Some hear the call of God to help the helpless. Some hear the cry of the orphan and are moved to action.

Many organizations try to help, but with more than 130 million orphans across the globe, the problem is bigger than any organization can solve.

One agency that has helped facilitate more than 1,800 adoptions worldwide wants to go out of business.

Shaohannah’s Hope, an adoption assistance organization created by Christian musician Steven Curtis Chapman, receives an overwhelming number of requests for assistance each year. They expend $100,000 to $125,000 annually in grants to couples trying to adopt or churches beginning local programs to assist adoptive parents.

Scott Hasenbalg, the organization’s executive director, said he would love to live in a world one day where the service they provide is no longer necessary and every child is placed in a loving home.

“As long as there are orphans and an active church, we will be here to be a bridge between them,” Hasenbalg said.

He said they would like to change the focus of Shaohannah’s Hope from direct assistance of individual families to assisting local churches establish programs to help families adopt.

“We will never end direct adoption assistance,” Hasenbalg said. “We just believe the local church does a better job. We have helped more than 1,800 families, but how many more could be helped if churches across America helped one family a month?”

Shaohannah’s Hope is a national organization with a global reach. They have helped orphans in more than 40 countries find homes.

Chapman, the organization’s founder and spokesperson, has been involved in a battle to help these children for more than 10 years.

In 1997, the Chapmans’ daughter returned from a mission trip to Haiti and began a campaign to help orphans in that impoverished country. Two years later, Steven and Mary Beth Chapman adopted the first of three children from China.

Two years after that initial adoption, they began Shaohannah’s Hope to offer financial assistance to other families considering adoption.

“The Chapmans saw such a great need,” Hasenbalg said. “They didn’t want finances to stand in the way of these children finding homes.”

There are several ways the group helps orphans.

Direct adoption assistance is the most obvious. But through Maria’s Big House of Hope, named for the Chapman’s adopted daughter who died this year in a tragic accident, the organization hopes to build a six-story facility to house and help care for orphans with disabilities in Louyang, China.

Shaohannah’s Hope also supports the Mackenzie Fund, which funds surgeries for orphans who have cleft lips and palates.

Even small financial donations to the group make a big difference in the lives of families.

Recently, at a Steven Curtis Chapman concert in Tulsa, Okla., a couple received a donation from the Change for Orphans campaign – a project that collects spare change and donates it to a family to help the afford adoption.

That couple had recently been told that after months of effort to bring a child home, they would need an additional $9,000 to complete the adoption.

It was a tough pill to swallow for them since many of their resources had already been expended in the effort.

Hasenbalg recalls the woman becoming almost inconsolable when they were presented a check for more than $4,000 through the Change for Orphans donations. They didn’t understand her reaction until they discovered that just before the concert, her husband had been promoted and given a $5,000 raise at work.

The spare change donated one quarter at a time, combined with a blessing at work met the need that seemed out of reach only 24 hours before.

Hasenbalg said Shaohannah’s Hope also helps fund local church budgets for adoption assistance when they prove the fund exists and is sustainable. With the help of these local programs, he said many more of the world’s orphans will receive the help that they need.

“Our limitations are as wide as God will allow,” Hasenbalg said. “With Steven Curtis Chapman as our spokesperson, our best days are still ahead of us.”

Augusta Gazette