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The God's Child Project's GrowthNGO Has Grown Quickly and Successfully in its Mission to End Poverty
"The God's Child Project" has seen itself grow from a one room office to Central America's epicenter in the goal to end world poverty.
The God's Child Project's Start One of Guatemala’s largest and fastest growing NGOs is The God’s Child Project, a nondenominational charity founded by international educator and human rights leader, Patrick Atkinson in 1991. A native of Bismarck, North Dakota, Atkinson has seen his project has grow from helping a few dozen impoverished children to thousands. Since its inception, The God's Child Project has grown due to the support of thousands of volunteers and benefactors worldwide, to where it now cares for and educates 4,000 orphaned, abandoned, and poverty-stricken children, and nearly 9,000 widowed, abandoned, and single mothers and their dependents in many of our world's poorest neighborhoods. Demographics of Children HelpedAccording to the projects website forty percent of the children in the project are girls; sixty percent are boys. While there are very few infants and young adults, most of the children range in ages from five to sixteen. Seventy-five percent of the children are mestizo (mixed Mayan Indian and Latino blood), and twenty five percent are Mayan Indian. The children served come from across Guatemala. The thousands of children assisted by The God's Child Project are placed into twenty-one different categories based on their situation. In general, though, they are children who are exceptionally poor and continue to live with their own families and older, orphaned, abandoned, or otherwise hurt children who can no longer live with their natural families. The Project's Reliance on Outside HelpThe project relies upon its benefactors, friends, volunteers, and children coming together to assist the world’s poorest children in their educational, social, physical, and spiritual growth. Its motto is, “breaking through the chains of poverty through education and formation.” It sees education as the practical and only way to help poor children escape the viscous cycle of generational poverty. Rather than alleviating the pains of poverty for a day, the ideal goal of the project to free the poor from needing outside assistance. Every week scores of volunteers come through the project's doors to assist in everything from teaching English to building houses. In this way, more than just assisting the poor of the world, the project also opens Western eyes to the poverty problem. The Dream MakerABC news reporter Monica Hannan, wrote a biography on Patrick Atkinson in 2006 titled The Dream Maker. The book is in its seventh printing and there are plans for it to be made into a movie. In an interveiw with the founder Patrick Atkinson, stated simply his reason for doing the work he does. “We recognize the opportunities and help we have received from others, and will try each day to help someone with a need greater than our own.” Atkinson has given his life to this ideal, and all the work has been paying off in a large way.
The copyright of the article The God's Child Project's Growth in Anti-Poverty Activism is owned by Luke Armstrong. Permission to republish The God's Child Project's Growth in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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