Giving Children Hope Team in Indonesia

GCH team is on the ground during major earthquake

(2007-9-12) Giving Children Hope (GCH) has a team of five men on the ground in Indonesia. Founder and CEO, John Ditty, John Bibler, Jonathan Ditty, Mike Humphrey and Matt Gibbons left a week and a half ago to work alongside Giving Children Hope’s Indonesian office on Nias Island. Upon waking this morning and hearing news of the 8.2 magnitude earthquake that struck off western Indonesia, staff, family, and friends of Giving Children Hope were eager to hear news of the team’s safety. John Bibler’s wife received a phone call minutes ago and found the team is in fact safe and doing well amongst the excitement of the quake.

The GCH team brought 3,000 pairs of eye glasses to fit the Indonesian people as well as assessing our current micro-enterprise projects of bakeries and fishing boats and is implementing a new structure of our micro-finance loans. Yesterday, the team left for Teluctalam to fit children in rural villages for reading glasses and to take part in medical outreach. The team is expected home on Friday night, September 14th.

Reports are still coming in and Giving Children Hope is waiting to hear more before deciding how to respond the areas affected by the quake.