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TechnoratiThe father-son team of the Rev. Jack Smith and son Philip Smith along with David Swoap, the former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, founded Hope Unlimited in 1992. The ministry has reached more than a thousand Brazilian street children – many on drugs or engaged in prostitution prior to their participation in the ministry.
(Photo: Carmel Presbyterian Church)Hope Unlimted co-founder/president Philip Smith.
Co-founder/president Philip Smith spoke to The Christian Post on Thursday about the unique family-style raising of the children and the ministry’s future goals as it looks forward to its 15th anniversary.
CP: How is the ministry Hope Enterprises in Ethiopia connected to Hope Unlimited in Brazil?
Smith: Hope Enterprises is not so much connected to Hope Unlimited in Brazil except that it shares the same founder – Jack Smith. The founding vision for both was to start a local ministry to street kids that would be turned over to members of the local community so that it would be an indigenous ministry.
In Ethiopia, this little thing started in our backyard and it was turned over in 1977. It now provides services to 8,000 people and on Dec. 2 they just inaugurated the new Hope University.
In Brazil, the vision has been the same. I have been the only American there since the beginning and I even spend half my time in the states supporting the ministry. Brazilians are now developing it and they are raising half their support and all the administration is done through the local staff and board.
CP: Did you help establish Hope Enterprises with your father also?
Smith: I would like to take responsibility for Hope Enterprises, but I was only six or seven-years-old at the time.
My parents left as Presbyterian missionaries in 1959 and my mom was 7 months pregnant when they finally got their visas for Ethiopia, so my older sister was born only three weeks after they arrived. I was also born in Ethiopia and Hope Enterprises started in a little tool shed in our backyard in 1971.
My parents would see these little street kids as they went back and forth during their missionary assignment as teachers at a school.
Mother Teresa was a colleague of my father and would go to Ethiopia quite frequently and challenged him to take in the older kids from her orphanages and stories like that came together. We left with 300 kids in a huge facility founded by the Dutch government in 1977 and like I said that has grown to 8,000.
CP: Are there many Christian mission groups working in Brazil and doing the same activities as Hope Unlimited?
Smith: There are many folks that have an interest in working with these street kids and there are a lot of missionaries working with the kids in the streets. I do not know of any large scale programs that are providing residential care and vocational training for street kids.
I express that clearly as a challenge because we would love to find out those whom we could come alongside and learn from.
CP: Is it hard working with street children, especially from another culture?
Smith: It is enormously difficult. Probably the street children in Brazil would be more like children in the United State in terms of their hardness. The more developed cultures just make different characteristics come forward.
In Ethiopia, because it is very much a developing society where family is so highly valued, in times of starvation the family would die and give the children the last morsel of food and the children actually grew up with hope. Sometimes that hope was the only thing that kept them alive. Continue »
