Many who’ve been captured by God’s deep love for orphans and vulnerable children can feel disappointed that their church doesn’t “catch on” faster. It’s important to remember that pastors and others often feel overwhelmed by all the needs and opportunities knocking at their door daily.

But gracious, persistent effort pays off. We’d especially encourage you to start small and slow, building with resources mentioned below. A solid foundation is far more important than speed.

We also believe it is vital that orphan ministry not be presented as yet “one more need” that a church “ought to” address. Rather, the core of adoption and orphan care ministry is discipleship – helping believers grow to reflect the character of Jesus Christ more and more. It’s about coming to see that God’s deep love for the orphan reveals His deep love for each of us.   Grasping this and the service that rises as a response can truly transform both individuals and church communities. Ultimately, all this becomes a small reflection to the world of how God first loved us, the Gospel made visible.

We’d encourage you to use Orphan Sunday as a “catalyst” to begin growing hearts for orphans and/or foster youth in your church. Orphan Sunday events, whether large or small, can help people see what you see. (The very first Orphan Sunday, held by a local pastor in a hard-pressed church in Zambia, ignited many hearts for the orphans around them!)

The new CAFO Church Engagement Initiative is designed to help churches develop effective, sustainable ministry to orphans and foster youth. In addition, we’d recommend the quick-to-read book Becoming Home: Adoption, Foster Care and Mentoring—Living Out God’s Heart for the Orphan as a great overview of the key issues involved in orphan ministry. There are also many other great volumes in the CAFO Resource Library. In addition, many great CAFO members have developed rich resources and other supports for churches seeking to develop effective ministry, including Hope for Orphans, Patch Our Planet, ALL IN Orphan Care and Tapestry.

Some of our CAFO member organizations also have great resources for church ministries: check out Patch Our Planet, ALL IN Orphan Care, and Tapestry Ministry.

As a first thought, we’d first encourage you to prayerfully weigh whether starting a new organization is definitely where God’s leading you. You may indeed be called to start a new ministry to meets a need that is not being met today. But the process of starting a new organization from scratch demands an immense amount of work that – in itself – may not accomplish a lot for children. So it’s always wise to ask if your strengths and passions could be used most effectively with an existing ministry so that you don’t have to expend extensive resources and energy just to get started.   Do research and also talk with others who’ve served for many years in the field to see if they know of similar organizations. Ask if there might be a way that your vision could be accomplished through or in partnership with an existing organization.

That said, if you still have a clear sense that a new organization is needed, CAFO Member Organizations have a wealth of knowledge and expertise that could prove invaluable along the road ahead. (See Membership Categories for more information about each.) We’d especially invite you to experience the unparalleled blend of experts, workshops, resources, ideas and more at the annual CAFO Summit.   We’d also invite you to join us for free webinars once a month and spend time researching in the CAFO Resource Library.

Once your organization is up-and-running, we’d encourage you to make full use of all of the learning opportunities open to CAFO members, from the private “Leadership Strategy Roundtables” at Summit to other gatherings of leaders to address together pressing issues they face.

(Note: you may also want to read the FAQ answer under the question, “I feel called to start an orphanage. What advice can you offer? What resources do you recommend?”)

There is so much information out there, not all of it entirely dependable. So it can be overwhelming to sift through it all. Here are some ideas for getting started.

An excellent easy-to-read primer is the book, Becoming Home: Adoption, Foster Care and Mentoring—Living Out God’s Heart for the Orphan. It provides a great overview of the key issues involved in orphan ministry.

Another important resource is the CAFO white paper, “On Understanding Orphan Statistics” that provides explanation of some of the most important global orphan statistics and how to use them accurately.

To go further, we’d definitely encourage you to attend the annual CAFO Summit. It is a tremendously rich and substantive learning environment for both newcomers and veterans, covering issues from attachment and trauma to mentoring models to church-based ministry to global partnerships.

If you are particularly interested in serving orphans overseas, we’d commend to you the resources noted in the FAQ question that begins, “I feel called to start an orphanage…”

Beyond all this, we’d also invite you to join future CAFO Webinars and also watch past webinars that reside in the webinar archives. The CAFO Resource Library is also rich with books, videos and other resources. Finally, many of CAFO’s member organizations provide additional content to inspire and help guide effective advocacy.

We’re so glad that you sense God leading you to step forward for orphans! We’re keenly aware the unique journey God has for each person is very different. So we’d want to provide advice as gentle suggestions, especially without a deeper understanding of your personal story. But here are a few initial thoughts:

Encouragement. It’s clear in Scripture that God cares deeply and personally for every orphan. So we’d very much guess that your sense that He is leading you to reflect that love in action is indeed from Him. We’re excited with you and encourage you to be persistent in following through on this sense of God’s leading.

Caution. In orphan care and many other areas of deep human need, there are “good,” “better” and “best” ways to respond to complex needs. There can also be ways that are not-so-good, and even harmful. So we’d very much encourage you to make deep learning a core part of this investigation stage – seeking not just to love, but to love wisely and well.

One important question for you to address early-on is whether programs could be developed that enable children to grow up in families – such as local adoption or quality foster care in local church families. There are certainly some parts of the world today where high-quality residential facilities (usually small and family-like in nature) offer a vital alternative to life on the streets or in abusive homes. But overall, both Scripture and social science affirm that the very best place for a child to grow up is in a family. So we’d strongly encourage that any model of care you pursue absolutely be as close to family as possible.

It’s also important to know that many children cared for in orphanages have living parents or other family members. Certainly, not all of these children can be safely returned to those families. But many can. So we’d very much encourage that any approach to orphan care include programs and/or partners that 1) Work to prevent family separation whenever possible; and 2) Work to facilitate reunification and support of families whenever this can be safely done.

Some resources that could useful to your research include:

1. a) The free downloadable booklet, Journeys of Faith and other resources from the Faith to Action Initiative, including, “Children, Orphanages and Families.”
2. b) The book, Becoming Home: Adoption, Foster Care and Mentoring—Living Out God’s Heart for the Orphan
3. c) The CAFO Report, “Replicable Models for Family Based Care” and webinar by the same name.
4. d) The book, In Pursuit of Orphan Excellence.
5. e) Any of the downloadable sessions from the CAFO Summit HERE.
6. f) Joining us at a CAFO Summit.

Finally, we believe it is especially wise to learn in a more direct, in-depth fashion from veterans of orphan care before you shape your future plans, start an organization, or begin to raise money. The CAFO Summit would provide many chances to meet these kinds of veterans and interact directly with them. But if you desire to make this mission a major part of the rest of your life, you may want to investigate additional options (depending on what is feasible for your financial situation, flexibility, etc) — such as living and working alongside one or more excellent leaders/organizations in the field for a season.

We hope this doesn’t feel too overwhelming. The truth is that all of us on the CAFO team would have felt overwhelmed if we’d seen from the start where God was ultimately going to lead us. But what has made it not just do-able, but truly a joyful journey, has been simply taking one little step at a time.

We’d encourage you to start there — identifying just one or two things you can act upon at this point. Alongside much prayer, take that step. We trust that one little step will follow another as God faithfully leads you to the place where your passion, vision and unique gifts can be fully used for precious children.

CAFO invests in orphan-serve organizations only in non-financial ways. We do not provide grants or other funding.   Rather, all CAFO initiatives work to equip ministries, churches and individuals for effective service – from the CAFO Summit, to monthly Webinars, to the Applied Research & Best Practice Initiative.

For international leaders working to motivate fellow Christians in their nation to care for orphans, the CAFO Global Movements Initiative is designed especially for you. This includes the annual Collaborate Forum, regional training events, strategic coaching and consulting, monthly newsletter and other services.

Many CAFO educational resources are highly-relevant to each of these groups. The annual CAFO Summit includes workshops and a huge array for all of these groups. (You can see and download workshops from prior years here.) You can also search the CAFO Resource Library by topic for high-quality books, videos, websites and more.   Free CAFO Webinars each month cover a wide range of related topics as well.

We’d especially invite you to join us at the next CAFO Summit. Alongside the resources mentioned above, Summit is a great opportunity to network and learn from people around the world who are passionate about effective foster care, adoption, family preservation and global orphan ministry.

This is a growing area of need, keep following CAFO and as opportunities present themselves we will share them!

Please contact us on the form below and we will do our best to point you in the right direction. CAFO does not provide respite care but member organizations may be able to help you.

We do! The CAFO Aging Out Initiative is designed to help identify and share promising models and resources for serving aging out youth, both in the US and globally.   See more here! If you’re interested in getting more directly involved, you can also email the Director of the Aging-Out Initiative, Scott Brown.

As an Alliance that includes so many organizations and churches, CAFO generally must restrict the space on our website and social media to the resources and events of our member organizations. (And, in truth, even not all of these can be shared given space constraints.) If you would like to become a CAFO member, you can find more info here. We would note that resources of the highest quality can be recommended for inclusion in the CAFO Resource Library.  You may make a recommendation through our contact form below.

There are a number of devotional resources in the CAFO Resource Library as well as in the Orphan Sunday Prayer Guides and Bible Studies.

The CAFO Resource Swap is currently only available to member organizations, which make available to each other at no cost the best of their policy documents, manuals and other proprietary resources. If you would like to become a CAFO member, please learn more here.

We’re rallying together advocates, moms, attorneys, students, authors, musicians and anyone who has a heart that beats for the orphan. This is a growing movement and we want to tell the stories, encourage those on the front lines, give names to faces, call to action, and inspire audiences with perspective and truth.

Join as a Blogger for Orphans Here!

Although traditional orphanages no longer exist in the US, group homes serve a portion of the children in US foster care.   This percentage varies significantly by region, but is roughly 15% nationwide. Children are generally placed in group homes when it has been difficult to find them a foster family due to a lack of available families or a dynamic that makes placement more challenging, such as a sibling group, older age, or intensive special needs.

Not all group homes permit volunteer involvement. However, many do allow (and some actively seek) volunteers for roles ranging from mentoring and tutoring to transportation to/from religious services that youth express interest in attending.

Whether or not there are group homes in your region that allow volunteer involvement, there very likely are other volunteer opportunities to help foster youth and other vulnerable children. We’d encourage you to reach out to any CAFO foster organization involved in the foster system in your area.   In addition, mentoring and other opportunities may also exist through respected organizations like CASA.

Of course, you can also consider working within your church to raise awareness of local needs (possibly using Orphan Sunday as a catalyst!) and/or to provide practical support for foster and adoptive families.

We’d love to connect with you and see if there is a place for you on our team or with one of our member organizations. View our current Volunteer Opportunities.

The CAFO2017 Summit will be held in Nashville on May 4-5, 2017. You can visit the CAFO Summit page. For updates and news on CAFO Summit, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Yes, absolutely! Visit here for more information and to fill out a certificate request form.

Audio Recordings and General Session videos are available here!

Audio download cards are available for purchase through (1) CAFO Summit registration website  (2) On-site the CAFO Summit.  If you didn’t purchase a card, no worries! You can browse and purchase audio recordings below.

Visit CAFO.SONACART.COM to redeem audio download cards or purchase individual recordings

Audio recorded sessions include: General Sessions, Workshops and Intensives

Video recorded sessions include: General Sessions

Visit CAFO Audio Recordings Store

Orphan Sunday is the second Sunday each November. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on latest happenings and resources.

November 8, 2015  |  November 13, 2016  |  November 12, 2017

To get involved with Orphan Sunday, contact your Regional Coordinator on the list of Coordinators here.

If there is no Coordinator yet for your region write us at OSCoordinators@cafo.org.

If you are considering becoming a coordinator in your region take a look at the Coordinator FAQs.

We’re grateful you want to join us in this work! The CAFO donations page includes options for giving online or by mail. If you would like to discuss giving opportunities further, please explain that in a short note on the contact form below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience! Please request your giving statement on the contact form below, selecting “Partnership” in the drop down menu.

We apologize for any inconvenience! Please let us know how we can help on the contact form below, selecting “Partnership” in the drop down menu.

The first step is to check our Next Steps booklet. There are countless agencies and ministries worldwide that work with orphans and vulnerable children directly, and by supporting them, you will be supporting those they serve. Reach out directly to agencies and ministries you are interested in supporting.

• CAFO will NEVER ask for your credit card information, User IDs, passwords, or debit or ATM card information by email or in a phone call initiated by us (if you call us, we may need to verify some pieces of information but this will NEVER include asking you for any of your passwords).
• If you receive such an inquiry (phone, email, or unauthorized posting on the web) from someone claiming to be from CAFO, do not respond to the email, post, or call the number provided by the email or call.
• If you are unsure of the authenticity of any inquiry, please contact us directly at info@cafo.org, and DO NOT call the number in the email or phone message.
• Further, CAFO does not directly place vulnerable children in homes and will NEVER contact in request for funds to place a child with a loving family.

See the CAFO Membership types and online applications HERE!

Please use the contact form below to update us on any changes.

Please use the contact form below to update us on any changes.

CAFO Webinars are normally on the last Wednesday of the month. You can check our Webinar Page for the latest information on upcoming webinars and also an archive of previous webinars. Webinars are announced in advance via the CAFO listserv – which you can sign up for here.

CAFO webinars are FREE!

Yes! You can view past webinars in the CAFO Webinar Archive.

We’re so sorry to hear you’re having troubles logging onto the webinar.  Have no fear! Webinars are recorded and you can view them here: Watch Webinar Videos Here!