| Featured Friends - Kentwood Community
Church
 Twenty-seven
students from Kentwood Community Church in Kentwood, Michigan,
descended on the World Hope International office on Friday,
April 11, to learn about the Reach4Life
program and how they can participate in a movement to stop
the HIV/AIDS crisis. Reach4Life
is a 40 lesson HIV prevention program implemented in the
public school systems of Sub-Saharan Africa that goes beyond
abstinence and acknowledges the difficulties of peer pressure,
parental absence and poverty while giving youth the opportunity
to make a choice for purity and for Jesus Christ.
The Kentwood group participated in a variety of activities
while they were in the Virginia office. After watching a
video clip about a boy who grew up in Johannesburg, South
Africa, and whose entire family died of AIDS, they heard
from Yemi Oshodi, WHI’s Trafficking in Persons Program
Director/Western Region, about her HIV prevention work with
youth in Swaziland prior to coming to WHI. The group also
helped brainstorm for new Reach4Life promotional material
which will be rolled out later this summer.
WHI works with youth in the United States
to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, encourage American youth
to support their peers in the Reach4Life program, and open
a discussion  about
purity for youth around the world. WHI has a multi-focused
outreach in the US, including coordinating with summer camps,
youth groups and colleges to organize Reach4Life events
and hosting a representative to speak about the program.
WHI has an ongoing partnership with Kentwood
Community Church, where Jeff Eckart is the youth pastor.
Eckart also directs Never the Same youth camp, which incorporated
Reach4Life’s message of justice and purity into its
regular activities last year, and plans to focus on it again
this year. In 2007, two WHI employees from Malawi and South
Africa visited the camp and gave seminars that put a “face”
on the crisis in Africa for American teens.
WHI welcomes the opportunity to talk to youth about their role in international development. If you are interested in scheduling an office visit or hosting a Reach4Life representative, please call 888-466-4673. To learn more about WHI’s Reach4Life program, visit our Reach4Life page, or visit our donation page to make a gift supporting Reach4Life.
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