Moses, who’s been the Sponsorship Officer since Pilgrim’s inception in 2001, knows all too intimately the joys and pains of informing children whether or not they get sponsored to attend school.

There are countless children like Racheal here, children who hope and hunger for nothing more than the right to an education. Informing their yearning faces that we can’t afford to enroll any more students is a wholly heart-wrenching experience. It is an honor to help people achieve the basic needs of education, food, medication that they’ve been denied. I look into the eyes of these children and their eyes are asking for intervention in their future.

Will you intervene for one of these children?

The hardest moments in my job is telling children that we can’t afford to enroll any more students. You can see that they have no alternative, especially for those barely living off of one meal a day. I’ve had many children follow me to school, pleading to be accepted. One girl walked over 50 km with her luggage on her head just looking for an education; another girl sat on the compound until we took her in; she eventually graduated and went to university.

Everyone has potential; education can be the key to unlocking it.

I have seen the children uplift the school, climbing ladders of success and excellence. I worry where these students would be or what would become of their immense potential if they had been left in the camps, bushes, or villages.

There are more children left in the camps, in the bush, among villages lacking access to education, will you sponsor them?

You can support students by giving the gift of HOPE using our Giving Catalog!

My name is Racheal Atuko and I am an 18-year-old student at Beacon of Hope College.

My family has been very poor and broken since childhood and yet, I am a firm believer in the phrase ‘things happen for a reason’. When my father refused to pay for my schooling, my mother dumped me at BOH with no money and moved away. When I found a mass in my breast, I couldn’t afford the surgery or painkillers that I needed. Doctors feared I had breast cancer. I experienced various levels of pain due to my medical condition and my family’s abandonment. But, I believe this all led me to BOH and there I found a community I could rely on.

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I feel like I’m the luckiest to have joined BOH. This school has been a life-changing blessing for me, like a small, happy family where I find my peace and strength. My financial state meant that I couldn’t afford food, school supplies, or even my breast surgery, and I often felt so alone and miserable. But through all this, my friends and teachers at BOH reassured and supported me in every way (my friends even paid for my surgery); they were the family that did not abandon me.

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I believe things happen for a reason; I believe all the pain I endured led me to the love I found at BOH; I believe you are reading this now so I can tell you that people like me exist—people whose lives have been saved from misery and brightened by BOH.

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Your support is so important to us because, without Beacon of Hope, our lives would have been forever lost in the brokenness of poverty and sickness. But thanks to you, we are studying, we are provided for, we are loved. So, thank you for providing for us and I implore you to please continue your generosity; there are more like me.

May God bless you,

Racheal Atuko

P.S. You are reading this for a reason.