Our Family Strengthening Department was birthed to walk alongside families that faced separation & hardship. We endeavor to resource families as they take up their responsibility to raise the children God gifted them.
Family Strengthening
What This Looks Like
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In the beginning (2007), Cherish operated more or less as a traditional orphanage, with children living on-site in family-style homes. At the time, we thought this to be the best way forward for abandoned HIV+ children. We started to realize the very limited success of this model as children started to “age out”. This challenged us to look for a better way. As we started looking deeper into the lives of the children in our care, we found that many had family members. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, & in some cases even a parent. Very quickly we realized a new way forward. A way that moved kids out of an institution & into a family – their family. As good of an institution as we strived to be, we were not a family.
Our Family Strengthening Department was birthed to walk alongside these families. We endeavor to resource families as they take up their responsibility to raise the children God gifted them.
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Partnership is the lens we look through in every situation. We do not exist to raise children. We exist to partner with families as they raise their children. We want to promote dignity & responsibility, not dependence. We work with families, teaching them how to disciple their children. We desire families to know God deeper, parent well, & manage their resources responsibly. We truly cherish life & yearn for families to do the same as we encourage & strengthen them through the process of raising children that learn to live out the gospel in their world. We have reunified almost all of the children that used to call Cherish home with a blood relative.
There are some family situations that are just not safe, & in some situations there is not a family member to be found. In an effort to give those children the best opportunity to grow up as healthy as possible we have placed those children in a foster family.
The foster families have melded these children into their own family & a child who has no family of their own has the next best thing.
At Cherish, we exist to build a hope & a future for children living with HIV & we are convinced it happens best in the context of family.
Family Reunification
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