The PeKa Project for Beautiful Gate 2

Josh is a father and husband firstly, but also a public middle school teacher, traveler, coach, marriage mentor, tennis player and an ambassador for BGL 2! 

 

Josh has traveled to more than 90 countries and volunteered in many. This includes helping in the construction of an AIDS clinic in The Gambia, West Africa, volunteering at a malnourished children's home in San Salvador, El Salvador, organizing a sports camp in rural Romania, site prep for the expansion of an orphanage in Primo Tapia, Mexico and caring for children who live at the local garbage dump in Guatemala city 

 

 

More than six years ago, we started the international adoption process as a way of adding to our family. Four and a half years later we were finally matched with a little boy from Lesotho! He is an amazing boy, full of energy and a zest for life and new experiences. After going to receive him, and spending eight weeks traveling the area, a passion began to grow for my son's country of birth and I started wondering how I could give back.

 

 

Lesotho is a deeply suffering country, afflicted by overwhelming poverty (2 in 5 people live on less than $1 a day) and extreme disease (over 1 in 4 people are HIV positive). The children of Lesotho are sometimes abandoned in trash dumpsters, toilet pits, or found alone in a forest. In a nation of 1.9 million people, there are an estimated 300,000 orphaned children (approx 15% of the total population)

 

Beautiful Gate Orphanage gives many children in Lesotho the opportunity to be more than just one of these statistics. It strives to give them the opportunity to be children… and give them a chance at life. Its ultimate goal is finding them “forever families” in Lesotho and abroad.

 

However, the orphanage is at capacity and only mandated to take care of children up to the age of six. After that age, the children are forced into the broken Lesotho foster care system, where they very often end up a victim of human trafficking or child labour.