Send us Fan Mail

Certified Ethical!

Mission Excellence and Standards for Global Mission Deployment

Last year we did an episode with Ellie Oswald from Faith to Action focused on the importance of ethical missions in regard to the safety and protection of children. In that episode, we talked broadly about ethical approaches to short-term mission trips, and introduced the 7 standards of excellence in mission. On today’s episode, we will go through in more detail these 7 steps and discuss why they are important for churches, charities, and other organizations to consider when doing volunteer mission work. 

With me today is Tory Ruark from Mission Excellence. Tory is the COO of MissionWorks and Director of MissionExcellence (formerly SOE). He’s been leading mission trips since 2001 and been in his current role since 2016. Tory has served in Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Italy and mobilized teams to many other countries. Over the years, he has worked with churches from all over the United States, spearheaded organizational partnerships, and served on the pastoral staff of his church. Welcome Tory!

MissionWorks General Website: https://missionworks.global/

MissionExcellence Website: https://missionexcellence.global/

7 Standards: https://missionexcellence.global/7-standards/

Giving Wisely Book: https://amzn.to/3KzLUCT

Culture Link: https://culturelinkinc.org/

Mission Trip Quick Audit Download: https://missionexcellence.global/free-downloads/short-term-mission-quick-audit/

Become a member: https://missionexcellence.global/membership/

Standards Introducto

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

We can't fix anything if we don't know what's wrong!

Your Hosts, Yamine Vaughan and Laura Horvath talk about everyone’s FAVORITE topic - DATA!  Medical professionals understand that monitoring and evaluation is a huge and important part of our work in global health, certainly, but this optimistic voice believes that M&E is as important in the child welfare sector.  It seems that everyone in the sector is struggling with how to find ways to capture data that can really tell us whether our interventions are having a positive impact or not.  Guest Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Neville joins us to talk about the importance of M & E in the field of caring for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, and the challenges in implementing best research practices in the field.

 In 2022, the Christian Alliance for Orphans created a grant called the Research Challenge Grant. This program was an opportunity for researchers to be connected with a nonprofit doing a promising practice in caring for orphans and vulnerable children. The researcher would conduct a study on that non-profit’s program, write a paper on its outcomes, and share lessons learned. 5 organizations were selected for this first grant, and HCW was one of them. 

Sarah Elizabeth Neville, PhD, is a post doctoral research fellow at Brown University. She obtained her PhD from Boston college school of social work in 2022, where she conducted her dissertation on children reunifying with family after living in residential care institutions (orphanages) in Kenya. Sarah‘s research is on children and residential care in low- and middle-income countries, including strategies for enabling them to live in safe and nurturing families, preventing them from entering institutions, and enhancing their mental health and well-being. Sarah received her BA and MA in child development from Tufts University. 

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

This is the final episode in a series. If you have not listened to parts one and two of Pastor Rob Lough’s interview of Emmanuel Nabieu regarding his memoir My Long Journey Home, you should. Emmanuel Nabieu is the HCW Director of Mission Advancement and Partnership Development - whom we all call Nabs. 

Warning, the content of the first two episodes can be somewhat disturbing in truthfully depicting the violence that Nabs experienced as a child during the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. Although the interview took place during a single session, we elected to break it into several episodes.  Part Three is the celebratory wrap up of the topic, covering his achievement of a lifelong dream of an education, his triumphant college years, and the decisions he made to return to the orphanage where he spent a decade before being reunited with the family he thought he had lost forever.

As the Child Rescue Centre Director, he used his passion and experiences to lead the transition from institutional care to family-based care, to work toward family preservation to eliminate the trauma of separation in the lives of orphans and impoverished families, "fighting the fire, instead of the smoke," as he is fond of saying. 

Nabs continues to advocate and lead in bringing about that transition all across the continent of Africa and the globe, as part of his commitment to Helping Children Worldwide.

I think you will agree with me that Nabs has a vital message to share on the importance of family, and his work to bring this message to the global stage is worthy of attention. His voice is uniquely passionate, vulnerable and inspiring. I hope you will go to Amazon.com and order a copy.

It's really good.  

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

This episode is part two of a series. If you missed part one - you should return to the prior episode and listen to it first. 

Although the interview took place during a single session, we elected to break it into several episodes. Warning, the content in this and the prior episode can be disturbing as it truthfully depicts the violence  and brutality that Nabs experienced as a child during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Part One takes us from Nab’s early childhood through the time of his initial escape from the rebel soldiers who were hunting him. Part two takes us on his trek through the bush, his time on the streets in Bo, and his ten years in the orphanage.

Emmanuel Nabieu is the HCW Director of Mission Advancement and Partnership Development - whom we all call Nabs. 

We  asked our dear friend, Rev. Rob Lough, former Pastor at Ebenezer UMC and long time supporter of the work being done at HCW, to guest host this episode.  

This is a story about resilience and transformation. It is both Nabs’ life story and also a beautiful testimony for hope and overcoming trauma. Nabs is using his experience living in an orphanage to bring global awareness and change to child welfare institutions. He is an example that we as humans can overcome difficult circumstances and use them to create something unexpected and positive. According to Nabs, he wrote this book as a way to address and overcome his trauma. He says that digging back into the past is a hard thing to do but was a huge part of his healing process. 

Nabs was raised in a rural village in Sierra Leone. His childhood was brutally interrupted by the civil war there when he was about 8 years old. When their village was attacked, Nabs' life was shattered. He initially recalls a bucolic, though impoverished, childhood in rural Africa, where scraping adequate nourishment from their labors was the number one struggle, and he was surrounded by the love of his family and the joys of camaraderie with his boyhood friends. He describes his rural life  as he and his friends begin to explore what it means to follow your dreams, and the wisdom of his elders as they try to imbue his future with hope and resilience.

Then he shares how his early life of hope and innocence transformed almost overnight into a nightmarish existence of fear and uncertainty that overtook his entire family.  After hiding together in the bush and in holes dug for latrines at the family farm,  and nearly escaping, a unexpected ambush separates Nabs from his parents, some of whom are mu

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

This episode is part one of a series. Although the interview took place during a single session, we elected to break it into several episodes. Warning, the content can be somewhat graphic in truthfully depicting the violence that Nabs experienced as a child during the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. Part One takes us from Nab’s early childhood through the time of his initial escape from the rebel soldiers who were hunting him.

Emmanuel Nabieu is the HCW Director of Mission Advancement and Partnership Development - whom we all call Nabs. 

We  asked our dear friend, Rev. Rob Lough, former Pastor at Ebenezer UMC and long time supporter of the work being done at HCW, to guest host this episode.  

This is a story about resilience and transformation. It is both Nabs’ life story and also a beautiful testimony for hope and overcoming trauma. Nabs is using his experience living in an orphanage to bring global awareness and change to child welfare institutions. He is an example that we as humans can overcome difficult circumstances and use them to create something unexpected and positive. According to Nabs, he wrote this book as a way to address and overcome his trauma. He says that digging back into the past is a hard thing to do but was a huge part of his healing process. 

Nabs was raised in a rural village in Sierra Leone. His childhood was brutally interrupted by the civil war there when he was about 8 years old. When their village was attacked, Nabs' life was shattered. He initially recalls a bucolic, though impoverished, childhood in rural Africa, where scraping adequate nourishment from their labors was the number one struggle, and he was surrounded by the love of his family and the joys of camaraderie with his boyhood friends. He describes his rural life  as he and his friends begin to explore what it means to follow your dreams, and the wisdom of his elders as they try to imbue his future with hope and resilience.

Then he shares how his early life of hope and innocence transformed almost overnight into a nightmarish existence of fear and uncertainty that overtook his entire family.  After hiding together in the bush and in holes dug for latrines at the family farm,  and nearly escaping, a unexpected ambush separates Nabs from his parents, some of whom are murdered before his eyes. Always trying to find his way back to family, he survives without them for months in the jungle, and then on the urban streets of Bo, as the war began to draw to a close. 

Eventually, he was brought int

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Today’s episode peels back the curtain to show the considerations that are made by organizations around the world when it comes to building sustainable programs, and for those of you getting into this work, may help you understand some challenges you may face and see some gaps in program planning.

Host Yasmine Vaughan is joined by Mariama Massaquoi, a family medicine doctor based in Virginia. Mariama is double board-certified in family medicine and family medicine obstetrics with an MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She currently works full-time for the US Army. Mariama and her siblings run an organization called Tenki for Born, a org dedicated to alleviating maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. Tenki began about 2  years ago and has been doing health system strengthening work in Bo, including training midwives, funding clinic improvements, and other activities.

Mariama started on this journey to help Sierra Leone from her passion to empower others and transform lives. She and her sister are co-founders of Tenki and are part of the board.

 Welcome Mariama!


Important links:

USAID Global Health Courses

Partners in Health Program Management Guide

https://www.workwithusaid.org/events/rising-tides-2023-together-for-global-health

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/rising-tides-conference-2023.html

As Mariana says,

"We maximize our effectiveness by working together."

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Host Dr. Laura Horvath engages in conversation with

Brandon Stiver

SENIOR DIRECTOR, GLOBAL PROGRAMS AND PARTNERSHIPS
The spiritual side of Orphan Care
https://1millionhome.com/
https://thinkorphan.com/

Brandon has worked in the child welfare and nonprofit sectors for over twelve years. Before joining 1MILLIONHOME, he led a family based care and advocacy program in Tanzania for several years. Brandon has also worked at a Tanzanian orphanage, in the Californian foster care system, at various churches and teaches on issues facing at risk children at the university level. He has his Master’s Degree in Global Development and Justice and is passionate about indigenous leadership, community mobilization and seeing global entities come together to deliver the best care for at risk children.

Today we’re going to dive deep into an aspect of the work involving care of orphans and vulnerable children that doesn’t often get talked about.  For those of us in what we call “the sector” we talk a lot about the research, and the nuts and bolts of getting kids home, transitioning residential programs like orphanages into models that prioritize family care, engaging with donors, missioners and others in shifting the model and shifting the mindset.  That’s all really important stuff.  What we don’t spend a lot of time talking about is the motivations for getting involved in orphan care in the first place.  We cite the scriptural language we all know - James 1:27, Psalms 68:6,etc.  Today I want to get into something a little more spiritual - the idea of being “called - by God” specifically to this work.  If you talk to people in this space, including those who have built and supported orphanages, they will often tell you that they have answered a “calling.”  

As we are coming to understand that orphanages are not the best place for children to grow up, how are we to think about having received a calling that prompted us to build or support an orphanage? 

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Laura, Nabs, Yaz and Melody talk about their love for Helping Children Worldwide, and changing the world together!

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Host Yasmine Vaughan discusses the topic of health disparity in wealthy and poor countries, and wealthy and poor citizens in every country.

Special Guest Dr. Aruna Stevens is the Chief medical officer at Mercy Hospital in Bo, Sierra Leone. Dr. Stevens is a graduate of the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences from the University of Sierra Leone. Since joining the staff at Mercy Hospital, Dr. Stevens has transformed the hospital into one of the top medical facilities in Bo, with over 10,000 patients treated every year by his staff. In addition to his duties at Mercy Hospital, Dr. Stevens regularly heads up the medical team assessing patients at the outreach clinics in rural villages surrounding Bo, and serves as associate faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, S.C., USA.

Mercy Hospital was first conceived as a joint project of the Sierra Leone Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and Helping Children Worldwide and is part of the UMC medical health ministry in Sierra Leone.

Important links:

To learn more about the programs offered at Mercy UMC Hospital:

Watch:
Mercy-programs.html  - Videos on the maternal/infant mortality programs at Mercy Hospital, including vaccinations, prenatal care, child nutrition, labor and delivery,  including surgical interventions such as C-sections.

tour-mercy-hospital.html Dr. Stevens acts as a tour guide for his medical facility located in Bo, Sierra Leone in 2020 - prior to significant renovations in 2021 and 2022. (New videos coming soon)

READ:
About mercy-hospital.html
Empower Magazine Winter Issue 2022
Empower Magazine Summer 2020

To learn more about health disparity and infant mortality in Sierra Leone:

Listen to:  Optimistic Voices Podcast Episode Season 1, Episode 6 - CHAMPS.

Read:
https://www.who.int/news-ro

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Host Dr. Laura Horvath continues her conversation with Katie Milazzo and Lucy Matsumoto of All for One Foundation, as they share with their work in 23 countries, and their experience founding the Child Prosperity Centre in Sierra Leone with a new family support and a focus on child/family reintegration. This is a great episode for those who are thinking of moving away from old models of international aid to promote a shift away from dependency on external donors. Our guests discuss how AFO went about undertaking this sea-change decision to repurpose a gorgeous new building intended to be a 200-bed orphanage planned for the national capital city of Freetown. Katie and Lucy share specific experiences and practical details of 

• How Western Partners can operate to embrace the shift and partner in programs that focus on  building capacity in the community to care for their own
• How to effectively partner with other organizations (i.e., Helping Children Worldwide, Child Reintegration Centre, World Hope International) with radical honesty and radical collaboration to share experiences, resources, expertise and fill gaps rather than working in silos and duplicating efforts. 
• How fund and resource development is “everybody’s job” in nonprofits and how to leverage story-telling by program professionals to explain the value of investment to donors in shifting to family support and capacity-building models, and supporting greater collaboration and networking of knowledge and resources to increase impact.
• Shifting the philanthropic philosophy that motivates donors from “I feel bad” for the needy to “I feel like a partner” in making the world work well for everybody.

All for One

Child Prosperity Centre

World Hope International

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org