Founder’s Story

There’s a verse in the bible that says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

As I made my way through college this verse, along with several others, became the cornerstone of my personal faith. It took such a grip on my heart that in the winter of 2004, I decided to use my Christmas break to volunteer at an orphanage in Africa. I didn’t know where or how… but I was determined to go.

I started by trying to volunteer some where I already had a connection, but all my requests to volunteer were either ignored or rejected. So I turned to the internet. I did a Google search for “orphanages in Africa”. I was amazed at how many there were. I began to compile a list of organizations all over the continent and then sent out a mass email introducing myself and asking if they could use a young college student without any skills, but a desire to serve. The response was overwhelming.

I decided to volunteer with a local Community Based Organization called Bringing Hope to the Family. The organization had been founded in 2000 by a woman named Faith Kunihira. It focused most of its work in a rural village in western Uganda.

Fortunately, my parents had the faith/craziness (some people see it differently) to let me spend Christmas by myself in a country I didn’t know existed before my internet search, with a lady I only knew through email.

While in Uganda, I experienced the effects of extreme poverty first hand. I lived with a boy named John who had recently been orphaned and then chased away from his home by his grandfather. I stood next to a mud hole that was the water source for a whole community, including Faith’s family. On Christmas day I helped serve a simple meal of rice, beans and meat to a group of orphans who where registered with Bringing Hope. Faith told me it was the best meal many of them would have that entire year.

After almost a month, I flew back home to finish my last semester of college.

I expected to have my heart broken, but I was unprepared for how it would overwhelm my thoughts. Being a problem solver, I thought about it constantly. The enormity of the problem was mind boggling and the reasons were so complex.

Could such extreme poverty ever be reversed? If so, how? Where would you even start?

I had to resist the overwhelming thought that there was nothing I could do that would make a considerable difference and allow myself to become emotionally disconnected from what I had experienced. So I continued to stay in touch with Faith and help in every possible way that a poor 22 year old could. I didn’t see it at first, but the answers to the questions I kept asking had been standing right next to me the whole time I was in Uganda, were already in action, and I was already helping.

It was Faith’s story that told me things could change.

She had escaped the poverty trap, but instead of using her prosperity to isolate herself from the disparity of so many around her, she used it to build a bridge for others. She quit her job and gave up everything she had once dreamed about to start Bringing Hope to the Family. Her passion and commitment to her own community, not only gave me hope, it inspired me.

In January of 2006, I committed myself to starting a nonprofit to support community leaders and local organizations like Faith and Bringing Hope to the Family.

I had no clue where to begin or how to start… but I was determined to act. I began to research and learn as much as I could about non-profits… and with the prayer, support, help and personal sacrifice of so many people, Global Support Mission was born.

Compassion = Action,

Travis Gravette