Your donation can help an at-risk child experience hope

By Patricia Nugent

We’ve all had that moment. Images of impoverished children on the other side of the globe pop up during the news and we wish we could do something, but don’t know how.

For Nicole and Sanjay Parker, that moment came when they saw the movie Lion, which chronicles an orphan’s amazing journey. It closes with the statistic that more than 80,000 children go missing in India every year.

“When we married, we knew it was our mission to help others, and since we both work full time and have young children, we assumed that would happen when we were older and had more time,” says Nicole.

“But when we saw the movie and thought about the tens of thousands of at-risk children we could be helping between now and later, we decided the deadline to start our charity would be now.”

They founded Dare 2 Care International last year. Based in Lake County, the all-volunteer, grassroots organization focuses on empowering at-risk children in developing countries. Their efforts began in Cameroon, Africa.

Last December, Nicole and Sanjay, and board member Lori Caszatt, took a nine-day trip to Cameroon to pinpoint the needs of at-risk children, as well as establish partnerships with local charities and governmental agencies.

Based on their evaluation of the direct needs of the orphans, the Dare 2 Care Board came up with three ways people here can help:

• Shoes – A $25 donation will supply a pair of shoes designed to expand to fit many sizes of an orphan’s growing feet.
• Beds – A $175 donation will buy a new bunk bed for a child.
• Educational Empowerment Grant – A $1,500 donation will underwrite tuition and supplies for one child to attend school for one year.

Dare 2 Care International is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. For more information on how you can help support their efforts to aid orphans in Cameroon, Africa, whether by donating or volunteering, visitDare2Care.org.