Skip to main content

What is Our Mission?

Our Board of Directors recently approved the following Vision, Mission, History and Profile descriptions for 2017: 

Vision: Believers without Borders for the Common Good

Mission: Connecting Resources with Needs 

As ‘‘believers” in God’s inclusive love and justice, we seek to cross social, economic, cultural, ethnic, and geographical boundaries to connect resources with needs and make a difference in the world through international service, community development training, and strategic charitable giving. 

History and Profile: 

Founded by Dr. Michael J. Christensen of Drew University in 2008,  WorldHope Corps, Inc. is a voluntary, faith-based, not-for-profit, organization registered in the State of New Jersey to facilitate community transformation; this through mobilizing volunteers, training community leaders, sponsoring international vision/mission trips, procuring and delivering humanitarian aid, and offering technical and relational support to individuals and organizations for the common good.
 
Following Henri Nouwen’s approach of “reverse mission” (i.e. those who seek to serve gain than what they give to others), Dr. Christensen has recruited, trained and taken scores of volunteers on vision/mission trips to Belarus, Ukraine, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Malawi and Uganda almost every year for more than 30 years.  These “believers without borders” have nurtured international friendships and offered works of service across cultural and religious divides.

As others joined Dr. Christensen in mission over the years, WorldHope Corps expanded its mission to include the following core programs: drilling village wells, providing youth educational scholarships, and offering community development training.  Special projects have included support for community orphan care and vocational training in Malawi, St George Hope Health Centre in Uganda, CitiHope Dental Clinic in Dominican Republic, and medical aid to the Children of Chernobyl in Belarus. We purchased our own Well-Rig and truck in 2011 and drilled over 50 village wells before transferring the equipment to a sister organization.  We loaned out $30,000 to two organizations and three individuals to start social businesses for the common good.

WorldHope Corps is a ministry partner of Sustainable Action Rural Sector (SARS) in Uganda, Shalom Coffee Cooperatives in Uganda, Mzuzu United Methodist Church in Malawi, and Communities of Shalom in the USA. Together, we installed a water purification system and opened a water store in rural Uganda, facilitated a fair-trade coffee venture in Uganda, built and rent out a Hope Scholarship House in Malawi to create a revenue stream for youth scholarships, and co-sponsor an annual soccer match for youth empowerment and HIV education and testing.

In 2016, WorldHope Corps elected a local board, opened a field office, and hired program staff in Mzuzu, Malawi.  For 2017, WorldHope Corps Malawi is focused on drilling and maintaining village wells, HIV/AIDS and community development training, granting educational scholarships, operating a Water Store, and distributing anti-Malaria mosquito nets to prisoners and poor families in rural areas.

The primary focus of the Founder and Volunteers of WorldHope Corps remains community transformation through specialized training, educational empowerment, and providing clean water; this through core programs and special projects.  We continue to come alongside indigenous, community-based organizations and congregations, as well as individual social entrepreneurs, to connect resources with needs and opportunities with sponsors for the common good.

Popular posts from this blog

Mother Shalom

South Central, Los Angeles, was the neighborhood in the city where Communities of Shalom began in 1992. I met Marx Gutierrez from El Salvador who was there attending High School at the time. He remembers what happened at the corner of Florence and Normandy Streets in South Central, LA, when Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten while the crowd looked on and the police did nothing; and how the Rodney King beating resulted in a not-guilty verdict for the police and resulted in a major, 3-day uprising in the neighborhood, until the National Guard came in and finally imposed law and order. He can still remember the fires, the bright orange night sky, the mass looting, 45 unsolved killings, the social chaos...And how the United Methodist Churches responded by creating a zone of shalom in 7 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Today, Marx is a community organizer, and married to Jennifer Gutierrez, Conference Shalom Coordinator in the Calif-Pacific Annual Conference, and Rev. Vilma
Read more

First Generation Lambs Club Reunion

Fifteen of us gathered Saturday night at the Lambs Club for a 35 th year reunion of those who helped start the Lamb’s Church in Times Square in the mid to late 1970’s, including: Rev. Paul S. Moore , Founder of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene, and his wife, Tamara Dr. Michael J. Christensen , charter member and former associate pastor, and his wife Dr. Rebecca Laird Fr. William (BJ) Webe r, former Associate Pastor and Director of the Lamb’s Residency, and his wife Sheila who lived at the Lamb’s Jim and Dustee Hullinger, who were on staff together and made the Lamb’s their home for over 25 years Effie Canepa , who was the church pianist under 3 pastors, and her husband Peter Shirley Close, who attended the Lamb’s in the late 1970’s while studying, performing  and teaching music and voice Carl "Chappy" Valente , former associate pastor Rev. Bob DiQuatto , lead singer of the Church’s “Manhattan Project” and staff member of the Lamb’s, and his son Jason Rev. Gabriel
Read more

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue Lecture Notes: Presented by Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D.,  Associate Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministry,  Drew University;  and  International Director, Communities of Shalom, The United Methodist Church Introduction “There is a little man in Peru, a man without any power, who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book.   In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that God became human to bring good news to the poor, new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives.   Then years later this book and movement it started is considered a danger by [the USA, or Rome], the greatest power on earth.   When I look at this little man, Gustavo, and think about [the President of the US, or the Pope], I see David standing before Goliath, again with no more weapon than a little stone, a stone called A Theology of Liberation (Henri Nouwen
Read more