The Boaz Project’s primary purpose and mission is to inspire and equip leaders around the world to care for orphans in their own communities.

Because of this, we do not send Americans overseas long-term. Instead, we partner with Christian nationals who intimately know the language, culture, and traditions of their country and have a passion for caring for children who deserve to grow up in their own culture within a safe, loving environment.

So, why do we still take short-term trips?

The concept of the short-term trip has become more and more controversial in our society—for many very valid reasons!

It can be extremely damaging to communities and individuals when often well-meaning, but culturally unaware teams of people come into their space and assert their ideals and standards onto them rather than partnering with them and seeking to understand their way of life and true needs. It is crucial to consider how we may actually be harming those we are trying to help. (If you’d like to dig deeper into this subject, I’d highly recommend checking out the books When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity)

The key thing to consider when you’re deciding whether or not to participate in a short-term trip is sustainability.

What is the long-term plan to support those we’ll serve during this short-term ministry experience? Are these children going to be well-cared for when we leave? Will there be ongoing discipleship?

As a result of our model, the children in our partner homes are receiving quality care, love, and discipleship on a consistent basis. This is taking place day after day, whether we are present or not. Praise God for how He has equipped and called His people all over the world to this ministry!

Because of this, we are honored to be able to take short-term teams to visit our partners and see firsthand how your giving and prayers are making an impact. And we have put some safeguards in place to assure that we are operating in a way that upholds the dignity of our partners and supports their daily ministry:

1. We provide specific cross-cultural training for our team members, which educates them on the country they will be visiting, who our partners are, and how we, as a team, will serve them on the trip.

2. We take our team members through a manual on healthy attachments, which emphasizes the importance of the attachments the children are creating with their caregivers and gives practical guidelines for how we can behave in a way that does not disrupt these attachments. (Contact me if you’d like to learn more about this!)

3. While on the trip, we only engage in activities that our partners have either directly asked us to do or have consented to. This may be things like Vacation Bible School with the children or training for caregivers.

4. After the trip, we provide our team members with opportunities to continue to support those they’ve met and encourage them to stay plugged-in even as they return back to normal life.

Above all, our goal is to provide encouragement and respite for the dedicated men and women who have given their entire lives to caring for orphans. It is such a blessing to be able to bless these incredible people and to extend Christ’s love to their children. Our prayer is that, through our time together, our partners would be refreshed as they continue to follow God’s command to care for orphans.

If you would like to receive emails related specifically to upcoming short-term mission trips, you can sign up at the link below! And, if you have any further questions regarding our philosophy behind short-term missions, please feel free to reach out to us.