Orphanage sustainability, part 2

When I was sharing my thoughts with my friend Ryan tonight as kind of a mini debriefing on what I had learned today, I told him that I almost felt like a heretic for wanting to suggest this model to others from my home church and other friends outside of church.  I know I’m going to face some opposition, but this need not be if we realize we have the same goals in mind.  As Christians who are moved and compelled by the love of Christ to love our neighbors and make disciples of all nations, we must be willing to firstly admit our faults and secondly learn from our mistakes.

So, what’s the solution you may be asking yourself at this point.  The one main orphanage that I found that was serious about running a self-sustaining orphanage had some great ideas that I’ll share here.  Basically, they need to create income-generating projects instead of relying on outside support.  Obviously, this can’t happen overnight and will take some serious training in business start-ups and funds to start businesses. 

It really reminded me of my church plant though.  From the beginning we had a goal of being self-sustaining by the end of year 3.  We had to plan on how this would be accomplished, it didn’t just happen automatically.  At first, we mainly relied on outside donations to help us get off the ground.  Every year after that, we moved from relying on mainly outside donations to relying more on inside donations from our own people.  By the end of year 3, we were self-sustaining by relying on our own people to support us.  I believe a gradual process is a good model in regards to orphanage sustainability as well. 

For example, the people who had started the orphanage in Thailand had bought a truck to transport the children to school.  The orphanage directors than used that truck not only to transport the children to school but also as a taxi and as a way to bring farmers’ produce to market and rented it to them when it wasn’t being used to transport the children.  What good is a truck if it just sits most of the day?  To me, that is a great gift that has resulted in generating income for the orphanage that results in moving off dependency to independence.

Heifer International is another example of an organization that gives good gifts that are then used by people to generate an income.  Unfortunately, I looked at their website today and they’re not in Myanmar.  Ryan informed me that international NGO’s have a very difficult time gaining permission from the government to work here.