About Where Love Is
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
- Helen Keller
Where Love Is - history
My name is Jason Burton. I have two very sweet younger sisters and a younger brother who were adopted from Ethiopia. The adoptions were a little more complicated than most, so we ended up visiting them in Ethiopia quite a number of times. During that period my family and I fell in love with the kind, welcoming, Ethiopian people and our hearts were broken by the deep poverty and pain that we watched them endure. We also saw that with just a small amount of assistance and love, children in need can rise above their hardships. We’ve felt a call to help them do that, and it’s been heartwarming to see the outpouring of support from friends and family.
There was a point (around march 2007) in the adoption process when we felt that my 12 year old little sister (who was still in Ethiopia) needed someone from our family to be there to love and support her during her long wait to come home. At about the same time, an opportunity opened up for me to volunteer at the Mother Teresa Home for the Dying Sick and Destitute in Addis Ababa. I've dreamed of working in Africa with street children for a very long time, so this was something I was thrilled to do.
The Mother Teresa outpatient clinic provides free medical care for homeless people, and I became friends with a bunch of the street children that were being treated there. I couldn't handle sitting idly by watching the children I had come to love, fighting to survive the harsh realities of street life all alone. It was inevitable that I'd end up getting involved in their lives and try helping them heal and move forward. I started talking to friends about how we could do more to help and ended up bringing one of the boys home to try to reunite him with his mother. His homecoming was a beautiful tender moment, but it was obvious why he’d left home in the first place. The tiny mud house was shared by three families. They had inadequate water, sanitation and food.
I saw how much they were suffering, and how many of the young children were forced to leave home in order to find food for themselves and often their families. I also saw how much they cared for each other - like an extended family - and how much they tried to improve each others lives. Most days I was there, I had children tell me about (or show me) a dying family member. There was very little I could do. You feel profoundly inadequate when a child’s mother dies, and you’ve done nothing to prevent it.
My family helped me form WhereLoveIs to make a difference in the lives of these forgotten street children we have grown to love. WhereLovIs may never grow large enough to make a dent in the widespread poverty across Africa, but it’s my hope that it will have a life-changing impact in the community we serve. That vision is shared by friends in America and Ethiopia, and we’re working together with Village of Hope to realize that vision.
Current Activities
Boys Transition Shelter:
We currently have 17 boys in our Boys Transition Shelter, down from 21 before the summer break. Addisu, Habtu and Jote reunited with relatives over the summer and Abara went back to living on the streets after numerous fights. All of our boys have begun and are enjoying school.There's a strong sense of family and friendship in the home. Several months ago, I realized there were three things the boys always mentioned in their prayers (it's a little hard to follow in Amharic - their primary language) - first they prayed for my health, which had not been good; next they prayed they wouldn't fight, which they knew made me sad; and finally, they prayed that more boys would come to the home to be helped. I was touched that none of these things were selfish.
Outreach:
A group of about 20 street living children approached us to help them get into school. Most of them have either never gone to school or have been out of school for years, so combined with the fact that their motivation seems to wane after using drugs or having a hard night it’s been a little complicated.
The ones that we are successful in getting into school will be coming to our home for breakfast, lunch and tutoring. We will assist children that attend well for two months to come into our home or to find an alternative shelter.
Scouting
The kids have shown a lot of interest in the scouting. We talked to the Ethiopian National Scout Association and they were also positive, but we haven’t moved forward. They want the orientation and vestment of the new scouts to be public, but the political climate is too volatile heading into the 2010 elections.
Long term plans
Link to long term plan page
Underlying philosophy
In the new testament Jesus teaches about the tremendous value of one poor widows mite. Perhaps each of us - orphans, the disabled, poor families, foreign volunteers, community members - has a tremendous capacity to show love and help each other. Yes, a child needs clothes and food, but perhaps what he needs even more than that is to know someone cares about him, that he is valuable as a child of God, that someone will walk along beside him while cheerfully sharing his burden, and that he in turn has something very valuable to offer others. I once took a long walk across Addis Ababa with my father and a homeless boy, Birhanu, who we were helping off the streets. Every block or two we bought 4 kilos of bananas, and Birhanu would scamper up and down each alley we passed. He fed the blind mothers with little children running around half dressed, the young men who had lost their limbs due to leprosy, and the kids who just like him, had no shelter from the rain. He had never been able to give to others before, and to see the look of pure joy on his face left an indelible image in my heart.
We really want to help the children and people to get involved in helping and showing love for each other by doing small acts of service such as caring for those that are sick or visiting the widowed, and orphaned. I’d love to see older children serve as "Big Brothers and Sisters" to children living on the street or in child led homes. They could do so much good by visiting them a couple times a week, counseling them, having fun, and just checking up on them to make sure that they’re doing OK.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little
– Edmund Burke
Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. -Mother Teresa
God gave you these two feet to go visit an orphan. God blessed you with two hands to that you can fix a leaky roof, dig a vegetable garden, or give a little child a hug. God blessed you with with a mouth to speak up on behalf of orphans who are being exploited or to encourage an orphan who is feeling sad. You can use that God-given mouth to go to an orphan and say God loves you and so do I. And you can use your two God-given ears to sit and listen to the child as they tell you about something as mundane as school that day or something as traumatic as how they felt when they saw their mother die. Every single person here has a wealth of God-given resources that they can use to help.
– Craig Greenfield, Urban Halo
I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. - Mathew 25: 35-36
The capacity to give one’s self to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; It is a miracle. - Simone Weil
Know how to listen and you will profit from those who even talk badly – plutarch
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other
– Mother Theresa
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
–Mother Teresa