WELCOME

Welcome to our trip journal! We are a team from Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church traveling to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to host a summer camp for kids at Hope for the Fatherless!

More than 5.6 million children in Ethiopia are missing one or both parents, and in 2018 inter-country adoption was banned. Sadly, at that time there was not yet a strong culture of domestic foster care or adoption, but HFTF has been working since 2017 to change that.

HFTF serves orphaned and vulnerable children in Ethiopia and places them into loving families through in-country adoption, reunification, and small group homes. HFTF is helping to create a culture within Ethiopia that cares for orphaned and vulnerable children and promotes domestic adoption. To that end, HFTF has now placed over 300 children with their forever families in Ethiopia and trained many more adoptive families who are now waiting to be matched! Believing children belong in families, not institutions, HFTF trains and equips families to adopt within Ethiopia. Additionally, HFTF cares for vulnerable single moms and their children who are at risk of becoming orphans without support like  tuition assistance, counseling, medical care, tutoring, and job training. HFTF operates three children's homes (Hope House, Faith House, and Joy House) to provide orphaned children a safe, loving, peaceful environment where they can heal and develop their emotional, spiritual, physical and educational well-being. Lastly, HFTF operates Tesfa Mender (which translates "Hope Village") where street children can rehabilitate and heal, in order to be reunited with existing family, placed in a forever family through adoption, or successfully launched into adulthood with the skills needed to live healthy and successful lives.

While our team is there, we will be hosting MADE FOR MORE, a Dr. Seuss-themed summer camp teaching valuable life skills through science, crafts, games, legos, and cooking, with an emphasis on the idea that these kids were made to dream big and do great things in their lives! At the same time, some of the older teens will be learning barista skills with a partner nonprofit called Filtered Hope and the HFTF staff will be participating in their annual staff training. We also will be helping complete several work projects at Tesfa Mender.

We are so excited to serve with Hope for the Fatherless and greatly appreciate your prayers as we prepare for this work and travel to Ethiopia! We'll be posting updates of our trip (provided the Wifi is working!), so be sure to bookmark this blog to stay in the loop!