstate the suffering HIV has caused to Sub-Saharan Africans. GMF staff, Rev. Hennie Venter and his wife Rina, oversee a group of Baptist pastors in Southern Africa whose church members take the younger orphans into their homes and raise them along with their own families. These families are very poor themselves and often they have only one meagre meal a day. You can partner with these families who are willing to share what they have and love these orphans as there own. Being in a Christian home is vital for young children during the formative years. Nothing can replace their parents, but the love of Christ extended by the kindness and compassion of believers in the USA can help bring healing, sustenance, and opportunity for an eternity of joy in Jesus Christ.
  
  

• HONDURAS – Extreme poverty, unemployment, hunger, and disease have left their mark on Honduras. You can partner with us to provide Christ-centered assistance to poverty-stricken children in Choluteca, Honduras, through the Mount Carmel Baptist Mission. Founded by Fred and Mary Hurd in 1997, the mission now has three churches, two feeding kitchens for children, a day care center, a clinic, and a child sponsorship program.
  
  The Mount Carmel Baptist Mission operates in the San Jorge barrio on the outskirts of Choluteca. It’s a place that experiences extreme heat or humidity year-round. The temperature typically exceeds 90 degrees in January. But, nobody in San Jorge has the luxury of air conditioning. This is a community where the 21st Century is utterly non-existent. San Jorge is a slum of cardboard shanties and mud huts. People here have no electricity, no running water, and precious little food.
  
  You can provide significant help by sponsoring a child. Sponsorship provides a child’s uniform and other supplies required to attend school. If not for these sponsorships, these boys and girls could not afford school. And since neither the government nor their families would make them go, they would simply stay home, growing up to perpetuate the generational cycle of poverty.
  
  

• INDIA – The Indian subcontinent has nearly half of the world’s hungry. At GMF, we feel a special urgency to help children in India.
  
  Cooperative Outreach of India was founded in 1993 to address the impoverished children who are the most vulnerable part of any society. Their goal is to reach them with the love and care of God.
  
  In India many are deprived of an education due to unavoidable situations around them and cultural traditions. They are behind in academic skills and can not afford uniform and supplies. You can change this for a child, making all the difference in the world for his/her future!.
  
  

• GUATEMALA – There are 35 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with 54 million children under the age of five. According to UNICEF, 60% of this region’s children are living in poverty. Nowhere is this more prevalent than Guatemala. “GMFChildren Guatemala” is seeking to raise support for children in the Agua Viva children’s home.
  
  The Agua Viva Children's Home is a non-denominational Christian home that has helped meet the physical and spiritual needs of hundreds of impoverished children down through the years. Its goal for these children is to rear and educate them in a loving Christian environment to be successful, Christian adults with the desire and ability to help their own people.
  
  

• ALBANIA - In the early 1990s, Albania abandoned its long-time Communist rule in favor of democracy. The country suffered severe economic hardships because of the onslaught (into Albania) of thousands of ethnic Albanian Muslims exiting the former Yugoslavia. As a result, Albanian children are suffering severe consequences.
  
  You partner in raising the over 360+ children in the Hope for the World Children’s Homes Shkoder and Tirana. Of the children, 25% are orphans, most of whom are babies because it is common in Albania for mothers to abandon their children if they are born out of wedlock. The remaining 75% come from varying backgrounds. Some children were abandoned due to divorce. In Albania, if a divorced woman remarries, her second husband can refuse to take care of the children from her first marriage. Others come from families who are living in extreme poverty and cannot afford to care for them. You can help Hope for the World Albania bring stability into the lives of these children in addition as they encourage and counsel them while caring for their physical needs.
  
  

With each children’s initiative that we support, we see our role as partner. The specifics of this partnership include:

• Providing survival resources: Our goal is to create, develop, and find funding for initiatives that provide food, clothing, medical care, and education to children who would otherwise go without.
• Providing spiritual nourishment: Our goal is to move these children toward spiritual Life as well as physical life. As we help to provide food, shelter, clothing, and medical attention to these poverty stricken children, we do so in the name of Jesus.
• Supporting existing child relief initiatives: Our goal is to provide needed resources that will help to keep existing orphanages, children’s homes, and children’s clinics open to the community.
• Helping with space allocation: Our goal is to help others construct new space or expand existing space in schools, churches, or other community facilities for the purpose of housing children’s clinics, classrooms, and play areas.
• Providing community-wide education and involvement on issues that would benefit the entire family and community: Our plan includes supporting initiatives that work with children, their parents, and the communities in which they live .