Try to imagine living in a bleak institution from birth, spending 8760 hours in your first year of life laying in a crib. Imagine being kindergarten age and still the size of a toddler due to malnutrition. Imagine being transferred to an internat orphanage at age seven where you are the newest and youngest child.  You cry your eyes out as you adjust to life with a couple of hundred kids up to the age of seventeen, slowly losing any hope of finding a family. Puberty and maturity come late, and at age sixteen you have  few of social, educational, or life skills required to survive in the world outside the orphanage. 

Now imagine leaving the internat, the only “home” that you have known.

You do not own anything, you don't have any money, and you don't have a family.  Your education is equivalent to about eighth grade at best. You have very few options available to you.

Perhaps you dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer, but you will have to become a seamstress.

Maybe you wanted to be a teacher, instead you will have to learn how to lay bricks.

And even then the obstacles are huge.

When the heat goes off in winter and the temperatures are well below freezing, you shiver in your bed. Your immune system is weak due to lack of adequate nutrition and you are far more vulnerable to the scourges of tuberculosis and other illnesses. If you have a medical crisis you have no savings to fall back on and no family to help out.

Envision trying to prepare a meager meal without any kitchen equipment – you wait in line to borrow a pot, heating the water slowly over a shared burner.

There is no one out there who cares. No one to help you. No one to comfort you when you are ill. Quite simply, you are all alone.

Perhaps a group of five or six friends from work or your church or your street would be prepared to contribute eight dollars each to sponsor one of these children?

This vulnerable teenager would have someone who cares about them and who encouages them to do well and to take care of themselves.

Please consider sponsoring a graduate today by clicking here.

Sponsor a Graduate Orphan. With your help, An Orphan Smiles.