Amber Outreach Project is a small, nonprofit organization started in 2006 as a response to a crisis in an orphanage in Haiti. The immediate need was to provide for the children, but the long term goal is self sufficiency, both for the orphanage and the village where it is located.

 

Our name is symbolic. Amber is formed when certain pine trees are damaged, and pitch from the area solidifies. If it is protected over time, the resulting pitch hardens enough to be polished and its beauty highlighted.   Like this, many developing countries, including Haiti, have been damaged by civil unrest, famine and poverty. Yet these countries are filled with individuals who have a potential for beauty.

 

Operating within the principles laid down by our Lord, Jesus Christ, we are committed to prayerfully maintain, support and undergird programs of a like Christian mind, which strive to protect and develop individuals within their own communities. Our intention is to assist, to the best of our ability, indigenous programs which are dedicated to caring for those who have no family or whose families are unable to care for them. (James 1:27)

 

The overall strategy has two parts: the immediacy of providing for those in need, especially children, and long term development of the surrounding communities so they can support their own. Our desire is to listen to a community's goals for itself, and find ways to bolster these efforts. It is not our intent to set up a cycle of dependence on sponsors, but rather to use sponsorships to get things started and maintain them through the early stages of the process.

 

AOP began in Haiti, but will repeat this model in other areas.