In Malawi, many children have little hope for the future. They lack educational opportunities and necessities for living. So RBP’s 2023 Vacation Bible School missions project partnered with Going Home Africa Ministries to help these children.
Operation Hope: Providing a Future for Impoverished Kids raised desperately needed funds for these children. Through the generosity of kids attending VBS, $12,500 has been sent to Malawi.
I sat down with Francis Chipukunya, founder and projects leader of Going Home Africa Ministries (virtually, as he lives in Malawi), to learn what Operation Hope means for children in Malawi. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
Interview with Francis Chipukunya
Joshua: Francis, can you tell me a little about your ministry and what it does for kids?
Francis: Going Home Africa is a teaching and evangelism ministry—a pastor for pastors and a voice of the voiceless. On the topic of a voice of the voiceless, we have different children’s homes where we support children from needy and very poor families with food, teaching from the Word of God, and resources for school so these children can have what they need to do their best.
Going Home Africa ministers have taken it to be a desirable goal that we should support these children, because they don’t have any hope. They are needy. So our aim is to give them hope so they can feel included in the welfare of their communities as well as their churches.
Joshua: You’re giving these children hope, helping them feel welcome, and drawing them in. And most important of all, you’re reaching them with the gospel of Jesus and helping them know how to become a child of God. We’re so excited about your ministry with children in Malawi.
Could you tell me more about the living conditions of children in Malawi?
Francis: Children in Malawi’s rural areas do not have hope for their future. They are from poor backgrounds and poor families. So I felt in my heart that these children need help and hope for their future, and I approached you and your team to come alongside us to work together so we can bring needed hope to the children in Malawi because of the conditions in which they are living.
Most children spend nights without food, nights without sleeping, and nights without covers on their beds. They don’t have something to eat in the morning at their boarding school or good clothing to put on. They do not even have school uniforms.
[School uniforms are required to attend school in Malawi. Because many impoverished families cannot afford uniforms, their children are hindered from going to school.]
It isn’t possible to help all the children in Malawi, but we can help children who are in our context, whom we can reach, and do something that can create hope for them.
Joshua: How long do you expect the funds to help these children?
Francis: The funds are not used altogether, at the same time. We are using them in bits and bits to ensure that over maybe a year we can feed the children so we have sustainability in the use of the funds.
Joshua: What kinds of things are you able to do for kids through the funds that you may not have been able to do before?
Francis: Using the funds we have been able to provide tuition fees and rent assistance to girls from a poor background in a secondary school. We also provided them with uniforms, pens, and exercise books. There are about ten of these girls. But we have also supported over 350 children from different backgrounds, so adding it all together, we are reaching 360 children.
One girl at the secondary school is very grateful because of the wonderful support that we have given to her. She is able to continue with her education because now we have brought these children hope for the future. They see that God is great.
Another testimony is a boy who was not able to go to school can now go back to school because he has reading material, a school uniform, a backpack, pens, and pencils.
We also have managed to purchase sewing machines—about ten of them. The reason we have purchased sewing machines is because we want to be generating some funds that are going to be used in the future. My aim is that some of the children’s parents will learn how to make things using the sewing machines so that Operation Hope will be sustainable.
Joshua: We’re grateful for what God has done through Operation Hope. And that project was possible only because of VBS kids and families who gave.
Francis: My words to them, from deep within my heart, are that we deeply appreciate what they have done. We are praying for them, we are going to be praying for them, and let me say that you must extend our heartfelt thank-you for raising the funds for this ministry in Malawi. They have done a very wonderful and commendable work; they have given hope to the children that did not have hope before.
Children are now seeing the light who were in darkness, and all of it is because of the parents and the kids of this ministry in America and what they have contributed. May the Lord bless them for supporting these kids here in Malawi.
Present and Eternal Hope
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with this gracious man who is doing a wonderful ministry for children in Malawi. Even though we’re separated by an ocean, we’re serving together for the Lord Jesus!
Please pray for Francis’s ministry to children in Malawi, which is not only giving hope to children for a better future here on earth but also helping them see how they can have certain, eternal hope through Jesus. Because of Operation Hope, substantial progress is being made toward these goals.
Joshua Mason is creative manager of Regular Baptist Press Vacation Bible School.
Explore RBP’s 2025 VBS missions project, Building Bridges: Sharing God’s Love with Refugees, at rbpVBS.org/missions.
