Sweet Sleep Celebrates 10 Years, Launches ‘Heart for 1’ Initiative
Nashville, TN (PRWEB) August 12, 2013 -- Founded in 2003, Sweet Sleep is creating a world where orphaned and abandoned children are given the chance to live as sons and daughters. In celebration of their 10th anniversary, and with renewed vision, the Nashville-based non-profit organization has now launched the Heart for 1 initiative, founded by Jen Gash and Madelene Metcalf. Heart for 1 focuses entirely on family preservation by using integrated social services and working through the church to encourage indigenous adoption, child abandonment prevention and child reintegration around the world.
The global orphan population is estimated to be between 130-210 million. Facing extreme poverty, AIDS, war, disease, famine and more, roughly 5,760 children become orphans every day. Through economic and indigenous empowerment, Sweet Sleep has been meeting the needs of orphaned and abandoned children around the world in a way no other non-profit has done. From educating school-age children across the United States, Canada, England and Australia to using beds, mosquito nets and Bibles as resettlement kits for orphans in war-ravaged northern Uganda, Sweet Sleep has impacted the lives of thousands worldwide.
“We’ve spent our first 10 years, breaking new ground and advocating what we were learning along the way about the orphan crisis,” says Sweet Sleep founder Jen Gash. “In our next 10 years, our goal is to embrace those lessons and introduce economic, educational and rehabilitative solutions to communities with the greatest need, and the greatest impact to change so that we can reach down into the trenches of poverty and bring an end to its deep cycles.”
Heart for 1 currently has identified 1,000 families who are ready to begin the restoration process, integrating children into families transforming the orphaned and abandoned into sons and daughters.
For $385, donors can provide integrated social services and vocational training to a Heart for 1 family. Through September 2013, a private donor is providing the opportunity for a Matching Gift drive. Every dollar from every tax-deductible gift to Sweet Sleep will be matched – dollar for dollar - to increase the impact on the global orphan crisis.
“Our vision is that humanity will see a day when every child God has created will have a family who loves and cares for them so that they can live their lives to the fullness of the glory God intends for each of them,” says Madelene Metcalf, Sweet Sleep’s Global Ministry Director and co-founder of Heart for 1. “This is what God asks of His children, of us.”
To learn more about Sweet Sleep and Heart for 1, visit http://www.sweetsleep.org.
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BRIAN MAYES, NASHVILLE PUBLICITY GROUP, +1 (615) 771-2040, [email protected]
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