From Orphan To Ophthalmologist - How Harvest Children's Home Is Transforming Lives With Mark Dunn

In this episode, Nika and guest Mark Dunn, the Board President for Harvest Children's Home (HCH) in Cameroon, Africa, delve into the critical and expanding need for support for orphans in Africa. They discuss the severe conditions many of these children face, including the aftermath of AIDS/HIV, civil unrest, and other adversities, which leave them without essential life necessities such as adequate shelter, nutrition, clean water, and access to education.

Mark shares insights into how HCH is making a significant difference in addressing these challenges. Through their work, HCH is not just offering basic needs but is also transforming lives by providing a beacon of hope and support to those who have faced immense hardships from a young age, showcasing the profound impact of collective efforts and compassion in changing the world, one child at a time.
 
CONNECT WITH THE GUEST:

• Connect with Harvest Children's Home: https://harvestchildrenshomes.org/
• HCH on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HarvestChildrensHome/

CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie
Instagram: instagram.com/biohacking4babes
TikTok: tiktok.com/@biohacking4babes
YouTube: youtube.com/@NikaLawrie
Facebook: facebook.com/biohacking4babes

SUBMIT A QUESTION OR REQUEST A TOPIC:
I would love to hear from you! Please record your question or topic request to be featured in a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/NikaLawrie

DISCLAIMER:
*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business or personal success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hey everybody and welcome to the show. I am super excited for my guest today. He has an amazing organization that he is the board president of. Mark Dunn. He is the board president of Harvest Children's Home and Orphanage located in Cameroon, africa. Mark, thank you so much for joining me. It's great to have you here.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Yeah, super glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Awesome. So can you tell me the backstory behind Harvest Children's Home, like what it is, how it got started and how you got connected with the organization being all the way in Cameroon? What is, what is that story?

Speaker 2: 0:49

Yeah, yeah, well, that's quite a quite a long story, but Harvest Children's Home started off as a feeding station. The guy who founded it is is a is a native of Cameroon. His name is Valentine Mbong, or Mbong Valentine Felix, as they would say there. Yeah, and he just saw the massive poverty and the huge need for not only orphaned children, but even just impoverished children, and so he just the church across the street donated some land and they started cooking food there and just inviting the poorest of the poor. Yeah, this was in the late nineties. Then, in the early two thousands, they built a traditional Cameroon hut so picture, mud bricks, wooden shutters and a thatched roof, and they put 30 kids in one of those. And the funny thing is they were better off, though, in that mud hut than they were before. So they were getting, yeah, yeah, they were getting education and getting some food and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Well then, valentine did some traveling. He spent quite a number of years in the us, um, he's got four master's degrees he's got one from paris and and three from the us and during his travels he started raising money, um, to build an orphanage. And so, in 2005, construction of harvest Harvest Children's Home began. It was finished about a year later and they started populating it. So it's been running since 2005 now for 15 years and we got connected through one of our current board members named Christy Mollier, and she lives down in Austin and at the time she was coming to our church in Colorado Springs.

Speaker 2: 2:26

I was a pastor there and she just started feeling like she really wanted to make a difference in the lives of orphans and for some reason, cameroon was on her heart.

Speaker 2: 2:35

So she did some research, ran across some information about Valentine and the original church that was involving in Pinal Valley, california, and she ended up in 2007 going on a trip to meet those guys, first to California and then they all flew to Cameron. It's like single lady, early 30s, she's going halfway across the world by herself. That's crazy. I was like I know it, yeah. So we gave her some money for her trip and stuff. But she came back with such a glowing report that the next year my wife and I and several other people from the church went and took a trip there and it was just such an incredible work. Yeah, we just told the other people involved we want to be a part of this at the deepest level, and so Susan's been the treasurer and the secretary for a long time and I was one of the vice presidents and been the president for two and a half years now of the organization. So that's kind of our connection story.

Speaker 1: 3:43

That's amazing. Yeah, I mean how brave she must have been to just travel across the world and do that, and she's still pretty amazing yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:51

That's awesome so. So Cameron is a really kind of unique country and there are a lot of challenges that a lot of the individuals that live there face. You know, some of the ones I know about are like the AIDS HIV epidemic. My understanding is there's a civil conflict within the country as well. That's caused some issues. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on there and also why that's affecting so many children, why there's such a need to support the orphans there?

Speaker 2: 4:20

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I mean Cameron's, like many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia. I mean there's a big orphan problem. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I mean Cameroon's, like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia. I mean there's a big orphan problem.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:30

And AIDS, especially in Africa, has been a really big problem. You know, once the virus hit there, it spread very quickly, and so in Cameroon right now, there's 1.2 million orphans and vulnerable children oh my gosh, yeah. And 350,000 of them are AIDS orphans. So you can see the magnitude of the problem. That's like a fourth of the kids there right are AIDS orphans. I mean malaria, yellow fever, I mean get some. Sub-saharan Africa is the second most disease-infested area of the world.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:02

So you know disease and illness, viruses. They claim a lot of lives. The conflict has claimed a lot of lives as well. Not a ton of people have died, but the problem is it's created almost 2 million people of concern in the country. In other words, these are people who have fled. It's kind of funny because people are fleeing the Boko Haram in Nigeria into Cameroon, right, and then people are fleeing the conflict in Cameroon to Nigeria. But you've got these people going back and forth and right now there's IDPs, which are internally displaced persons, almost 700,000 people who've been driven from their home, their family business, their family farm, and they're just living in camps or they're living in the jungle. You got refugees coming in from other countries and asylum seekers, and they're all living in terrible poverty, Incredible conditions that you and I can barely even comprehend, and so that creates a bigger orphan problem. Obviously, you get people being killed in wars. Their homes are being burned, they're living in poverty, they're dying quicker, they're more susceptible to diseases and water-based diseases and things, and so it exacerbates the problem.

Speaker 1: 6:18

What's the conflict about? How did that get started?

Speaker 2: 6:23

it started in 2016 and, and so, going way back to world war one, cameron was, uh, held by germany at that point in world war ii.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Then then the french and the british came and they kicked out the germans, and then they split the country and so you have what's called the francophone section, which is the the area of the country and that's probably three-fourths of the nation. They speak French, they have French laws, french form of practicing law, french forms of government and all of that kind of stuff, and then you have the two Anglophone sections that speak English and they practice things more like Britain would, britain would, and so there's been well, there's been kind of a quiet plan to try to convert all the English-speaking people to French, and they started slowly sending in lawyers that couldn't speak English, teachers that couldn't teach the kids English they would teach them in French or Pidgin and this started an outcry in 2016. The teachers started striking and marching, the lawyers started striking and marching. Yeah, so I'll try not to do that, but the government sent troops to quell the picketing, if you will, but ended up shooting a bunch of people, which then rose up a group of rebels.

Speaker 2: 7:55

And now you've got, yeah, influence sections are looking to start their own country. They call it ambisonia, they're trying to form their own government, and so it's just a big mess and it breaks my heart, because for so long they were ruled by white people from european countries. Then they finally get their freedom. Now they're killing each other because they speak a different language.

Speaker 2: 8:16

it's just heartbreaking yeah, absolutely yeah, but then you know, once people start dying, then you kind of almost lose sight of the problem and you just it's all anger and hatred and revenge.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Right. So I mean many, many kids have been affected by this, obviously, and they're coming to Harvest Children's Home. What are these kids like when they first get there? What do you see? Are they starving? Are they missing clothes? What do they look like?

Speaker 2: 8:44

Yeah, we get them from a couple of different sources. Sometimes the government workers bring, bring kids in that they find living in the streets or an abandoned car or whatever. Sometimes family members bring them and that's the most common thing, because you know their aunts or uncles died. You know, all of a sudden, all these kids are piling in on one relative, right right, their aunts or uncles died.

Speaker 2: 9:04

You know, all of a sudden, all these kids are piling in on one relative Right. They're all trying to live in one mud hut. They have one meal a day at best, no running water, no education, no electricity, no sanitation, you know. And so they come to Harvest Children's Home, and typically in pretty rough condition. Yeah, they're always almost always malnourished. They're always behind in education.

Speaker 2: 9:26

Um, they usually just come with the clothes on their back and um, yeah, so that's, that's how we take them in, but we're always, always happy to to welcome new kids into the family absolutely.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Yeah, um are they. I mean, is there an age range? How, what? What age are they usually coming, or is it just vary?

Speaker 2: 9:44

It does vary. We won't typically go below two years old because we don't have the bandwidth to watch infants, how much more time it takes to watch an infant. And then, when they're 18, they're supposed to leave, based on the laws of the country. Right now, during the conflict, we've got kids that are 20, 21 years old because they have nowhere to go. Their relatives have fled the area and we just can't send them out. We can't send them. It's not safe. Yeah yeah, it's not safe at all. So, yeah, so we've got a pretty good range from three to probably 23 right now, but typically it's about three to 18.

Speaker 1: 10:18

So when the kids get there, outside of obviously feeding them and giving them shelter, what does Harvest Children do for them?

Speaker 2: 10:28

Well, we try to care for all the macro areas of health, as I put it. So you have physical conflict, you know, and things like that, yeah, yeah. So we try to integrate them quickly with other kids. You're familiar with the story of Nellie Brown. It's on Nellie Brown who just came. He's a four-year-old boy and he got adopted by Kelly Bride and she walks with him and spends time with him. So we try to connect older kids with younger kids, make sure they get a support network right away where they feel loved and they're having fun. Of course, there's never any problem feeding them. They're hungry, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:22

And our cooks are the unsung heroes of the orphanage. They still cook over, you know, wood fires and they cook for 70 people a day. That's incredible. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I wouldn't want to do that job. Um and so, yeah. And then they have devotionals in the morning and evening and they have a church across the street, and so we, we come from a Christian perspective, if you haven't picked up on that yet. But, um and so we, we just try to make sure we address everything. They get medical care, um, they get education. Of course, the last three years the schools have been closed because of the conflict, but this last year we hired some teachers who were working.

Speaker 2: 11:56

And they came to our children's home. They were teaching our kids right there and it was wonderful, and then we had to kick them out because of COVID. So it's been a challenging year, not just here in the States but in other places.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Yeah, for sure, what does COVID look like right there? Are the kids facing that, or is it spreading as rapidly as here, or what does that look like?

Speaker 2: 12:16

It's not spreading nearly as rapidly. I think they're finding that all across Africa, perhaps because of some of the medications they grow up with that they use to treat malaria have shown some effectiveness in treating COVID. And the other deal is that there's a few really big cities and then there's a ton of open space. So, for instance, harvest Children's Home is about a kilometer from a little village called Fundong and there's just several thousand people there. It's very agrarian and lots of farmland, and so you don't have them packed as America, you don't have them traveling as much as Americans do, and so that really helps as well, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Well, at least for once, Africa is not, you know, as hard hit with one of the pandemics. Fingers crossed, it stays that way.

Speaker 2: 13:05

So yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 13:07

So how many kids do you guys usually have at Harvest Children's Home?

Speaker 2: 13:12

It varies between in the mid-40s and mid-70s. I mean we could sleep over 100 if we needed to. But our population there's usually about 90% that are there for a long time and then there's 10% that floats in and out. Heart-hurting families bring in the young ones because the older ones can help with the farm and stuff like that, you know. But sometimes when they get older they come and take them back, you know. So we always make sure that that family has first say so you know whether the kids come or go and things like that.

Speaker 2: 13:44

But while they're in our care. We take super good care of them.

Speaker 1: 13:46

So, yeah, yeah, 50, 60, 70 kids yeah, very so you talked earlier about some of the kids are, you know, 18 and up and I know from working with you over the last year some of them have even gone on to university and things like that. What are some of the success stories? Do you have any that you could share about some of the kids that were previously there, or some that are currently there and getting ready to do other things?

Speaker 2: 14:09

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And getting ready to do other things? Yeah, yeah, no, totally. So this year, just as a quick data point, we got 16 of our kids who are going for either university or trade school education and we look for sponsors here in the US. We pay for their education until they graduate what we call high school, and then we look for sponsors from that point, because we don't have the budget to send all these kids to university. But so far I think 11 of them have been picked up and there's only five more remaining.

Speaker 2: 14:39

So one kid wants to go to agriculture school, he wants to learn how to raise chickens, and one wants to go to mechanic school and he wants to teach other orphans how to fix cars and small engines so they can make a living. I know, but I mean we have some incredible success stories. Donald is one of our graduates he's in his fourth year now of civil engineering school and an incredible kid. He's already a leader at his church and he sings and plays instruments and I mean he's just a super talented kid. Chiffon is another one who graduated a number of years ago and he's in his last year of ophthalmology school.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Oh my gosh, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 15:15

Yeah, now ophthalmology. There is more like optometry here. He's not going to be doing eye surgery, but he's already volunteering time helping poor people check their vision and prescribe glasses for them and really making a big difference.

Speaker 1: 15:29

I mean going from being an orphan to that is a huge deal and takes a lot of care and support, so it's a big, big, big accomplishment.

Speaker 2: 15:38

It's a huge deal. I love to talk about life trajectory. When the kids show up, like I said, they're living in a mud hut with maybe eight or 10 other relatives because the parents have died, and all the kids are crammed in. They don't even have a bed. They throw a bunch of grass in the corner and they pile in the corner. One meal a day, no education upset that. And then they come to Harvest Children's Home and they're loved and they're cared for, they're fed. Well, we have a freshwater well right there on site, so they get clean water, they get medical care, they get education. And yeah, I mean I can't imagine Chiffon's life, you know, maybe he's just an agrarian farmer and he's, he's happy and content, I don't know. But now he's going to graduate as an ophthalmologist and make a huge difference. And so, yeah, I mean our kids are. They're amazing, you know. We watch them grow up and they're becoming such solid, solid kids, you know.

Speaker 1: 16:34

That's just so cool. I love that. Yeah, so do you do. You usually stay in touch with most of the kids after they've left.

Speaker 2: 16:37

I wouldn't say most, because a lot of them just you know they're older teenagers and they want to get out I remember that my mom, my dad, yeah, yeah, I'm out of here.

Speaker 2: 16:47

Yeah, yeah, um, but I do stay in touch with a lot of them, some of them that I talk with regularly Joel, joel, we just helped get him to United Arab Emirates. He wanted to go and live there and he learned to be an electrician, so he just moved there a little while ago. But he thank God for WhatsApp, right, we use that a ton, yeah, so Joel stays in touch. Clovis is a pastor we put through seminary. He stays in touch a lot. Sheena we just had her all over our Facebook page, right.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Yeah yeah, she's a single mom. She lost her job because of COVID. She was a teacher, and then she got a hold of us under a month ago and said Dad, I don't know if I can pay my my rent and feed my daughter, and I'm tired of sitting at home doing nothing which I love. Go Sheena, and she sent us this incredibly humble list. She wanted to do hair and makeup, and so she needed a chair and a mirror and a blow dryer.

Speaker 1: 17:44

Yeah, I still have the list. I don't think it was more than six or seven items, maybe.

Speaker 2: 17:49

No, no, she wasn't asking for the moon at all all. We sent her 360 us and it changed her life. Now she's working, she's earning money again and and uh, you know. So I stayed a lot in touch with sheena um chiffon. You know the kid who's going through ophthalmology school. Finyan emil wants to be a mechanic. I mean, these kids pay me all the time either on facebook or whatsapp, or susan you know, we're constantly getting messages.

Speaker 2: 18:11

Hi, hi mommy, hi daddy. Some call me uncle, some call me daddy. Yeah, I don't care, it's cool.

Speaker 1: 18:18

That's awesome. I reckon it's great. So you've mentioned a couple of the stories about kids that you've continued to support or, like those who want to go to a university and you try to pull together scholarships for them. How are ways that the listeners can support Harvest Children's Home if they wanted to, or, you know, support these kids directly?

Speaker 2: 18:38

Yeah, we recommend everything comes through us, not because we're control freaks, but because Cameron's in exceeding the corrupt country. It used to be the most, it used to be the number one most corrupt country in the world, Now it's number two high am Nigeria. So I'm just saying you don't, you don't ship anything direct, yeah, yeah. And so, of course, all deductions to harvest children's holds are tax deductible, which is kind of cool too. But and we were in touch with the kids and we know how to get money to them safely but yeah, right now, like I said, we're looking for sponsors for a few more kids to get into university. That's one way to support just monthly donors. You and I both know every big or small nonprofit runs on donations.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Yeah, yeah, and so we're no different. We got about 30 people a month that donate regularly in a few churches, and that's it. We're not real big, but we have big plans. Yeah, I mean, that's the best way to help. I mean, if you're a person of faith, we, we always solicit prayer. You know, every once in a while we need volunteers for different things. We do take trips periodically, and sometimes we take a team of diet people, medicine, medical people or things like that. And then, of course, you can always stay in touch with with us on Facebook and on our website, harvestchildrenshomesorg.

Speaker 1: 19:58

I know you and I had been talking a while ago about maybe doing some kind of ambassador program. Are you guys looking for people to kind of, you know, represent Harvest Children's Home? Maybe they can't donate financially, but are there ways that they can still spread the word, kind of help people out in that sense?

Speaker 2: 20:16

Oh, yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah, I mean we are looking to build a small army of people who will just go brag on Harvest Children's Home, talk to their friends, talk to their coworkers, talk to their families and tell them about the good work that we're doing. So if anybody wants to know more about Harvest Children's Homes, they should surely contact us. They can do it through Facebook or I can give you my email address. It doesn't matter. But, yeah, we can train you. If you get good enough and want to, we can give you a PowerPoint presentation you can show people, but one step at a time. First thing is just tell people about the good work. Like us on Facebook, share our posts right and get other people involved. The more people that know about it, the better, and the world's full of crummy news right now, anyway, so I think it's great to share good news.

Speaker 1: 21:11

Yeah, I think one of my favorite things, that I've really taken heart working with you guys over the last year and getting to know you know what Harvest Children's doing for these orphans is my favorite thing is that I can see this direct connection directly from the things that you all do to the support for the kids. There's not these big middlemen, there's not. You know, the money is not being funneled a certain way. It literally is. Dollars come in, kids get helped, cared for and supported and I love that, the smallness, the direct connection to helping the kids. I think that's such an important thing, especially with you know you see some organizations kind of make a bad name and you don't want to be bundled into that, but you guys really are, you know, a direct connection to these kids and it's.

Speaker 2: 21:59

it's just amazing yeah, and that's very true. I I appreciate you mentioning that. Yeah, 95 of everything we get in goes right to cameron yeah as it stands right now. So we're we're excited and that's one of the reasons we got involved because we could. We could meet the kids, see the kids, watch them grow up, love on them, support them, care for them firsthand. You know, it wasn't. It wasn't like sending 50 bucks off to maybe a great organization, but you don't know where it goes.

Speaker 1: 22:27

Right.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Yeah, absolutely do.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Yeah, what? What plans do you guys have for the future? Are you thinking about opening more locations or what? What do you feel like doing?

Speaker 2: 22:37

Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah, I mean, I've been praying recently that we could open a hundred orphanages before I die.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Yeah, I'm going to live to 150, right, yeah, yeah, no, no, we really. You know, we've been involved for 12 years, susan and I. We've tweaked this thing. We've written job descriptions, we know how to recruit good workers, we've written all sorts of policies for the kids, even a bunch of COVID policies here recently in the last few months, and we're starting to kind of figure out what to do and how this works. You know, through a lot of trial and error and stuff, yeah, yeah and so it's time to replicate this.

Speaker 2: 23:13

You know, right now we're touching dozens of lives, maybe, maybe 150, 200 lives over the life of the orphanage thus far, for kids who have come and gone. Um, I want to. I want to be touching 2 000 lives to 200 000 lives, because once you establish an orphanage and you put a good staff in there, it's just generation after generation of kids that go through there and get help. And to me, it's proven even more by when you hear what our kids say about the place Lizette, one of our graduates. She was our very first university graduate with a degree in biology. Oh my gosh. Yeah, lizette was awesome.

Speaker 2: 23:52

That's so cool and she's still awesome and so she's teaching chemistry and biology now to adults and, yeah, and they're doing some hair work on the side. She just got married, her husband's in the us, she's trying to get over here and, um, I mean, it's just amazing what she says. She'll. She says things like and I've got written testimonies, but she said I don't know what my life would be if I hadn't passed through those blessed doors. And wow, sorry, no no, I love it.

Speaker 1: 24:20

It's amazing, it's yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Yeah, the life change is what keeps me going, you know, to see these kids just flourish.

Speaker 1: 24:29

Yeah, you know it's just incredible.

Speaker 2: 24:31

So we want to see this happen over and over and over again. And you know, I know they're going to vary in price. But our next orphanage right now we're looking at a $400,000 project. It'll be on two and a half acres, which is great because we can have our own farm right there in a soccer field, because in Cameron you have to have a soccer field, you know and. But it's a six building complex plus some some, you know, small building for maintenance and things like that.

Speaker 2: 24:58

So it's a big project, but you know, once you do it, man, they just keep coming and they just keep.

Speaker 1: 25:04

But then you think about. You know 400,000 sounds like a lot of money, but when you really put it in perspective, on one what it costs to build, you know just one building here in the U S versus an entire compound there, and then also how many lives you're going to literally change from the ground up. 400,000 is not that much money. And so I really I hope to see you guys, you guys fundraise and pull that off, and I think it's incredible.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Yeah, yeah, so do we. We're excited about it. We sure appreciate it. Even being on your show today helps us get the word out.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Yeah, yeah, it's great. I'm happy to have you guys definitely. So you mentioned it a little bit before. You know where you guys can, where listeners can connect with you online. I'll be sure to link the website and stuff in the show notes, but where would be the best place for them to connect with you? Is it directly through the website? Is it on social media?

Speaker 2: 25:59

Yeah, our website is pretty static. If you want history, background pictures of all the kids and their bios who's on the board? How did it start? That's a great place to go and there's a contact form on there, so it's a great way to get a hold of us. But facebook is another great way. You can just message us on facebook and that's where the the latest, greatest content is, where nika does her magic and and uh, and yeah, I mean you hear all the great stories. Um, you see what's going on and what our current efforts are, and you can message us through that too, and so, um, anyway, you want to get involved. You need more information. You want to know how to donate, anything at all? Just please reach out to us. Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 1: 26:37

So, mark, I have one more question for you, but before I do that, I want to put you on the spot a little bit. Can you tell me what do you think has been like the, the best moment for you or the most inspirational thing you've experienced from working with Harvest Children's Home? What is the thing that just sparks that passion in you?

Speaker 2: 26:57

Well, the life change is what sparks the passion. Maybe it was a conversation with Clovis. Clovis is an albino and he's a pastor now and he is the only kid to ever come to harvest children's home. That nobody dropped him off, oh my gosh, I don't know his backstory because nobody knows his backstory, but he walked in and he never left and yeah, yeah, seriously, and then we put him through seminary and now he lives in the capital city of yaounde, which is, gosh, nine, nine hours away by bus, um, and he's starting a church there and doing good things.

Speaker 2: 27:32

But one day I was talking to Clovis and he he said when I found harvest children's home, I felt that it was built just for me. Yeah, I know, yeah, I mean it answered every, every problem in his life, every issue you know, and even even Donald. I remember interviewing him and he said both of my parents died and when I came to Harvest Children's Home I didn't know what my life would be. I mean, here's a little kid. I mean he was one of our first intakes in 2005, one of our first kids, and then he's been gone for five years now, so he's probably 25, 24, something like that, but anyway, he might've been six or seven years old when he showed up at HCH and he said I didn't know what my life would be.

Speaker 2: 28:25

He said but now I have this huge family. You know all these brothers and sisters and parents like me. You know I'm one of his parents and the staff. You know all these brothers and sisters and parents like me. You know I'm one of his parents and the staff. You know, and and those, those moments, being there face to face and hearing those kids and the and the, just the way they love the place and the value that they place on everything that was given to them there, that's.

Speaker 2: 28:49

that's what keeps me going.

Speaker 1: 28:51

Yeah, that's so amazing.

Speaker 2: 28:56

Yeah, I was just trying to hold back tears with you. Oh, me too. Yeah, I'm bad.

Speaker 1: 28:59

Yeah, so all right, mark, on that note. My last question for you is what advice do you have for someone who wants to make change either in their life, in their community or at a global level? Either in their life in their community or at a global level.

Speaker 2: 29:14

I think what I tell people a lot is you can't fix it all right. If we look at all the poverty in the world, or all the kids that need education, or all the hunger or all the bad water or all the whatever, you just want to curl up in a ball because it's way too big. So my big thing is to focus. If you're a person of faith, I would say pray and ask God where do you want me involved? Even if you're not, you can just contemplate, get out a map, do some research and focus on one issue in one place. Don't try to solve world hunger, but maybe you can solve hunger in one city, in one country, at one orphanage. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2: 29:58

Just as a matter of fact, $45 a month pays for everything our orphans need, from food to education, to medical care, to their percentage of the staff, overhead and stuff like that. So it just gives you an idea of what your money can do in places, especially outside of the U? S or Europe. And I'm not saying don't get involved there, um, but your money can go a long way, a lot of places, even if you don't have much. But the big thing is focus and and on one area, in one place, otherwise, otherwise you spread yourself, your resources, your time much too thin. But the cool thing is is that if Mark does what he's supposed to do and Nika does what she's supposed to do and everybody else does what they're supposed to do, then we can accomplish a lot.

Speaker 2: 30:45

A lot yeah, yeah yeah, we can make a lot of change in a lot of different places, so that's what my advice would be.

Speaker 1: 30:52

I love that. I'm all about simplicity and focus and even if you don't know what your purpose is, pick something and start with that and learn and then grow and change over time and kind of figure that out as you go. So love that. Yeah, awesome. Anything else you want to share, mark?

Speaker 2: 31:12

Not that I can think of off the top of my head, but I do appreciate the time. I appreciate the time your listeners are going to put in just considering this. At least it's a good story they can share with someone else.

Speaker 1: 31:25

Absolutely, I hope everyone tells the world about Harvest Children. I think it's such an amazing organization.

Speaker 2: 31:31

Definitely. Thank you, yes, awesome, we appreciate you. Thank you, yes, awesome, we appreciate you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Well, thank you so much for being here today, mark. I really appreciate your time and just the amazing support that you're doing for all of these kids and Susan as well. I just I really want to recognize you guys for the good work you do and how how grateful I am to have been connected with you guys Awesome.

Speaker 2: 31:51

Thank you so much. Yeah, how grateful I am to have been connected with you guys Awesome. Thank you so much, yeah, super glad to be here. Awesome Thanks, mark. All right, take care.