All of my successes in life can be attributed to one thing. Incredible people help me. This could be said of the family business I started and grew to almost ten million dollars a year. It could also be said for my actual family, where older children agreed to do all they could do to help Amy and me, so that several troubled children could be given a chance as full members of our own family.

Now I look for success in one of the most important undertakings I have ever experienced. I want to help children who don’t have their own families to find new ones.

And I want to help those who are left behind. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to increase what has been started. There is only one answer. I need to do what has helped me to achieve success in the past. I need to get others to help me. Fortunately, there are many who can help. The difficulty is that so many of the people I could turn to are under the misconception that they can’t make a difference.

As 2014 began, between my Facebook page and the Ele Lembra page there were over 119,000 followers. The followers of these pages are mothers and grandmothers. They are fathers and grandfathers. There are a few who ache to be parents for the first time, or to add to their families by adoption. Then there are those like me, who walked away from orphanages with additions to their families, while leaving other children behind. We made promises, if only in our hearts. We promised that if we could do something to help, we would. And to the rest of you, if you haven’t been in that situation, and didn’t make that promise, you would have. Please make that promise now.  The people who follow our Facebook pages and pay attention to my writing are the type of people you see on the news who end up being heroes when
opportunities present themselves. Still, they don’t consider themselves to be heroes. They say things like; “I was just doing what any good person would do.”

I find myself with the challenge of convincing people that while they are too old to adopt, or on very tight budgets, or in poor health, that they can still make a difference. We are all like very fine fibers in a rope. Alone we are weak. Alone we can do very little. But there are more than 119,000 of us! Together, we make an incredibly strong rope. Together, we can accomplish so much! Because we are united in our desires to halt the generationally repetitive situation of children being raised in orphanages, we will stop that chain wherever we can.

Program Chance’s afterschool program (provided by the Ele Lembra Foundation) currently assists twenty juniors and seniors with preparation for continuing education. It is our desire to replicate this program many times over. The cost of this 20 participant program is about $36,000 per year. This means it costs $1,800 per student, per year. (This is also what Program Chance provides as a stipend to its participants, to cover living expenses so that they can continue their college educations rather than dropping out and attempting to join the workforce in a place with an incredibly high unemployment rate). $1,800 per student sounds like a lot of money, but watch this… each group of fifteen of our Facebook friends who donate $10.00 each, per month, supports one child.

Even those who can’t afford $10.00 per month should be able to contribute one dollar per month. It sounds so insignificant. It sounds like it’s not even worth the time to make the donation. It appears that it wouldn’t make a difference. But if each of the 119,000 Facebook friends would donate $1.00 per month, it would be more that 1.4 million dollars per year that goes towards helping orphans and other high-risk youth go on to be successful adults.

Beyond the very significant contributions that our family business makes to Ele Lembra, beyond all of the proceeds from my writing going to the same cause, I am going to step it up. Beginning this month, January of 2014, Amy and I have decided to contribute $250.00 of our personal money, per month, to Ele Lembra. Both of my brothers and their wives, as well as the current CEO of White Knight and his wife have also decided to make personal contributions of $250.00 a month, per couple. I am asking for you to help us to help these children. I need you to be a fiber in the rope that we use to move children from institutions to successful adulthood. If you can only contribute $1.00 per month, know that it makes a difference. If you can give more, please do.

Please use the Angel Wings that God has placed in your hands. Click on the Smiley to see how you can help.

Thank you for using your wings!