My Nonprofit Reviews

Welcomed to volunteer by a family friend, I have spent the last two years writing sponsor updates for a sibling set in Cambodia. First, I've watched these kids begin in LWB schools and make friends, gain self-assurance, and catch up to their peers when these siblings had barely had any schooling before. I've seen the repetitive efforts of the LWB team to try to help their foster kids receive the health care they need when current records do not appear accurate. I've seen them try different strategies of education for kids so that they can confidently excel, such as through catch-up classes for kids who might be older or might need more specialized attention. Of course, sometimes teens decide to pursue work rather than education or to be reconciled with a relative rather than live with their foster families, but LWB allows children the choice. It encourages education, but it also tries to provide job suggestions if the child strongly opposes continuing education.

Second, I've seen hope for the foster care system, that even relatively poor families can host a sibling set of five. A foster mother helps her daughters learn how to cook, and a foster father offers his time to tutor his kids in the evening regularly. As with any child, behavior problems do occur, but LWB team members try to talk kids and their foster parents through these troubles so that solutions are reached. I remember writing of one child who had grown up on the streets and therefore had come into foster care with poor habits, but each update emphasized how he seemed so excited to share to his foster parents and to our team members about all the good things happening daily in his life at school. I also love reading about siblings helping siblings, seeing kids who have lived through unimaginable tragedies still laugh and create games with each other.

Third, I love LWB's focus on family-centered care. The fundamental building block of society is the family, and LWB works hard to keep families together if possible. Sometimes, it may help a family start a small business in their community to help keep it together, or it might help an elderly couple taking care of many grandchildren achieve stabler income. When birth families cannot stay together, LWB tries to locate relatives, again to keep the child with biological family and encourage a society built on a community of families. When reunification is not possible, it finds foster parents for the children. LWB continues discussing how to better find and equip foster parents who will best take care of the children. So far, the children I have wrote about have remained in their foster home without having to be abruptly removed. In the case that a child has moved homes, that was due to reunification being possible with family. LWB also celebrates domestic adoption, recognizing the value of families stepping up to adopt children in their own country desperately in the need of committed parents.

LWB exemplifies how to adapt family-centered care to each nation. In the developing nation of Cambodia, it runs a special Safe Haven foster care program for trafficked or abused children in addition to its regular foster care program. In another nation that discourages foster care outside of institutions, LWB runs on-site family care within the institutions, in which foster parents live in an institution’s private wing and care for a group of orphans.

I had the privilege of interviewing volunteers of various levels for a research project. I heard how the CEO herself has taken two orphaned children under her wing, so to speak, to try to help them achieve equal legal status to their non-orphaned peers. Each person I corresponded with passionately wanted to serve children and many had adopted children of their own, not just healthy children, but kids with medical needs. After all, LWB began on a quest to provide dire heart surgery for a child needing it.

LWB continually innovates and improves its structures to match the community. Amy Eldridge herself expresses the need for considering the peculiarities of cultures and communities when assessing and addressing needs in her book "The Heart of Community." Reading that book sparked my own research interests and led me to learn more about family-centered care for orphaned and impoverished children around the globe.

Lastly, the LWB community cares for each other. My supervisors care about my personal life and interests, they will create flexibility in my volunteer schedule when I have a particularly busy school schedule, and they voluntarily advised me through a research project. I have had positive, encouraging email interactions with the CEO, and she sends truthful emails weekly, not hiding tragedies when they do happen (such as when a heart patient's surgery ends unsuccessfully) but not without uplifting hope. The bright faces of impoverished parents who receive a new home or receive sponsorship for their baby's surgery cannot be understated. Despite my loaded university schedule, I hope to continue volunteering here and will happily recommend it to others. Altogether, LWB has inspired in me a deeper love for international kids and communities, and I look forward to watching more lives be transformed by this organization and its statement: "Every Child Counts."