How did you start? Why Ethiopia?

My name is Jason Burton. I have two very sweet younger sisters and a younger brother who were adopted from Ethiopia. The adoptions were a little more complicated than most, so we ended up visiting them in Ethiopia quite a number of times. During that period my family and I have fallen in love with the kind, welcoming, Ethiopian people and have had our hearts broken by the deep poverty and pain that we have seen them endure. We have also seen that with just a small amount of assistance and love, children in need can rise above their hardships. We’ve felt a call to help them do that, and it’s been heartwarming to see the outpouring of support from friends and family.

 
There was a point (around march 2007) in the adoption process when we felt that my 12 year old little sister (who was still in Ethiopia) needed someone from our family to be there to love and support her during her long wait to come home. At about the same time, an opportunity opened up for me to volunteer at the Mother Teresa Home for the Dying Sick and Destitute in Addis Ababa. I've dreamed of working in Africa with street children for a long time, so this was something I was thrilled to do.

 The Mother Teresa outpatient clinic provides free medical care for homeless people, and I became friends with a bunch of the street children that were being treated there. I couldn't handle sitting idly by watching the children I had come to love, fighting to survive the harsh realities of street life all alone. It was inevitable that I'd end up getting involved in their lives and try helping them heal and move forward. I started talking to friends about how we could do more to help and ended up bringing one of the boys home to try to reunite him with his mother. His homecoming was a beautiful tender moment, but it was obvious why he’d left home in the first place. The tiny mud house was shared by three families. They had inadequate water, sanitation and food.

  I saw how much they were suffering, and how many of the young children were forced to leave home in order to find food for themselves (& often their families). I also saw how much they cared for each other - like an extended family - and how much they tried to improve each others lives. Most days I was there, I had children tell me about (or show me) a dying family member. There was very little I could do. You feel profoundly inadequate when a child’s mother dies, and you’ve done nothing to prevent it.

 WhereLovIs may never grow large enough to make a dent in the widespread poverty across Africa, but it’s my hope that it will have a life-changing impact in the community we serve. That vision is shared by a group of friends in America and Ethiopia, and we’re working together to organize WhereLovIs, and to move it from a dream to a reality.

  What are you doing right now?    

Right now we're working  hard on all of the amazingly fun, office-type work  (By Laws, Board meetings, etc.) to get non-profit status for WhereLoveIs. The small group of boys that we're already supporting with their families or with our good Ethiopian friend Shemelis are happy and doing well. They have all started school now (some of them for the first time) and are excited to learn to read and write! Two of the boys that are working to support their very poor families have started their training at the electrical engineering school. One of them in particular who is healing from his painful past, seems to be learning to trust people again, and is realizing that we really love him - he's even talking to people and playing with other kids. Shemelis just emailed us last night about a couple more children that he thinks we can help right now. One has been living on the streets since losing his parents to AIDS four years ago. The other one has a living father, but was forced to leave home and live on the streets a few years ago. It is wonderful to see WhereLoveIs taking shape and touching children’s lives.

 
What is Where Love Is going to be? What are the plans?

I’ll be going back to live in Ethiopia in the spring of 2008. Initially, I’ll start back in Addis Ababa (the capital city) working with street children, but we’re planning on branching out from there to a smaller town or village. We’re searching for a pilot project, such as building a well, to establish good will and solidarity with the new community. We will live among the people in the community, sharing their burdens, becoming friends, and getting their input on how we can help. We hope to establish a family-like home where some children can live as long as needed, and other children can come to heal while waiting to be reunited with their families or caring foster families (one child at a time - whatever is best in each child’s situation).

 Many families or friends would love to have their children return, but they don’t even have enough food to live. We plan on initially helping  them with food, clothing and school supplies. Longer term, we can help them become more self sufficient by giving micro credit loans and skills training. We can give families a significant economic boost with just a few goats or a tray of snacks to sell along the roadside. Some families can be helped immeasurably by improving sanitation etc.

 As we said earlier, we’ll often be serving children who live on the streets.. We feel the most sustainable way to help them throughout their lives is to strengthen the bonds between the children and caring people in the community (preferably a loving family). It’s been wonderful to see acts of kindness and service reciprocated with love and  friendship. In areas where homeless children congregate, they often cause problems, and are not seen in a positive light by the people in the area. We believe this will improve markedly if we can teach the children to regularly serve the community.

Do you have a philosophy or founding principal that you try to follow?

 In the new testament Jesus teaches about the tremendous value of one poor widows mite. Perhaps each of us - orphans, the disabled, poor families, foreign volunteers, community members -  has a tremendous capacity to show love and help each other. Yes, a child needs clothes and food, but perhaps what he needs even more than that is to know someone cares about him, that he is valuable as a child of God, that someone will walk along beside him while cheerfully sharing his burden, and that he in turn has something very valuable to offer others. I once took a long walk across Addis Ababa with my father and a homeless boy, Birhanu, who we were helping off the streets. Every block or two we bought 4 kilos of bananas, and Birhanu would scamper up and down each alley we passed. He fed the blind mothers with little children running around half dressed, the young men who had lost their limbs due to leprosy, and the kids who just like him, had no shelter from the rain. He had never been able to give to others before, and to see the look of pure joy on his face left an indelible image in my heart.

  We  really want to help the children and people to get involved in helping and showing love for each other by doing small acts of service such as caring for those that are sick or visiting the widowed, and orphaned. I’d love to see older children serve as "Big Brothers and Sisters" to children living on the street or in child led homes. They could do so much good by visiting them a couple times a week, counseling them, having fun, and just checking up on them to make sure that they’re doing OK.

  
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little
 – Edmund Burke

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. -Mother Teresa

God gave you these two feet to go visit an orphan. God blessed you with two hands to that you can fix a leaky roof, dig a vegetable garden, or give a little child a hug. God blessed you with with a mouth to speak up on behalf of orphans who are being exploited or to encourage an orphan who is feeling sad. You can use that God-given mouth to go to an orphan and say God loves you and so do I. And you can use your two God-given ears to sit and listen to the child as they tell you about something as mundane as school that day or something as traumatic as how they felt when they saw their mother die. Every single person here has a wealth of God-given resources that they can use to help.
– Craig Greenfield, Urban Halo

I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. - Mathew 25: 35-36

The capacity to give one’s self to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle;  It is a miracle.  - Simone Weil

Know how to listen and you will profit from those who even talk badly – plutarch

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other
 – Mother Theresa 

  Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. 
–Mother Teresa