Access is Everything!
As a child I was told I could be anything that I wanted to be when I grew up. That old adage was tested when I was in the 6th grade. As an icebreaker in class our teacher went around the room and asked each of us what we wanted to be when we grow up. Back then, I still saw the saying as true, and answered proudly that I wanted to be a professional softball player. It was in that moment that my dreams were diminished. The teacher looked back at me and in no uncertain terms told me that it wasn't a reasonable goal. I remember a girl in my class, Jessica, who stood up for me and told my teacher that I could be anything I wanted to be and that it didn't matter what she said or thought. I went home that day devastated!
It was at that time in my life I realized that while it was easy to say you can be anything you wanted to be, life was just not that easy.
What if your dreams were stopped right where they started? Would you be where you are today if you didn't push to go further, learn to extend your skills, or dare to challenge yourself?
Like many people, the doors to success and access to possibilities are usually opened by others. Coming from a family in which neither of my parents completed higher than a high school degree it was instilled in me early on that education was the key to success. But, what if I didn't have the access to education readily available to me? Would I still have been so driven or determined to pursue my dreams? What about if I had gone to school hungry and not been able to focus on my lessons, would I still have been able to pass? While these may not have been things I had to worry about, many people still have to today. The lack of access to these basic necessities such as education, clean water, and food is vital to a persons well being and ultimately to their future.
Living in American we are extremely lucky to have access to the basic things that allow us to be successful. Many of us will never experience the pit in our stomachs from extreme hunger. Nor do we suffer from being sick from a contaminated water supply. These are concerns that are part of the daily struggles of many of our families in Hosanna. The access to these things is extremely limited and cause many of the families to live in extreme poverty.
Here at The Hosanna Project, our goal is to help fight some of these issues and to provide the access needed for success for our children and families so they can eventually eliminate the cycle of poverty. The need is great and if the access to these basic things is not provided then many will continue in the same footsteps of those who have gone before them.
Education is not accessed for free like in our American society. If a child wants to continue their education past primary school it costs the family about $9/year for public school and even more if they want to attend a private school. The push for education is not as important to many families as making sure they can make ends meet and provide what little they can to help their family. This leads to about 50% of the children not obtaining an education and even less going past primary school. Not having the access to education past primary school has limited many of the students and the possibilities of them being able to break the cycle of poverty.
Nutrition is another necessity that many of us take for granted as well. We don't always have to think about where our next meal may come from or who we should choose to feed first. Our families often face this on a daily basis since they don't have a steady stream of income coming in to off set this basic need. At The Hosanna Project one of our main goals is to provide this basic need so that we can provide a good starting off point for our families. Daily we provide children who are sponsored a nutritious meal and send them off to school to learn. While we are feeding only one child from that family daily, we are also providing monthly rations of food to these families to help off set the basic needs of the others in that family as well.
Access to these basic things, such as education, nutrition, and clean water are things that we often take for granted, but what if we weren't afforded these at the beginning, would you know any difference? Would you have been able to accomplish what you dreamed of being or doing if you lacked in one of these areas? Consider this a call to action to help us at The Hosanna Project to help provide access to these things so we can allow our children and families to flourish. Sponsor a child for $40/month or a family at $55/month or just make a donation that we can put to work to access these things for our communities success.
