Services Adoptions It is exciting when we are able to help a child in need of a family find a permanent Christian family of their own. OKHF will work closely with prospective adoptive parents and orphaned children in facilitating a smooth transition to the new family arrangement. Our social partners provide counseling, supervise legal matters, and work with biological parents and others involved.   Who can adopt?   If you have the ability to love a child and to make a lifelong commitment, then you already meet the basic requirements to adopt. In addition, in order to adopt through OKHF we require that you be a professing Christian, be active in a local Christian church, and follow a lifestyle that is consistent with the Christian faith.

Orphans of Rwanda

By JOSH RUXIN

Josh Ruxin is a Columbia University expert on public health who has spent the last couple of years living in Rwanda. He’s an unusual mix of academic expert and mud-between-the-toes aid worker.

Ange Benitha Bamuyugire is not your typical orphan in Rwanda. Orphans in Rwanda are generally living at or beyond the brink of desperate poverty. Ange, however, is a terrific student who’s studying computer science at the country’s finest technical institution, the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. She’ll be starting an internship soon at a Rwandan company that develops websites. But there’s more to her story.

Ange Benitha Bamuyugire

She survived the 1994 genocide. She saw her father brutally slain by a band of killers wielding machetes. Although she survived with her mother and sister, she lost her entire extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Today, Ange’s studies are supported by a superb organization called Orphans of Rwanda. It may be the only one in sub-Saharan Africa focused on university education for orphans, and it now sends more than one hundred students to universities throughout Rwanda. In addition to tuition (cost in Rwanda: about $550 per year), these students receive comprehensive services – health care, housing support and a living allowance – that help them focus on their studies. I’ve met many of them. These students are all stars who, without this organization’s support, would be concentrating on day-to-day survival rather than on their education.

University-educated orphans go on to be leaders in business, their communities, and in service to others. Investing in university education for those who can make the cut will pay dividends for decades and generations to come.

Without much publicity, Orphans of Rwanda received a staggering 1,500 applications for 68 available scholarships this past year. That’s an acceptance rate of less than 5 percent — making today’s selectivity in the Ivy League appear generous. Hundreds of fantastic applicants have to be turned down. This organization is about building human capital in Rwanda as much as it’s about supporting students like Ange, who never thought they would have a chance to go to college.

Assistance to Africa is often viewed from 100 miles up. At the macro level, development assistance, World Bank support and foundation grants are talked about in the multi-million or multi-billion dollar range. But that’s not the only way to make a deep impact. Small, local, carefully targeted support can be truly far-ranging, and is just as important to Africa’s future.