Caleb's Hope

MISSION

Rebuilding the Region. Rehabilitating the People.

Caleb’s Hope is a registered Canadian charity dedicated to improving the quality of life for vulnerable women and children affected by war, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. CH helps provide access to improved healthcare, education, and generates innovative job-creation and village banking programs.

Caleb’s Hope’s focus is helping women develop business and community building skills by creating goods and/or services that are sustainable, eco-friendly, fair trade and competitive on a global scale, while providing assistance to their children via mentorship programs.

PHILOSOPHY

Our goal is to go out of business

What makes Caleb's Hope different than most NGOs and charities is that we genuinely want to go out of business. If we are doing our jobs right in the area of humanitarian aid then we should effectively, in time, become redundant.

Many charities and NGOs unintentionally create co-dependant relationships with their beneficiaries and within the regions they work. For example: a job-creation program with a village bank is great, but if those jobs rely on the charity to sell their goods and raise funds for their salaries, then it’s a bust. It never ends.

Co-dependency is creating an unnecessary crutch. It is neither realistic for true economic development and sustainability nor is it ethically responsible. It further perpetuates a negative stereotype of developing nations – particularly in Africa – that they couldn’t possibly exist without us first world folk helping them out. The people of Uganda - and all of Africa - are more than capable to run their own businesses and succeed in life on all levels. But because some really horrific things happened to them, people presume they are incapable. This is simply not true. It is an ignorant and arrogant mindset.

No one needs a saviour. No one needs pity. Practical and compassionate solutions with tangible results are the answer.

We believe NGOs and humanitarian aid play an important part of world development. We wouldn’t exist if we didn’t believe this. We just believe there’s a new way to do things. We also believe in ethical businesses doing their part and investing responsibly in developing nations; seeing these troubled nations as equals and not lesser beings to exploit at their whim like many gas, mining and pharmaceutical companies currently do. We have yet to see ethical business being the standard across the board, but we believe that if more people become educated on the importance of seeing ‘foreign aid and development’ in a new light and tossing out the archaic, colonialistic pity party view on charitable work, the mold will begin to change not only for aid but for business development.