08 Aug A Vision of the Future
As I hope you already know, the purpose of the Vallado Project is to help eliminate generational brokenness in families by financially and relationally partnering with organizations around the world who are caring for, and educating, vulnerable and at-risk children. We have been doing this work with the Casa Vallado Children’s Home in San Luis Potosi, Mexico for over 10 years now. Recently, the doors have opened to other organizations the we feel provide the opportunity to expand the Vallado reach into other nations as well. We are beginning to evaluate how we might partner with an organizations in India, Kenya, and the Dominican Republic. This past month we had an opportunity to take that next step with the organization in the Dominican Republic by taking our first group trip to serve alongside, and get a better understanding surrounding the work being done by, Makarios International. What we saw was not only a vision of what the “ministry of reconciliation” looks like on a very practical level, but also a glimpse of what other organizations, like Casa Vallado, have the potential to achieve with the right kind of financial and relational support.
Makarios is working with three of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the North side of the Dominican Republic for the purpose of ending generational poverty and seeing communities serve Jesus. Makarios does this through education (they run a K-10th school that is only available to children from these neighborhoods), family empowerment programs, and partnership with both local churches in the D.R. and foreign churches from the U.S. Currently, Makarios has around 165 students in the school, over 100 families in the family empowerment program, and over 400 hours of in home visits with the families of their students. In a culture boiling over with racism, prejudice, social injustice, and an ever widening gap between the poor and the wealthy, Makarios is bringing together children from different cultures, different ethnicities, and differing socioeconomic statuses, and teaching them, through the love of Christ and God’s Word, how to love, serve, care for, and walk with one another despite the differences among them. Parents once illiterate are learning how to read and write alongside their children. Families once ignorant in regards to nutrition and clean water are now, with the help of Makarios, eating a healthy diet and drinking clean water. For the first time in most of these families’ histories, children are starting to glimpse the potential for a different kind of future for themselves and their future children. The work is truly remarkable.
But, how has Makarios achieved this success? How have they gotten to where they are? The answer is not as complicated as you might imagine. Makarios has, over the past 14 years, slowly and methodically built a culture and a team willing to make the necessary sacrifices, tackle difficult obstacles one at a time, and get boots on the ground to engage within the local context. All this has resulted in transformation, not just for the children involved, but entire communities.
Take, for example, Francis. Makarios met Francis 14 years ago. At that time, Francis was 10 years old, illiterate and had already dropped out of school. Francis was running the streets and doing what he could to help put food on his family’s table. However, after engaging with Francis and his family Makarios was able to get him into the tutoring program and eventually into the school a few years later when it first opened. Today, Francis speaks and reads in 5 different languages, has taught his parents to read and write in Spanish and Creol, coaches youth sports in his community, runs the chapel services at the school, and is essentially the unofficial Mayor of his neighborhood, Poncho Matéo.
Makarios has accomplished all of this through a sponsorship program for the students, a pen pal program which enables communication between the children and their sponsors, and having groups come visit and work with the kids on an ongoing basis. Sound familiar? This is exactly what we have set the Vallado Project up to do in partnership with organizations like Makarios. So, having taken our visit to the D.R. I not only got to see that this type of program can succeed, but I also got to see how the Vallado Project can partner with other organizations like Makarios in an efficient and impactful way.
This has given me new hope and excitement for what we can accomplish, not just with Casa Vallado in Mexico, but with Jeremiah’s Family in Kenya and Influence International in India. Our goal is to see the children being served and impacted by these organizations around the world all get to a place where they are flourishing in their education, where families are being healed and equipped to properly care for their children, and the cycles of poverty and dysfunction are are coming to an end in their lives. Each of these organizations is at a different spot on this roadmap to success, and it is going to take time, resources, sacrifice, and people like you and me working together to accomplish this work, but having spent a week with Makarios I know that this vision is not only achievable, but that it is what needs to be done to see God’s Kingdom come and His being done on Earth as in Heaven.
I want to encourage you to do two things this week. First, I want you to get to know Makarios International and the work they are doing. It is truly inspiring.
Second, I want you to get involved in some capacity. Either by becoming a Vallado Partner, a Makarios Sponsor, a Vallado or Makarios Pen Pal, or starting to save up to go one one of our group visits to one of the aforementioned countries/organizations. Details will be coming soon regarding these trips.
The work is great, but our God is so much greater!
