Orphanages Create More Orphans

In Canada, Orphanages have been exposed for the sad, poorly funded, managed, and sometimes (All too often) abusive structures they are. This kind of institution is just not capable of being a healthy experience for the children put in them. Rather support a family structure., where children are integrated into a family.

I find it amazing that in Canada we have shut down all such institutions. Because the truth has been revealed about how harmful such an environment is for young children. Yet, we Canadians continue to fund the building of these very same institutions in other underdeveloped countries.

Despite the greatest staff, greatest intentions, orphanages harm a child's healthy development. They grow up to be people with NO family.... a kind of "tribless" people. Also, I was reading an IRIN article recently that claimed that the majority of children in orphanages are not parent-less anyway. Many are there simply because parents or community think the child might have a better life in the "nice" home, with three meals and possibly an education (Not always the case). Which is often more than what they can offer the children. What, if the funding was directed to those desperate families DIRECT, orphanage "attendance" would drastically decline. Without the presence of a local orphanage, the parents just carry on and keep their kids and do the best they can, and the community continues to take them. For the truly homeless, we can place these children with loving families who will care for them. This is the model we should use.

Yet Christian churches continue to blindly support the building of such things overseas, without question, without thinking about what we learned here at home. In the last twenty years, have we not read the articles, and heard the hundreds of Radio interviews with people who were raised in these institutions?


I link a very good TED video about this subject. I don't expect it will actually change what we do. Institutions always justify their existence, because we are always doing it better... "more righter"...... or we are "Christians" so our good motivations change the experience for the kids...
Orphanages, in my opinion need to close, for the health and well being of Children. Children need family, even foster or adoptive families.

"Often charity to help the poor attracts more people into poverty. One example I have noticed takes place when North Americans try to care for the needs of orphans in cultures different from our own. If you build really nice orphanages and provide good food and a great education, lots more children in those places become orphans. I see this happen all over. When we attempt to eradicate poverty through charity, we often attract more people into “needing” charity. It is possible to create need where it did not exist by projecting our standards, values and perception of need onto others. "
-- Steve Saint