Year End Update
As we work to wrap up 2021 and look towards all that lies before us in 2022 we wanted to share an update with you on where we stand operationally, financially, and missionally as we head into the year’s end. As many of you are experiencing personally, COVID continues to be an impactor and influencer in our daily lives, and even now as we have constantly changing travel restrictions with new vairants constanly evolving, it is putting a strain on the relationships we have so carefully tended over the last years. We know it is difficult to stay engaged in a ministry that is so far away and personally unreachable. But, please know, we need each of you, now more than ever.
Operational Update – We are committed to the children in our care, and their families, working to provide spiritual support and education necessary to empower families and communities and transform generations.
Recognizing that 2021 was going to continue to bring challenges that we have never before seen, we worked hard to reduce our budget to reflect the financial challenges we anticipated. We have trimmed programs to only offer the absolute necessary services. We have trimmed staff, spreading the work between fewer hands. We have become as lean as we possibly can while continuing to provide care for some of Guatemala’s most vulnerable children.
We were blessed to have the Directors of Casa Bernabé, Edgar and Sara Salguero and their children, in the States multiple times this year, visiting Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Missouri making new connections and fostering relationships.
We introduced our Virtual Trips for those groups or families who want to stay connected to Casa Bernabé during our inability to host teams, bringing a Casa Bernabé experience directly into your living room or church.
We have seen more children being reunited with their families, some after only a few months in our care, even as we receive more calls for placements. Many of our new children are sibling groups as we are one of a few homes that will receive in children up to 12 years old, and receive both boys and girls. This allows these already fractured families the ability to stay together.
We are still in search of an onsite Missions Coordinator to facilitate our return to hosting teams in 2022. If you or anyone you know might be interested please contact us for details.
Financial Update –
We are grateful for the generosity of so many of you. You enabled us to continue loving, educating, and impacting lives in the name of Jesus.
As we are moving quickly towards the end of the year, we are faced with a trend we began to see developing in August, with giving being down 12% yoy in this same period. The bigger concerning factor is due to that decrease in giving, we have fallen short of our budgeted commitment by 36% over the last four months. Thankfully, due to the beneficence of our donor community in June and July, coinciding with Edgar and Sara’s visit, we have been able to sustain our programming amidst this deficit to meet our commitment. However, we have almost depleted that surplus as the end of the year approaches. What this means, in a dollars and cents, very real way, is that we need to raise $189,000 to finish the year whole.
We are faced with new health-driven protocols, an increased need to receive children, and new governmental rulings demanding we provide virtual classroom education for our community children at the same time as our in-person learning for our CB kids, meaning a need for expensive new technology.
Globally, the pandemic continues to affect all of us to one extent or another. Many Guatemalans are still suffering extreme need as their government is not equipped to handle any type of public support and we continue to face decreased local giving in Guatemala.
Ministry Update –
The Bible talks about fire as a refining tool of our faith, strengthening and clarifying it. We have seen this happening in the lives of our children and staff. The struggles they have all faced over the last two years have caused them to dig deep, to lean into Christ, and to grow.
Our Children’s Home continues to be the heartbeat of our ministry. This past year we had converted our “baby house” into our Covid transition home. With a cessation in calls to receive babies we have been able to take this home and utilize it to receive new children in a safe manner by following a strict Covid intake protocol. We have seen a significant increase in the number of children in need of care. We are also seeing family reunifications happening more quickly as well which is changing the face of Casa Bernabé to better reflect the government guidelines, creating more of a group foster care system as Guatemala has no formal foster care system.
This has also led to the development of Project: Independence. A project dedicated to helping successfully transition those children who will age out of our care into independence. About half of our children on campus are in this program, having grown up within the walls of Casa Bernabé. Their biological families will not be a resource for them in this transition.
Our new school buildings were completed and dedicated at the beginning of the year, a ceremony for not only the 3 new classrooms but also our new administration building. They, and our new soccer field (completed in February of 2020) are beautiful additions to our campus. More importantly, they will have life changing impact on the children who are blessed to use them. We still have almost 300 children enrolled in our Casa Bernabé school, but only our on-campus children are able to attend class in person in an effort to protect those living on our campus. Our community children are attending school virtually. Our older children (10th grade and above living on campus) are all attending school virtually as well. We have turned kitchen tables into classrooms for sometimes 7 or 8 students at a time and our house moms and dads into classroom monitors.
Our Families United team has continued to function in a virtual fashion, with video court hearings via zoom and digital communications with our families in the instances where we are able to maintain those connections. As we move into 2022, we are going to begin making site visits again to check in on the physical, nutritional, and spiritual well-being of our reunited families.
Our clinic continues to be closed to the community but our doctor has been busier than ever as the sole medical provider for the 200 people living on our campus through a global pandemic. Dr. Tabita is getting ready to head into her third year with us and has been an immense blessing. She tirelessly tested and treated all of our children and staff during our early 2021 COVID outbreak, all while managing not to contract the virus herself. Praise God!
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We have been setting our hearts and minds on God as the foundation of our strategic planning process. Without question, it is God’s plan we want, not our own. Our desire is not to just repeat last year but to be intentional in understanding God’s heart and knowing how He will accomplish His mission within our ministry.
While the ministry is evolving, the need has not lessened. We need your financial partnership to finish this year in a position to move forward in 2022. The mountain that stands before us is intimidating but we know that we serve a big God who can take that mountain and throw it into the sea. Our prayer is that you would respond as God calls.
Thank you for taking the time to make it this far in our update. I am so grateful for you, and your heart to know what it happening within our ministry. May you have a wonderful Christmas season.
Blessings,
Ashley Cunningham
US Director of Operations
Casa Bernabé and Friends of Children Everywhere