Our Mission is to provide all institutionalized orphans the opportunity for a truly successful future by providing the education and life skills necessary to thrive.
Who we are
Who we are
Orphan Angel International Foundation is a 501(c)3 Charity organization, comprised of a volunteer
board of directors and volunteer
workers, driven to provide hope and relief to orphans around the globe.
Orphan Angel International Foundation was founded in 2009 by Larry Hansard, Ted Wachendorfer and Bryan Harveston, all adoptive parents of Eastern European children.
Their goal was to do what ever was in their power to help those that they could not adopt, the ones left behind.
Helping the ones left behind remains our goal to this day!
What makes us different?
We are determined to provide help to orphans in the most efficient and effective ways possible!
Let's start with guaranteeing that 100% of your donation will go to directly impacting the life and future of an orphan! That's right, 100%!
How is that possible?
First, our already low overhead costs are covered 100% by board members.
Second, absolutely no one is paid or compensated for their work done within Orphan Angel. It's our pleasure, not our job.
Years of experience has shown us that pictures and stories don't make a foundation worth investing in, it is the change that comes through their investments and actions.
Because our motivation comes from God, Orphan Angel International Foundation, has dedicated ourselves to not be a "business" with high overhead costs and minimal impact. Instead, we are dedicated to serve 'the least of these", the orphans, the fatherless. This requires that waste nothing.
We are determined to have the lowest overhead costs and unnecessary spending possible. We are to be good stewards of the blessings we are given. We strive for highest level of professionalism and effectiveness obtainable. These are souls that we are working with and they deserve the best that we can give. We are always looking for ways to ensure that the effects of your support have the maximum amount of impact possible in an orphan's life. Our high standards will produce that.
Help us to change lives in the greatest possible way today!
A More Complete View
A Crippling Fact
When a child is abandoned and institutionalized, necessary and seemingly normal life skills are not learned, the brain misses key stages of development and emotional needs are neglected. It’s hard for us to truly understand how these doesn't develop naturally through everyday interactions with other people, but the truth is that without the parent-child interaction and relationship, there is a piece of their humanness that is missing. The logic behind managing normal things in day to day life, such as love, emotions, conflict, learning, time and even possessions is wired incorrectly. Also, the ability to learn is hindered and brain development is delayed. To this point, we have not found a single institution
that houses children while having the resources and/or the focus to truly overcome this.
“During the first years of life, the caregiver-child relationship theoretically contributes to a number of “building blocks” that seem to form the foundation of later social behavior (Ainsworth, 1973; Bretherton & Munholland, 1999). Children who spend part of their early lives residing in an institution typically receive deficient early social-emotional care that may lead to poor social skills in childhood and adolescence.” ... "Post-Institutionalized children tend to have poorer cognitive development and academic achievement, stunted physical development, and higher rates of behavior problems relative to never-institutionalized parent-reared children (Juffer & van IJzendoorn, 2009; MacLean, 2003)
- Megan M. Julian, M.S. and Robert B. McCall, Ph.D.
These missing foundations, poor social skills and ultimately a false sense of reality don’t magically resolve themselves at adolescence, they remain until they are intentionally corrected. It requires at least one consistent, selfless, loving and mature friend or family member, as well as a healthy community around them, for an institutionalized orphan to even understand the need to redefine what reality means to them and to be pushed towards healing. It is completely unreasonable for us to expect them to figure this out and fix it on their own, without having a built in frame of reference to compare it to.
Without this "new reality", this education, an institutionalized orphan is destine for failure in all aspects of their lives, including relationships, careers and even happiness.
We aim to change this!
How We Help
The answer to correct this issue is to provide every orphaned child with a loving, well equipped and mature family that will patiently work with their new son or daughter until all issues are corrected and then remain their family for the rest of their lives.
With 153 million estimated orphans in the world, providing every child with this type of family is not a realistic goal for us to tackle.
So instead, we will do what we can!
1. Raise awareness of the issue and promote involvement.
As you are reading this now, you now know that the number of orphans in this world equal to approximately half of the population of the United States of America. They are all destined to failure without our help. Period. Something is better than nothing, every little bit helps. What your involvement looks like is up to you. We encourage you to adopt! We encourage you to serve! We encourage you give! But whatever you do, please do something!
2. Provide children with trauma therapy.
Since 100% of children that have been abandoned suffer from some type of trauma, we work to provide much needed therapy by working with professional TBRI
practitioners certified by the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at the TCU College of Science and Engineering
to provide much needed healing.
3. Provide tutoring.
Few institutionalized orphans in poorer countries start or finish their education on time, if they finish at all. This increases the difficulty of life and closes many door for success. Just a few hours of tutoring a week can make the difference in an orphan's ability to pass a class or even graduate from a grade. In addition to academic tutoring for school classes and foreign languages, we work to provide cognitive tutoring to help orphans learn how to learn! In the same way that we work with professional TBRI practitioners for trauma therapy, we also work with professionals to provide cognitive tutoring using the Feuerstein Learning Method.
4. Provide higher education.
Whether or not it is college or a trade school, for most institutionalized orphans, higher education is a fairy tale. We work hard to provide the necessary means to provide a higher education to orphans, so that they have the tools necessary to be as successful as possible.
