Hope 4 Kids: A Global Endeavor
By Lee Nelson
For twenty-four hours, Angie Simon experienced firsthand the difficult life of an impoverished African woman. She slept the night in a cramped mud hut with seventeen family members. She worked hard in the fields planting potatoes and walked three miles to the community water well, and then found enough energy to haul heavy buckets back home.
Simon is the director of development and communications for Hope 4 Kids International. “The physical aspects of what they have to do to just survive are amazing, but then you have to add in the layer of life that every member of this family is living with AIDS,” she says.
Hope 4 Kids, headquartered in Phoenix, makes a minimum five-year commitment to these poverty-stricken countries. The time is spent educating residents and enabling them to become self-sufficient economically and spiritually.
Hope 4 Kids is a not-for-profit Christian-based organization that had a humble beginning in the form of one man’s quest to smuggle aid behind the Iron Curtain in Russia. Tom Eggum spent his youth in Iowa as a troubled teen. His strict home life brought out his rebellious side. After the police arrested Eggum for toting a sawed-off shotgun, the department decided to give him a second chance. That pivotal moment changed his attitude and steered him toward helping the destitute.
Eggum made eight successful trips with suitcases of Bibles, medicine, clothes, and other things into the Soviet Union. In 1981, the KGB arrested him, revoked his visa, and sent him away. Undaunted, Eggum began his journeys of assistance to China and Vietnam.
His organization now leads teams of volunteers on two-week missions into villages devastated by poverty and disease. They help restore dignity to children by establishing feeding programs, providing medicine, launching vocational ministries, and digging water wells to help the entire community. The volunteers—who pay up to $4,000 for their own trip—help build hospitals and medical clinics, give out toys, teach work skills, and nurture abandoned and sick children.
“It’s always life-changing for the volunteers,” Simon says. “They catch a passion on these trips. They begin helping out in their own communities, or they come back with us every year.”
Sponsorship for orphans may be done through the organization for $26 per month. Corporations or individuals also can fund the transformation of an entire African village for about $28,000. This pays for construction of a church, medical clinic, and more. One hundred percent of all donations go directly to the projects designated to receive them. Administration costs come from Eggum’s speaking engagements and church sponsorships. Help 4 Kids recently hosted a Charity Poker Tournament at Piñata Nueva in Anthem to raise needed funds.
Since its founding thirty-five years ago, Hope 4 Kids has assisted children in 96 countries. Presently, Hope 4 Kids serves impoverished children in Uganda, Peru, Romania, and Russia, bringing them the basic needs for their survival and, it is hoped, for a long and happy future.
For more information, visit hope4kidsinternational.org or call (602) 979-5516.