About Us
What is the Orphan Education Fund?
Scared $1 Million Education Endowment Fund
Adanna, the main character of Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World, has a story that could be a blueprint for any of thousands of kids author Tom Davis has met and worked with in Swaziland. This tiny country on the edge of Africa is a place of startling beauty, and of desperation. Like Adanna, so many of these orphaned children are brimming with potential, but they lack even a shred of opportunity.
John Dewey wrote, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” The Scared $1 Million Education Endowment Fund will help provide needed opportunity, so children can become educated and better themselves and their community. Betterment doesn’t mean, as we may have come to know it, success in life. For these children, education will mean life itself.
You can play a part in giving this life to children who may not have it otherwise when you:
- READ the Top Ten Submissions posted to this site December 1, 2009.
- VOTE for the top entries in each category.
- TELL your friends about this contest!
- GIVE a gift to this fund that will change a life!
Who is Children's HopeChest?
Children’s HopeChest works with poor and vulnerable children in Russia and Ethiopia, Uganda, and Swaziland, Africa. In Swaziland, children are served through national staff at community carepoints.
Orphaned children lose so much – basic care and protection, emotional and spiritual guidance. HopeChest is committed to redeeming what’s been lost. This happens as individuals and groups connect to children through sponsorship and kids experience the consistent caring and presence of HopeChest national staff.
Children’s HopeChest began work with orphans in 1994. Since then, they have become recognized as a leader in orphan care because of their long-term approach and successful outcomes. Beyond meeting basic, practical needs, their mission is to give orphaned children the tools they need to become independent, mature adults who can, in turn, impact their communities and culture.
HopeChest staff is passionate about fulfilling a vision where their children are teachers and doctors, mothers and fathers in healthy families—principled people who are giving back to their own communities, and mature Christians who will impact their peers and the world for Christ’s kingdom.
What is Scared?
Released by Cook Communications June, 2009 under “Novels with a Conscience,” Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World, follows the story of U.S. photojournalist Stuart Daniels and a young Swazi girl, Adanna. Like many in her country, she finds herself as the head of her household in a land with little to offer anyone in need. Termed “Nation of Orphans,” Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
The themes of the story are not easy – disease, hunger, death, and man’s basest evil toward his fellow man, even children. Reality in Swaziland isn’t easy for anyone. In fiction, as in life, the characters show a resilience of spirit in the face of unthinkable adversity. In the same way, their stories display the power of relationship, human and divine, to heal and restore.
Stuart Daniels, a battle- and life-worn photojournalist, has taken what he believes may be the last of his assignments. His personal life, including his marriage, is a disaster. He’s haunted by an award-winning photo that made his career, but has left him a shell of a person. Adanna is a young Swazi girl with an incredible gift, a voice that cries out for her people.
Scared is a testimony of the power of words to sustain and change lives – and the power of God to bring light and new life, even to the darkest places. As Christian Fiction Online Magazine reviewer, Michelle Sutton, stated: “You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be emotionally moved when you read Scared. The entire time I read this book I was in Africa right along with the characters. That's great writing.”
Enter the world of Scared, and you will find yourself transported to a different world. Certainly moved. Maybe even transformed.
Who is Tom?
Tom Davis is CEO of Children’s HopeChest, author of four books, and a passionate advocate for “the Fatherless.” His titles include Fields of the Fatherless, Confessions of a Good Christian Guy: The Secrets Men Keep and the Grace that Saves Them, Red Letters: Living a Faith that Bleeds and his fiction debut, Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World.
He has traveled extensively in Africa and worked with children in Russia, Swaziland, Ukraine, Ethiopia and Uganda. When Tom is not writing, speaking or traveling, he is likely attending a soccer game of one of his six children with his wife in his home state of Colorado.
