Humanitarian
While Family Watch is not primarily a humanitarian organization, we are engaged in several projects designed to help orphans, women and vulnerable children. We organize donors and volunteers to provide family-based humanitarian aid to children and families including promoting domestic and inter-country adoption and providing direct aid to children in crisis.
Tragically, many orphanages across the world are filled with children who have family members that cannot care for them due to a lack of economic resources. In addition to helping children in crisis access education and provide immediate, life-saving assistance, the Families for Orphans program works to provide children with families by providing assistance to family members to care for their own children, training and assisting local foster families, or by placing orphans with permanent families through domestic and international adoption.
Learn about our “Families For Orphans” project at www.familiesfororphans.org.
Our Current Projects
Children and staff of the Amandla Base & Relief Center
The Uganda Orphan Project
Amandla Base & Relief Center first came to our attention because of their urgent need to replace several old buildings that were in danger of collapsing, creating a hazardous, even life-threatening, situation for the 60 orphans who live there.
The orphanage was established in Kajjansi, Uganda in 2011 and, initially, their goal was to match the orphaned children with foster families. Many loving foster families were found, but soon, for most of them, the financial burden was too much as they were having difficulty meeting their own needs. The orphanage itself was short on funds and struggled to provide for all the children in their care.
Early in 2016, Families for Orphans interim director, Debbie Rasmussen, became aware of the situation and discussions were initiated about taking on the Amandla Base & Relief Center as a Families for Orphans project.
Acenda children with their new school supplies and foster parent
The Acenda Project
In 2008 an orphanage located in Beira, Mozambique was shut down leaving many children homeless. Through previous years of volunteer work with an organization called Care for Life, there were many who grew to love these children and could not bear to see them be turned over to the government when the orphanage doors were shut.
Acenda was created to help the children who did not have any living relatives to return home to. Supportive families were found and given training before their foster child was placed in their care. To date, Acenda has placed 20 children with loving foster families in the Beira and Maputo areas. However, Mozambique is extremely challenged with poverty, and the foster families would not be able to take in an additional orphaned child without support. Acenda offers the foster families training on how to care for an orphan, regular monitoring of each orphan, and financial support.
