History

CRC

UMC Sierra Leone Annual Conference used the Floris funding to open a children’s home and recruited children to live within its secure walls, to be fed, sent to school, provided medical care, and be mentored by the church. The orphanage opened its doors on July 4th. It was owned and run by the Sierra Leone conference, with all the personnel being employees of the conference. Mission teams were periodically sent to Africa by Floris to work with the children living in the orphanage. The first team arrived on the day the peace treaty was signed and the war was officially over.

A growing mission outpaces donor capacity

The impetus for incorporation of a separate 501(c)(3) organization was really the expanding needs of the orphanage in Bo, and recognition that supporting a second orphan mission in North America could become equally demanding, even if it drew from different segments of the Floris congregation.

HCW was incorporated in 2003 and tasked with supporting the existing international missions for children that grew from the outreach of Floris UMC in Northern Virginia. These ministries were specifically named in the Articles of Incorporation, along with any future programs and activities that aligned with the mission of the newly formed NGO. The concept was that a separately incorporated 501(c)(3) NGO could access funding opportunities that were beyond the capacity of the church, and could pull together various missions to help vulnerable children wherever they were found, and be better suited to managing them with a concentration of knowledge and best practices developed through lived experience, hence the aspirational name “Helping Children Worldwide ” The existing ministries included two orphanages, one in Nicaragua and one in Sierra Leone, and a hospital being built in Sierra Leone to address maternal mortality issues where they are the gravest, and offer charity services in the Province of Bo, where no such services existed.

HCW secures GBGM Advance Funding

Two special donation funds are created at the United Methodist Church General Board of Global Missions and United Methodist Committee on Relief for CRC and Mercy. Both funds are administered by HCW, although the funds go directly to bank accounts owned by UMC SLAC for their programs.

CRC moves into the dormitories of its new compound

The purchase of the property is completed, along with remodeling and the temporary dormitory building is remodeled again to become Mercy Hospital.

A New Facility is Constructed for Mission Teams

By 2005, Floris and HCW had sent 15 mission travel teams to Sierra Leone – and interest in mission was increasing as more church partners came on board. A plan was devised to build a guest house facility that was more suited to the expanding mission. The Missionary Training Centre was built on the recently acquired property, deeded in the name of the UMC Sierra Leone Annual Conference, with an adjoining wall and a gate that opened onto the CRC compound, and was within 50 yards of Mercy Hospital. The new facility could house up to 25 mission team members simultaneously in 3 dormitories with large shared shower/dressing rooms and toilet facilities for Men and Women, 3 private apartments, an indoor and outdoor catering kitchens, a large dining hall/conference room, a business center/lounge, and on-site staff quarters.

The name African Partnership was coined by the representatives of the churches who met regularly to discuss the work they supported. This was to affirm that the churches who had joined the partnership specifically as a mission to orphans and to make contributions to support a ministry to orphans in Bo, were in agreement that their support included other missions growing out of that, such as Mercy UMC Hospital and the Missionary Training Centre, although they were still free to designate their churches contributions with more specificity.

Helping Children Worldwide Plans a US Program

HCW’s mission remained broad, and while the board decided not to continue with the plan to support the Nicaraguan orphanage, it did want to implement a plan to be “worldwide”. In 2008, the board adopted a plan to open and run a local program for children and families in Northern Virginia called Connections for Hope from 2008 through 2012.

HCW begins in 2008 building a thoughtful plan to expand the work to benefit children worldwide with an addition of a program for vulnerable children near its base of operations at Floris UMC and to move HCW headquarters out of the church.

The concept is for a centralized hub of NGOs who could provide wrap-around style services for children and families, including a free clinic, ESL education, counseling services, and similar services. The plan unfolds over the next two years, as funding is secured and agreements are arranged between participating NGOs.

Naval Research Labs MOU

HCW, UMC SLAC, educational institutions, and US-owned NRL enter into an agreement to open a research lab co-located with Mercy’s Clinical Laboratory. The Research Lab becomes a hub of major medical research into tropical diseases such as Malaria, and begins publishing important research. Clinicians are trained as a result of the collaboration and the work contributes much to the knowledge of conditions of disease, diagnosis, management, treatment, and control.

A Scholarship Program is Funded to Send CRC Youth to College and Post-Secondary Training

Connections for Hope Suffers 2 Years Under the Weight of Its own Success, and is Transferred to Reston Interfaith.

Connections for Hope programming from 2008 through 2012, when it transferred the program to Reston Interfaith, one of the programs housed at the center. The lesson learned was that it is impossible to manage operations like fundraising, finances, legal compliance, facilities management, and program coordination to support multiple direct-service programs with a small administrative staff.

It would be five more years before the underlying lesson fully sinks in that managing program staff who are not subject to your authority is not sustainable as a business model in any way. This will ultimately contribute to HCW’s review and change of our approach to mission alliances.

The First Residents of CRC Begin to Graduate from their Post-Secondary Education and take Leadership positions.

A thoughtful Reintegration

In response to issues with children in residence, some children are sent home to live. Research at HCW begins to reveal social science and child development concerns in long-term residential care.

A plan for tracing and creating an evidence-based practice to reintegrate older children begins.

A Grand Collaboration Between HCW, GBGM and Cure Americas

Emmanuel Nabieu Hired as CRC Director

In a full-circle moment, former child resident of CRC becomes the leader and begins to examine his experiences as Director from the perspective of a care-leaver.