By Barbara Myers Mason
BIG CANOE, Ga. | Armed with index cards filled with Swahili translations, six Big Canoe residents, members of the Big Canoe Chapel, recently spent several days in poverty-prone pockets of Kenya to witness and support a program geared toward orphans that has a 95 percent success rate of eliminating hunger. Known as Zoe Empowers, the not-for-profit organization has designed a three-year program that comes alongside orphaned households led by teenagers to teach them business skills to support themselves and their siblings. Zoe’s mission works – equipping vulnerable youth with solutions to overcome extreme poverty for good.
The Big Canoe team visited first, second- and third-year programs, in addition to a graduation ceremony. The faces of the teenagers told the story better than words can. Students who had just begun the program looked on in despair and shed tears as they told stories of their many challenges – deceased parents, relatives who forced them from their homes, the need to leave school to support their siblings, lack of work and income, being sexually assaulted, and most of all being hungry.
Dock Hollingsworth, senior chaplain of Big Canoe Chapel and a member of the mission team, saying: “This is the healthiest and most inspiring model for missions that I’ve encountered.”
Amazingly, the second and third-year students had faces of hope and trust as they had become proficient in a business, learned important life skills, owned livestock, and even motorbikes. Some had adopted a homeless child into their families. They were proud that they were able to pay for their younger siblings to attend school. Real joy and feelings of accomplishment were evident as the team members recounted their achievements. And graduation from the program was an arena-filled celebration of dancing and testimonials.
Through coursework, apprenticeships and micro-grants, the group members become welders, mechanics, carpenters, convenience store, boutique, salon and restaurant owners, barbers, seamstresses, or sell specialty food items.
Zoe’s model was designed by Rwandan social workers to empower vulnerable children to permanently pull themselves out of extreme poverty. The program is locally based, employs indigenous staff and resources, and groups 60 to 100 children, about 25 households, into mutually supportive working groups. The organization is supported by a nimble US – based team.
The households, headed by the oldest remaining sibling in the family, receive support from a trained Zoe facilitator who manages 10 to 12 groups, and a volunteer village mentor recruited by group members. Each group selects a name and elects its own chair, secretary, treasurer and pastor. The leadership team is responsible for setting the agenda; however, a prescribed curriculum contributes to each group’s success. In addition, a “table bank” allows members to invest in each other’s businesses. Zoe is comprehensive, empowering the children in eight areas of need including food security, health and hygiene, education, vocational and business training, gender equality, housing, and child rights.
The organization, founded in 2004 as a relief organization, transitioned in 2007 to a program that empowers children to become self-sufficient. Currently enrolling nearly 80,000 children in 12 countries in Africa and India, the model has impacted more than 230,000 vulnerable youth. Relying on individual and church contributions to fund the program, the Zoe Empowers website outlines many ways to offer support.
Aside from Dock Hollingsworth, other members of the Big Canoe Chapel Kenya mission team included Melissa Hollingsworth, Randy Wiersma, Bob Crouch and Barbara and Bill Mason.
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