Cause Champions: Orphan Prevention — Episode 2

Mike Mitchell
I’ve got kind of a fundamental belief that you go with your life as well. And so almost everything that we’ve been involved with has been things that we are not just giving to, but things that we’re really passionate about.

Betsy Mitchell
We had some good friends who were involved with the Global Orphan Project and had been to Haiti, and they really insisted that we go, and it was a little bit out of our comfort zone. But um, but we went and it, it was life changing.

Mike Mitchell
It was, you know, shocking to understand how the vast majority of the world lives and even more shocking to understand that how many children there are without families. And so, you know, it was a fairly cataclysmic event for our family being there.

Betsy Mitchell
It’s difficult even coming back home in the first week. You walk into your home and think of how many bunk beds could fit in it, and it really spoke to our hearts to be generous and to go further in our generosity.

Adrien Lewis
We see these horrible videos of family breakdown and poverty and broken systems all around the world. And in our country, the foster care system is a gateway to homelessness, sex trafficking, and incarceration. And that is why we created CarePortal, to go upstream and help these families at the moment of crisis for them, so that those things never happen to those kids.

Mike Mitchell
One of the things that we learned as we get more involved with Global Orphan Project and CarePortal and what have you, was that 80% of the orphans in the world are economic orphans. And to me that was a shock.

I always thought of Orphan Annie, you know? No, mom, no, dad. But the reality of the situation is, you know, in the vast majority of cases that it’s a child that that actually has a loving parent. Oftentimes a single mom that simply can’t get a job. And children are abandoned in mass to orphanages because the parents can’t care for the kids.

Mike Mitchell
So, at this time, my son had become a, you know, a student at Wheaton and was, I think maybe in his junior year up in Chicago. And he had determined that he wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Mikey Mitchell
So, my dad has always been an entrepreneur and I have as well. Since I was young, I have loved to take ideas and turn them into reality.

Him and I went to Haiti together and we went to Uganda to visit villages and to visit small businesses with people who are really just trying to be good stewards and be generous to the community around them.

And so, that was one way really, that he showed me how not only to be a steward of physical resources, but then to be able to turn those resources into an engine for generosity and for giving and impacting communities at large.

Mike Mitchell
He really latched on to this… this concept that you could have a business that would create jobs, that would change the trajectory of families and really help, you know, avoid family breakdown due to, you know, extreme poverty.

Mikey Mitchell
Specifically, Restoration Apparel is a company that is creating jobs in the largest exploitative industry in the world, which is the sewing industry.

Mike Mitchell
We got on to a higher tech manufacturing process called dye sublimation.

You know, they tell us the ripple effect of that is maybe you know, six, five to six people being supported for each of these jobs. So, you know, it’s grown. We are now in the position of being able to be generous. And so, we’re super excited about the CarePortal. It’s something very specific that we can do in terms of investing.

Mikey Mitchell
And we’re doing so really to try to create one, an engine for generosity for my dad and I and for the rest of our team to be creative in how we give like giving through CarePortal.

But in addition to that, we really want to create a mechanism for dignity for our people and something that is life giving for them and their families for generational wealth and for impact over the long haul.

Adrien Lewis
We hear from businesses all the time that they want to make a difference in their community, but they are not sure how to do it in a way that makes sense for them. Now that CarePortal is here connecting kids and families in crisis with people that want to help using technology. Businesses all over the place are sitting from their offices and they are able to see the needs of real kids who are in and around the foster system who might be approaching homelessness or incarceration and if they just had this one little thing, it could make all the difference.

And using the CarePortal app they can just make a donation and watch that thing happen in real time, in their community, through a local church, who will be at the point of care for that family. And Mikey, with Restoration Apparel, as a community champion they are a great example of that.

Mikey Mitchell
Okay, so it’s super cool at Restoration Apparel is that we actually, as a community champion, get to come together every Tuesday morning and sit and read through the need of someone in our community. And so, a good example would be a single mom who has been in a difficult situation and is in need of a bed for her kids or is in need of rent support for her kids.

And prior to our strategic meeting, after we’ve read that need, we actually all sit down, and we pray, and we pray for that mom and for her kids. And then we meet the need together.

Betsy Mitchell
So, it’s actually been incredible to see what just a tiny little yes, you know, saying yes to a trip and yes to getting to know the Global Orphan Project, how the Lord has used it to create something that is bigger than we could have ever imagined.

Mikey Mitchell
With CarePortal, what I’ve really been most amazed by is that it takes what the church was already doing within a community, especially an under resourced community, and it puts wind behind the sails in a way that allows them to do more and more and multiplies the impact.

Mike Mitchell
Yes, the things that we say and do and how we invest our time and talents and treasures, you know, trying to set a good example for the next generation.

Betsy Mitchell
There’s no way to have any eternal impact. There’s no better way than to help foster in our children and our grandchildren loving, giving, serving in the name of Christ.