PWM Ministries > Orphan & Widow Care > The Model > The Advocate Model

The vision is that children, in addition to their family group, will experience the providence of the Lord through the unconditional support and care of an extended family.To ensure this, additional aid comes to each child through his or her relationship with an Advocate Family, who will participate in the child’s life directly. Advocate Sponsors, a team of six individuals or families who pray and give monthly support for the child, will support the Advocate Family and form a group.The child will not be informed of the Advocate Sponsors, ensuring that he or she will never feel the burden of keeping supporters involved. It will be the responsibility of the Advocate Family (a family chosen by the group),with direct support of PWM staff, to communicate to the sponsors how the child is developing. We believe that this model places the emphasis on relationships for the orphaned children, a key cultural value in Honduran life, and properly expresses, via the Advocate Family, the wonderful biblical value of the support given by the sponsors.

Likewise, if sponsors are ever in a situation where they cannot contribute financially, they do not need to leave the group. It is possible for the group to get larger, but it is the intention of the model to emphasize relationships above finances.The group will continually be together and support others in the group through those times.The financial commitment we are seeking from the group will be until the orphan turns 18, but our hopes are that involvement in the life of the orphan will be for life.

Partnerships

The model also includes partnerships. We are currently seeking a partnership with a church.We believe that what we do cannot be done without the existence and involvement of the church and want to seek out an evangelical church that will partner in this effort. Knowing that projects like this belong to the entire body of Christ,we continually seek partnerships with churches, foundations, corporations, and individuals.We believe that we are only one part and need the support of the entire body.

Missionary Involvement

All of our missionaries will have as a goal to identify, train, pray with and be replaced by local professional Honduran natives in their particular areas of expertise. It is our goal to have the entire orphanage staff be composed of Hondurans.There are several reasons for this, the first of which is keeping as much of the culture in the lives of the children as possible. It has also been our experience, through direct research, that the best use of missionaries in areas where the gospel is already present is for training and support.This
creates a group dynamic more acceptable to Hondurans and missionaries alike.This limits the need to compare the two (e.g., salary levels, position, job security) because each group has a different function and purpose.Missionaries are able to freely express their expertise and leadership and Hondurans will be more prone to accept it because the two, by their nature, are not threatening to one another.

Sponsorship Period

Though our sponsorship model looks different it will act much in the same way as traditional models with the exception of its length and relationship style.The sponsorship will start six months prior to the arrival of the child and will end at age 18. However, within that same time frame we expect to put a college fund in place and so technically, the sponsorship will not end until the child has achieved a college education.

Academic Focus

Many of the orphanages focus on agricultural or trade models in the education of the children. PWM will focus on Academic models and have agricultural and trade models as options.We believe that solid leadership training must first have a solid and classical liberal arts education that will give the children more options as they grow. At age 18 they may very well choose to go into agricultural or trade, but they will have the option to further their education at the university level as well.We plan to develop a school that will be multilingual and have teachers of the highest caliber.This school will give the same opportunity to an additional 96 community children who are poverty stricken and will be assigned to the school at the same time (e.g., age 2) the orphans come to live at the orphanage.This way we will track social, nutritional and other health factors prior to their actual enrollment.The school will have a strict dress code that will be similar to prep schools in the United States. Although Honduras is already familiar with this type of environment, it is currently only available to wealthy families.We are using this model to emphasize to the children that they are not second-class citizens in the kingdom of God and that our Lord through his providence and people will take care of their needs.

Future Developments

The model that we have is a work in progress.We are continually trying to find parts of the puzzle that work well in this culture and have encountered many promising ideas that will cover areas like personnel policy, discipline, medical care, economic family models, curriculum and so on.However, these will most likely not be decided upon until we have our leadership team in place (Pr. 15:22).