Loving Staff. We have a live-in, locally sourced staff of at least five adults for each orphanage. This staff includes “house parents” (a married couple frequently with children of their own), a cook, a cleaning woman, and a watchman/grounds keeper. We also hire tutors who do not live at the orphanage but visit several times per week. We hire staff who do not view this as a job but as a calling to care. The staff, by necessity, must be people who love easily – we are asking them to care for children desperately in need of such love. We are careful to compensate our staff at levels that encourage retention but also reflect the cost of labor in the market.

Access to Education. Most children who come to us have not attended school or are currently not attending school because, as children of deceased or ill parents, they frequently have had to work to support their families. At an Agape orphanage, they attend school for the first time. Currently all of our children attend public school located close to the orphanage, however we anticipate that we will need to offer education services of our own to HIV/AIDS positive children since many public schools do not allow such children to attend.

Healthcare and Proper Nutrition. Our children also have access to necessary medicines and a nutritionally balanced diet for the first time in their lives. We provide meat and other proteins as a regular part of the kids diet and meet all of their medical needs with an Agape run on-site medical clinic. It is amazing to see the transformation in these kids simply as a result of proper nutrition.

Time to Play. Our kids are kids like any other and they love to play. Many are able to do so for the first time since their lives before coming to the orphanage were filled with great responsibility, work and fear. We play traditional Indian games such as cricket and Kabadi but have also introduced new games like Twister and matchbox car racing!