Imagine a child, seven years old, living in a garbage dump and watching both her mother and father die slowly of AIDS-related illnesses.
This was reality for Erminia before she joined Forward Edge’s program for at-risk girls in Nicaragua called Village of Hope.
If Erminia had continued to grow up living in the dump, she likely would have had a teenage pregnancy (one in four girls do in Nicaragua). That could have happened through rape, a drug-induced mistake, or even forced prostitution—all things not uncommon among girls living in the dump.
One thing is almost certain: if Erminia had stayed in the dump, she would have dropped out of school, married a much older man to relieve the economic burden for her parents, and borne her first child before the age of 15. Depressed, uneducated, and undervalued, she would have been another link in the endless chain of heartbreaking poverty.
She came to under the care of our Nicaragua Directors at the Village of Hope, Wilbert Alvarado and Gloria Sequeira. One of the first things Wilbert and Gloria did was tend to Erminia’s medical needs and test her blood to see if she had contracted HIV from either of her parents; thank God she hadn’t.
Erminia’s new life at the Village of Hope came with regular nutritious meals, safe drinking water, clean clothes, professional counseling, and the chance to go to a first-rate Christian school.
Today, nine years later, Erminia’s life is completely transformed. She is physically and emotionally healthy; flourishing in her school work; and growing in her relationship with Christ. She now dreams of being a doctor someday so she can, in her words, “help others with more problems than mine.”
There is a specific moment in Erminia’s story that profoundly illustrates why we do what we do together through Forward Edge. It was when Erminia went to the hospital to visit her mother for the last time.
As Erminia held her mother’s hand and said goodbye, her mother told her in a weak, defeated voice, “You’re going to be an orphan now.”
“No I’m not,” Erminia replied. “I have Papa Wilbert and Mama Gloria.”
The amount of suffering among children in this world is great—sometimes overwhelming to think about—but as Mother Teresa once said, “If you can’t feed 100 people, then feed just one.” For that one, our help means the world.
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Many of us have seen profile photos of children in sponsorship programs; they are often solemn, sad and sometimes down-right angry looking. I know I have thought at times, “Wow, that poor child must be so unhappy!” But then I come across a video from the same organization in which
21 yrs. old
Entered the program: March 2023
Comfort lives with her mother in a house built with mud and roofed with thatch. They have no access to potable water. There is no piped water in the village so the women and girls in the community fetch water from a local dam; once it dries up, they have to walk very long distances to find other sources. This affect their availability to work and attend school regularly.
Comfort’s family is Christian. She lost the father at an early age and her mother is a housewife with no source of income. Before Create Hope, they lived on less than $1 a day and usually one meal a day. Joining the program has enabled her to attend school and have a bicycle to take her the 5 miles each way, every day. As with many girls her age, Comfort misses school when she is having her monthly cycle because she cannot afford to buy a sanitary supplies.
Plus bonus group fundraising ideas!
