Friday, August 17, 2007

Girls Gobal Education Fund

I have mentioned Girls Global Education Fund in passing before but have just now gotten involved, and I am so excited. The translator that came with JinMei (and again is coming with Xianbei) is named Matthew. Although he is helping with with A Heart for China, his job is working with GGEF. It is an organization that finds sponsors to send girls that live in rural China to school who otherwise would not get any formal education. It's is amazingly cheap for us to send a girl to school and yet education is priceless to a child's future. For an elementary aged girl it is $40 a year, a middle school girl is just $80 a year and a high school is only $240 a year - yes, for a whole school year! When I first signed up last month, I chose to sponsor an elementary aged girl. When Matthew emailed me about the girl I was to sponsor, he told me that she has two middle school sisters and a high school sister that he is also looking for sponsors. He asked me to pray that all these girls will be sponsored and be able to go to school. They are a family of 6 kids - the others, a brother going to school already and an older sister that hasn't gone to school for years. She stopped going to school so she could help support the family; both of their parents died a few years ago of illness. They are living with grandmom and uncle. When I got the email, I was so moved that I called my best friend to tell her the story. That evening Mike and I talked about it and decided to sponsor the two middle school girl and my mom would sponsor the elementary age girl, our original assignment. Before I went to bed, my best friend called me back and said she would sponsor the high school girl! Within a couple hours we had all four sponsored and I was emailing Matthew back. He was so excited to get our news that he said he was immediately making the three hour round trip (on his bike - he does not have a car) to go tell the family! How amazing to have these kids so excited to have the opportunity to go to school. What a difference it will make in their lives.

If you are so moved by the ease to make such a huge impact on a child for very little financial commitment, please visit Girls Global Education Fund to learn more. There are many more girls waiting to be sponsored. If you sponsor, mention me to be the coordinator - I've volunteered to organize correspondence for those signed up through me. Thank you for your support!

2 comments:

Middle-Aged Moi said...

We do a similar program in Guatemala, where one of the missionaries from our church is. It is such a blessing for these girls to get an education. They have many more opportunities this way!

Unknown said...

What a wonderful post. I am off to learn more. Thanks for sharing.