The Christian Alliance for Orphans’ monthly webinar series gives local advocates access to the knowledge and experience of top Alliance member churches and organizations nationwide.  Webinars cover key topics on adoption, foster care and/or global orphan care.  Each is hosted by a local church orphan ministry and co-presented by one or more national experts on the subject matter. 

Upcoming Webinars 

Making the Best Use of Social Media for Good

In today’s world some of the greatest impact in orphan advocacy is coming from online tools.  How can you best use your voice for good while harnessing the technology at your fingertips?  How can you get your message out effectively with both  confidence and wisdom?  Join Shaun Groves, Coordinator of Blog Ministries for Compassion International, as he explores how to use your online voice for good in a way that will magnify your message and engage your audience.

Date: Wednesday, April 24

Time: 2:00PM (EASTERN)

 

 

Past Webinars

The Global Orphan Care Movement: Updates from Around the World

Imagine a day when the local church in every nation is known as the primary answer to the global orphan crisis. It can happen! Today, expressions of local orphan care and adoption are growing in churches around the world. In some regions, aspiring networks are rising to help churches care for the orphans in their midst.

Join us to hear stories about emerging orphan care movements from around the world, and how your church or ministry can join with them.

Webinar Speakers: David Hennessey works with orphan care leaders around the world, helping to equip and connect emerging national orphan care movements. Joining David will be national movement leaders, including: Ruslan Maliuta (Ukraine Without Orphans), Ivan Iklyushin (Russia Without Orphans), Pastor George Ndhawa (East African Orphan Summit), Sukhen Biswas (Bangladesh).

 

Building Trauma Competent Healing Caregivers: What Does That Look Like?

Around the globe, millions of children live in group homes and other residential settings. Many come with deep hurts from severe abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Some have lived on the streets, in orphanages, or as victims of trafficking for many years. Although the staff caring for these children often do so with giving hearts and sincere desire to bring healing, they frequently are not fully equipped for the challenges before them. When it is not possible to see these children taken into family care, how can we help dedicated caregivers to understand and meet the complex needs of wounded children? This webinar will present an overview of what it means to be a healing presence in the life of a wounded child living in a residential setting or foster home. We will discuss three essential skills and three essential tasks key to becoming that healing connection. These tasks and skills can be easily taught and practiced within any cultural setting and offer true hope and restoration to wounded, abandoned and abused children.

Jayne Schooler has worked extensively with caregivers serving wounded children in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine the U.S. and other parts of the world. She is the author of numerous books, including her newest Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families (Navpress). She and her husband are adoptive parents.

Resources:  Handout #1 and Handout #2

Building Trauma Competent Healing Caregivers from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

 

20-Minute Investor Report and Movement Update

Whether you’ve invested prayer, funds or passion in the Christian Alliance for Orphans, here’s a special chance for an insider’s view of:

• The growth of adoption & orphan care movement across America
• The expansion of indigenous movements around the world
• The impact of your investment & key future priorities of the Alliance

You can donate ONLINE or mail to: Christian Alliance for Orphans, 6723 Whittier Ave., McLean, VA 22101

 

Creating a Balanced Adoption & Foster Church Ministry

Now that Orphan Sunday is past, many of you will want to harness that excitement and momentum into something that is ongoing and intentional.  Johnny Carr has been leading sessions for church leaders for several years on ways to practically implement orphan and adoption ministries in the local church.  He will give you the high level view of the ministry but also a sample calendar that is very practical and detailed.

FAS and NAS: Alcohol and Drug Related Birth Defects

This webinar will explain FASD and NAS and offer an introductory view of their implications for the life of a family. It will discuss symptoms, assessments, the school system, daily life, and how they effect the brain. This will be a great session for those who have children affected or those that are considering adopting a child with alcohol or drug related effects. It will address many of the fears and give a real life picture of what raising children with FAS and NAS really is like. Join this session to better equip yourself to love and serve these children and families affected by FAS/NAS in your own communities and congregations.

Wrapping Around Families: Providing Help and Hope to Those Called to Foster or Adopt

Not every family is called to foster or adopt, but we can all be a blessing to the foster and adoptive families in our community, providing much needed (and often lacking) support.  The webinar will explore some crucial ways to help families and some tools for doing it well.

Orphan Sunday: Seize the Opportunity! 

Whether your church is a house church, mega-church or somewhere in-between, Orphan Sunday is your opportunity to help the community see God’s heart for the fatherless and how individuals can respond. This 30-minute webinar will provide practical ideas to help you to make the most of Orphan Sunday to inspire and engage others. Learn how to create a simple activity, event or themed meal for your church, family or small group. Discover countless ready-to-go resources designed to save you time while strengthening your services, meetings, and events. Find partner organizations ready to assist you in turning passion into action. Join churches around the world participating in Orphan Sunday. Use Orphan Sunday to spark that next step in your family or church that will bear fruit for years to come.

The Unadoptable Orphan 201:  Octopi Care

Millions of children globally live without the love and nurture of parents. Yet adoption, whether local or international, is currently available to only a fraction of these children. Standing for these children includes efforts to remove barriers to adoption and to grow a culture of adoption in the church worldwide. Yet Christians also can play a vital role today in the lives of children for whom adoption is not currently an option. Approaching this vast and complex need requires more than a single approach. Rather, we must begin to think like an octopus with many arms reaching out in a broad variety of ways, custom designed for each culture and crisis. This webinar will be an excellent resource for both churches and individuals seeking to discover their unique “arm” in Octopi Care for some of the world’s most at-risk orphans.

Download the PDF of “On Understanding Orphan Statistics” referred to in this webinar.

 

Microfinance and Orphan Care

Most orphans know poverty intimately. It is a primary reason children become orphans in the first place, and often impacts orphans deeply through their childhood and beyond. So addressing poverty directly is a vital facet of caring for the orphan—from helping struggling families stay together to providing a livelihood for orphans as they enter adulthood. There may be no tool more important in these efforts than microfinance, which is widely recognized as one of the most significant ways to help the entrepreneurial poor overcome poverty. On this webinar, learn about the key elements of microfinance and how those serving orphans can work to unite orphan care and economic development to address the global orphan crisis head on.

 

Engaging Students in the Cause of the Fatherless

Whether you’re a student, a youth pastor, or just want to help wake a passion for orphans in young people, this webinar is for you!  The idea of Heartwork first sprung up in a Colorado youth group, and it’s now helping students and youth groups across the country care for orphans around the globe.  But this vision is not only about the needs of orphans.  It’s also about rescuing American youth from self-absorbed lives and helping us all grasp God’s great love for orphans…and for each of us as well!  Powerpoint Available:  Engaging Students in the Cause of the Fatherless PPT

Due to technical difficulties, this video contains some interruptions in the sound.

What Adoptees Wish Church Communities Knew

Many of the seven million adult adoptees in the US wouldn’t darken the doors of a church.  Some do, but struggle with issues they dare not verbalize. What if the church were known as a place where adoptees felt truly understood about their challenges and needs?  Sherrie Eldridge, best-selling author (20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew) will share insights based on research and her faith-based life experience as an adopted person.

 

Foster Care Ministry — 25 Little Things That Make a Big Difference

It isn’t always easy to know how best to encourage and aid young people in foster care.  Here’s your chance to hear honest reflections and advice from those who know intimately the challenges of life in foster care…and what a big difference small acts of love can make.

Join the Alliance in welcoming several Foster Youth Interns (FYIs) from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s (CCAI).  They’ll share from personal experience as alumni of the U.S. foster care system their ideas about how churches and individuals can love, support and provide guidance for foster youth. Click to download the 25 Ways to Help Youth in Foster Care.

 

Although the best place for any child is a loving home, sometimes this is not an option. In such cases, a well-designed continuum of care can effectively minister to the diverse needs of a broad range of children.  Learn about both broad principles and specific practices for supporting all levels of care through partnerships, with a special focus on transitional care approach.  This webinar is designed for individuals who are interested in orphan ministry or who are already involved. Whether it be church leaders, lay people, organization representatives, we can all learn from each other as we discuss the importance of an integrated approach to caring for the least of these.

 

What’s next? How can you best harness the energy from your Orphan Sunday events and activities?  Join us for this webinar featuring practical next steps and building blocks for local church orphan ministry and more.  Receive a list of ready-to-go resources for continuing to build on Orphan Sunday in your families, small groups and large ministries.  Hear strategies for turning awareness and excitement into tangible plans for defending the fatherless over the year ahead.  Orphan Sunday is just the beginning!

Orphan Care Ministry that Lasts: A Pastor’s Perspective on Overcoming Common Obstacles

At every stage in the life of an orphan care ministry, obstacles exist. Creating a long-term, sustained ministry to the fatherless is difficult. Drawing from both his own church’s ministry and the experiences of others, Pastor Daniel examines common challenges to a vibrant ministry. The webinar will address various topics, including: engaging church leadership, Orphan ministry Bible studies, post-adoption support, discouragement in ministry, and growing the ministry beyond its initial scope.  Daniel Bennett is the pastor of Bethany Community Church in Washington, Illinois and the author of A Passion for the Fatherless: Developing a God-Centered Ministry to Orphans.

How to Use Orphan Sunday to Engage Your Church

Whether your church is small or large, Orphan Sunday is your opportunity to stir the community to see God’s heart for the fatherless and how individuals can respond. This 30-minute webinar will provide a plethora of practical ideas to help you to inspire and engage others. Learn how to create a simple activity, event or themed meal for your church, family and/or small group. Find partner organizations ready to assist you in turning passion into action. Join churches around the world that participating in Orphan Sunday. Discover countless ready-to-go resources designed to save you time while strengthening your services, meetings, and events. Use Orphan Sunday to spark that next step for your family or church that will grow for years to come. Join this webinar to learn how. 

Transracial Adoption: Becoming a Multicultural/Multiracial Family

Becoming a multi-racial/multi-cultural family through adoption. This webinar will explore social definitions within the context of adoption to include race, ethnicity, nationality and culture. Our webinar will inform participants of the joys and challenges of expanding families trough Transracial adoption, provide awareness of the sensitivities to the lifelong impacts of adoption, and offer tangible suggestions for the community to help support and embrace families.

Starting a Church-Based Foster Care Ministry

Churches of all sizes can create meaningful ministry to serve the 400,000 children in the US foster care system.  This webinar will explore the nuts and bolts for doing so, including effective ways to raise awareness within a church about the needs of children in the foster system and engage volunteers to surround and encourage foster/adoptive families.  The webinar will highlight proven methods for gathering a core leadership team and gaining church staff support.  Other topics include: support groups, respite nights, training events, working with emancipated youth and more. Bruce & Denise Kendrick helped launch Embrace at a small church in Dallas, and have seen that churches of any size can be effective in meeting the deepest needs of foster youth.  

Journeys of Faith: Guiding Principles for Church Global Orphan Care Partnerships

Both within and beyond Christian circles, experts increasingly recognize that indigenous churches are indispensable partners for effective orphan care around the world. Yet for U.S. churches and individuals, partnering globally in ways both that are both discerning and respectful isn’t easy. Explore principles and models drawn from real-world partnerships that unite U.S. churches with local African churches and organizations. Building upon the recently-published Journeys of Faith, the webinar will provide tangible principles of practice and lessons learned as well as must-read resources for any church or individual desiring to engage in orphan care. Join us to learn what it means to “help without hurting.”

Rediscovering a Theology of Adoption and Orphan Care

There are two movements within evangelicalism that are not only experiencing significant growth, but are also wonderfully merging together: the orphan care movement and the reemergence of a deep interest in the theology of adoption. This webinar will explore both how Scripture’s teaching on adoption can inform, shape, and empower evangelicalism’s orphan care movement and how it already is. Join us as we rediscover a theology of adoption and orphan care for the sake of orphans all around the world.

SpeakUP!  Becoming an Orphan Advocate in Your Church

Ideas and tips for engaging your church leadership and your church body in orphan care. Learn how to SpeakUP and get your church to listen.

Help Wanted: Protecting Orphans from Human Trafficking

As part National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, gain an overview of the global human trafficking problem, its impact on orphans, and what orphan care ministries, churches, and motivated individuals can do to make a difference.

Prayer Gathering for Haiti

January 12th marked one year since the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  Those few moments and their aftermath took hundreds of thousands of lives, left countless homeless, and affected countless children in profound and permanent ways, including leaving many as orphans.   At the exact time of the one-year anniversary, we came together as the body of Christ to pray for the country of Haiti, for stability and integrity in its government, for ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts, for the Haitian church, and for the children of Haiti we all care about so much.

Starting and Growing a Church-Based Orphan Ministry

Explore the significant decisions, challenges and solutions involved in starting an adoption, foster and/or global orphan care ministry as a part of your church.

The Financial Challenge of Adoption and How the Church Can Respond

Equipping churches to help adoptive families overcome one of the biggest barriers to adoption: money

Partnering with the Local Church to Care for Orphans in Haiti

Practical advice, principles and practices for how your church can wisely partner with indigenous churches to care for orphans in Haiti and beyond

The Post-Placement Journey

Dr. Karyn Purvis and Amy Monroe offer insights and resources to equip adoption and foster ministries to help families meet the challenges of loving, nurturing and building strong relationships with children from hard places.

The Safe Families Model

Learn about a transformational alternative to foster care that makes the homes of local Christians and their church community the center of care.  This model now serves more than 1,000 youth in the Chicago area each year, and is now being replicated by Alliance organizations and churches in seven states.

How to Help Without Hurting

As church groups nationwide head out on summer missions trips, learn key principles and practices to ensure that the long-term results are for good.  Show an orphan the tangible love of Christ, building on principles that are practical, field-tested and useful for your next mission trip.