‘News’
UPDATE — May 22: This morning we spoke with Nathan, who is working with a network of 8 churches in the city of Moore. One of these churches is staging relief in their parking lot just about a mile outside of the affected area. They have requested cleaning supplies, nonperishable food, water, baby formula, diapers, canes/walkers, and hygiene products.
Giving Children Hope is preparing to send a truck out as early as Friday morning. If you want to volunteer or donate product, check out the attached flyer to see how you can do that. If you want to donate funds to get this product to where it’s going, click on the blue button.
May 21 — Giving Children Hope is communicating with our non-profit and church partners in Oklahoma to determine how to best serve this stricken area. On Monday, May 20, a tornado devastated the town of Moore, Oklahoma, and surrounding areas. The damaged area is at least 17 miles long and as wide as 2 miles across in some places. As of Tuesday morning, the death toll was at 24 people, including nine children; more than 200 people have been injured. Rescue efforts are still taking place as relief workers sift through the destruction.
More updates will be posted here as we get them. Please join us in the relief efforts.
Last week, GCHope sent its sixth container of relief to Syrian refugees. This container, our fifth container in partnership with Bouchebel Consultants, is going to aid refugees who have fled to camps in Lebanon.
The container held donations from multiple donors, including Free City, World Vision, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, World Bed, Seba Med, and TIPS South Hill Academy, as well as others. It included items such as cookware, clothing, hygiene, blankets, and World Beds.
GCHope Founder and Chairman of the Board, John Ditty, and Logistics Coordinator, Janet Valencia, will be traveling to Jordan and Lebanon to meet with partners and see the distribution of previous containers.
Visit our Hope 20/20 page to see how you can continue to help Syrian refugees, one of our Hope 20/20 communities for 2013.
On Saturday, May 18, Wienerschnitzel in Buena Park is hosting a “Day of Hope” benefiting Giving Children Hope.
Guests who bring in canned food items between 9 am and 10 pm will receive raffle tickets for prizes. In addition, 20% of all purchases made with the attached flyer will go directly to GCHope.
Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to support GCHope and the We’ve Got Your Back program! We’ll see you there!
Aid Africa and Giving Children Hope held a birthing kit event at GCHope’s warehouse, where 65 volunteers from ages 7 – 70 helped assemble 1,000 birthing kits. These kits will go out to clinics and villages to save the lives of mothers and their infants.
A kit only costs $10 and can potentially save two lives. It only takes a few simple items to make a huge difference in preventing infections, which is the leading cause of death during child birth. The volunteers assembled kits containing: gloves, soaps, blade, sanitary cord (to tie the umbilical cord) and a clean sheet. The kits also included baby caps and sanitary napkins.
In Northern Uganda and Pakistan, kits are already being used at clinics, where midwives are trained in the importance of sanitary and safe birth delivery. Many lives have already been saved and it will bring education and hope, as well as promote sustainability in these growing communities.
Aid Africa is a non profit 501c3 working to bring help and hope to the poorest of the poor in Northern Uganda. Aid Africa’s vision is to rebuild 1,000 sustainable communities by providing clean water, efficient stove, life-saving health care, education and reforestation.
If you would like more information about birthing kits or would like to sponsor one, please go to Aid Africa’s website.
Watch the video of the event below:
Video by: Agent Chill Entertainment LLC
Camera & Editor: Candice Rusch
Camera: Brian Byrd:
Giving Children Hope held a food drive for the We’ve Got Your Back program, in partnership with Buena Park Downtown and Brainpower Mania. WGYB currently feeds over 5,000 homeless children in Orange County every week and the food items collected will be distributed to the children and their families on the program. Sixteen local schools participated and over 10 pallets of food were collected. Buena Terra Elementary School collected the most items, over 1,300, and won $1,000 worth of school supplies. Runners-up Raymond Temple Elementary and St. Pius Elementary each won $500 worth of school supplies.
We’ve Got Your Back is a weekend nutrition program created by Giving Children Hope for elementary, junior high and high school students in Orange County’s school districts who have been identified as homeless under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Currently, there are over 28,000 children in Orange County’s elementary schools who are identified as homeless. Every week, Giving Children Hope provides food to 6,000 individuals through We’ve Got Your Back.
Giving Children Hope is in constant need of food for the children on the We’ve Got Your Back program. If you are interested in hosting a food drive or donating food items, please contact Paul Geisert at 714-523-4454 x 113 or email at pgeisert@gchope.org.
Giving Children Hope is a faith-based nonprofit organization dedicated to alleviating poverty domestically and abroad through disaster relief, health and community development, vocational training and advocacy. For more information, visit www.gchope.org.
Below are pictures from the event:
Giving Children Hope is excited to add Belize as one of our Hope 20/20 Healthy Communities! As part of our 20th anniversary celebration and in partnership with Gary Stanhiser, Project Coordinator for the Belize School Book Project, GCHope was able to send 20,000 brand new schoolbooks to be distributed to 30 schools in Belize. We are thrilled to be part of Gary’s mission to assist 5,000 students throughout Belize.
The 40 tons of schoolbooks, donated by Teacher Created Resources, were sorted by subject and organized by grade level by GCHope volunteers before being shipped. Students and teachers in grades K-6 now have schoolbooks covering subjects such as reading, writing, math, social studies, and geography. Some of the schools that received the books were Solomon’s SDA School, Progresso Zill’s Primary School, Hills of Promise SDA Primary School, Zion Seventh Day Adventist School, and Shiloh SDA Primary School.
Bucky Weeks, a volunteer with the Belize School Book Project, says, “Lots of hard work, but worth it all. Priceless! Who has the biggest smile? I know that my wife, Bonnie, and I are still smiling as we re-visit our time giving these welcome new schoolbooks to the beautiful children of Belize who are not used to having any books. For us, it’s all about people and serving others.”
If you would like to donate more books to these Belize students, please contact Janet Valencia at jvalencia@gchope.org or 714-523-4454 x126 for more information.
Watch the video Gary and his team made:
Here are pictures of the project:
Back in October, Giving Children Hope sent our first container to Jordan to assist the Syrian refugees. We recently received a distribution report from the International Relief and Development and the 9,000+ items in the container helped more than 1,200 families!
Click below for the PDF file of the report:
RX-1112-0149-Liberia-report from the field
As the civil war in Syria continues to escalate, the United Nations estimates that at least 70,000 people have lost their lives. Giving Children Hope (GCHope), an Orange County nonprofit, is working diligently to provide relief for those who have fled Syria to save their lives. “We received requests for winter clothes from our partners working directly with those fleeing the fighting in Syria. With the help of our local church partners, businesses and other nonprofits, we’ve been able to send five 40-foot shipping containers full of requested relief items,” shares GCHope Executive Director, Sean Lawrence.
Many Syrians have fled to neighboring countries, including Lebanon and Jordan, where over 1.5 million Syrians are currently seeking refuge, over half of these children under the age of 11. “They had to run for their lives and have nothing except for the clothes on their back,” said Jean Bouchebel of Bouchebel Consultants, one of Giving Children Hope’s field partners who has been coordinating the shipments of relief supplies to various refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. GCHope is also working with International Relief Development IRD in Washington, D.C. to deliver items to displaced families on the Syrian borders.
In December, the first container arrived in Lebanon filled with vitamins, medical supplies, blankets and winter clothing. “Even though it’s desert climate, it gets really cold during the evenings, even during the summer months, which can dip down to below zero degrees,” said Bouchebel.
Bouchebel lived in Lebanon before immigrating to the United States 15 years ago. He understands and experienced civil war while he was living in Lebanon, so his desire to help is personal. “People there need practical support and love. Innocent people are dying and getting hurt,” Bouchebel said. He has been going to Lebanon every three months to connect with the people and help coordinate relief efforts. Bouchebel’s next trip to Lebanon and Jordan will be in mid-May with Patrick Bouchebel, CEO of Bouchebel Consultants LLC and John Ditty, Giving Children Hope’s Founder, to meet with partners and arrange a long term strategy, as well as visit the refugees they have been assisting.
“A lot more needs to be done. Together we can make a difference. The more we can incorporate, the more we can help people. Thank you to our donors who are very cooperative and generous,” said Bouchebel.
GCHope is currently staging two more containers of requested relief items but is asking for the public’s help. “We need more hygiene items and new clothes,” said Lawrence. “We encourage our community here in Orange County to join us in supporting these refugees in a practical way. This support is not a political statement, but a statement of our love for our neighbors – not just those across the street, but around the world as well.”
If you would like donate products or would like to host a product drive for the Syrian Refugee Project, please contact GCHope’s Logistics Coordinator, Janet Valencia, at jvalencia@gchope.org or 714-523-4454 x 126. You may also drop off items to GCHope’s office at 8332 Commonwealth Ave., Buena Park, CA 90621 from Monday – Friday, 8am to 5pm.
Giving Children Hope is a faith-based, nonprofit organization dedicated to alleviating poverty domestically and abroad through disaster relief, health and community development, vocational training and advocacy. For more information, visit www.gchope.org.
