BMF FOUNDATION STORIES

Two of our partners are involved in educating young people to make positive and brave decisions for a brighter future. TruLife, an outstanding group in South Africa, uses dance and dramatic presentations in schools all around SA and has seen amazing results through the last 9 years. They were all set to perform and present their curriculum in 250 schools in 2020, only to have all the locations close their doors due to Covid19. This could have been devastating, but TruLife used our funding to go online and make brilliant educational videos that schools could use and still benefit from even during the lockdown.

Just as they were wondering when and how they were going to get back to live productions in the schools, their founder, Colin Edmonds, was contacted by an old friend who challenged them to think bigger and take their new curriculum worldwide. Colin was encouraged and inspired, but who knew (God knew:) all that would unfold from there. We had just been in touch with our good friend, Barbara Stewart, who works with another of our partners, Heart for Orphans. They are an organization in Ukraine who assists young people who are aging out of the foster system and provide housing, job skills training, and counseling that helps these vulnerable young people make a successful transition into adulthood. Barbara had a vision to develop a curriculum that would address making brave choices and teaching life skills that these young people so desperately needed, but she wasn’t sure who would be able to get all her ideas into a succinct video series usable in Ukraine.

“A match made in heaven”. TruLife was dreaming of going worldwide but would have never thought to start in Europe. Heart for Orphans needed high quality, relevant video curriculum produced and would have never thought to look in South Africa. BMF Foundation was able to connect these two and TruLife is producing 10 videos in the Russian language for H4O to begin using with their teenagers. Barbara is developing activities and follow up curriculum to be used with the videos. This curriculum package addresses issues that all youth are facing and could be used in schools and groups anywhere. We are so honored to witness these partners work together.

Written by The BMF Foundation