Photo © Courtesy of The Outreach Program
Floyd and Kathy Hammer planned to spend their retirement sailing the world, but when a friend invited them to help remodel a leprosy hospital in Tanzania, East Africa, their plans quickly changed.
What started as a two-month construction program led to a breakthrough – the pair were shocked at how many people lived in desperation and decided they could not stand by and allow children to die of hunger.
They purchased truckloads of maize for villagers to barter with construction supplies and baskets. Day by day, villagers would arrive with stunning, hand-woven grass baskets to barter for maize! Since then, Outreach has purchased over 65,000 baskets!
The Outreach mission was created based on what village leaders identified as the most important needs: safe water, food, medicine, and education. These four needs have become the four promises of Outreach and the mission they continuously strive to achieve.
Food
When food comes, hope comes, and Outreach brings hope to food-insecure families, having provided more than 600 million meals at home and abroad.
In the U.S., Outreach provides nutrient-dense, shelf-stable, protein-rich, and easy-to-prepare meals to vulnerable children and their families, distributed to local food banks and pantries.
Internationally, Outreach provides meals to Children’s Centers, school feeding programs, and emergency relief.
Safe Water
Clean water saves lives! Outreach assesses the water situation of each village to determine what needs to be repaired and implemented.
In some areas, a mobile water system posed the best solution. In others, Outreach’s unique design of solar-powered water purification systems in schools, businesses, and homes was the perfect solution to provide safe water and, in many cases, a micro-enterprise opportunity.
Medical
Healthcare should not be a luxury.
Through The Outreach Program, medical professionals from across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and England travel to Tanzania twice a year to change lives through healing and medicine. Since 2005, Outreach has supported 23 medical missions and coordinated the work of more than 1,200 medical volunteers in Tanzania and Haiti.
In 2004, Outreach developed the Porta-Doc, a Mobile Medical vehicle to provide services to remote villages with limited or no access to medical care. Each week the Porta-Doc travels to rural villages of Tanzania with essential medical supplies. With the Porta-Doc Outreach can care for even more vulnerable children.
Education
The Outreach Program works with local schools to provide support so that children like Isaiah have access to a good education.
Isaiah is one of more than 1,200 children who attend the Outreach Children’s Centers each day. Outreach helps the most vulnerable children access education with nutritious meals, mandatory school uniforms, tutors, and a safe place to eat and play. The pass rates are nearly 100% every year – twice that of the national average.
Each donation helps strengthen the four promises of Outreach. Learn more and donate at outreachprogram.org
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The mission of the Outreach Program is to provide safe water, food, medical care, and education to those in need, at home and abroad.
