Our mission
Our mission
To care for orphaned and less privileged children in Douala, and to keep every one of them in education — paying the fees, providing the materials, and standing behind them from their first class to their last.
About us
Our story
Why this work started, what we believe, and where we are going.
How it began
It started with children nobody was counting.
In Douala, between the houses and the market roads around École Publique Bilongue, there are children whose parents have died, or who have been left with grandparents too old to work, or with relatives who already have more mouths than income.
They are not hidden. You see them in the afternoon when other children are in class. They are the ones carrying water, minding a stall, sitting on a step with nothing to do. Nobody has written them down anywhere. No register is missing them, because they were never on one.
Zion Restoration began by counting them. By learning their names, finding out which school they had left and why, and then doing the unglamorous, expensive, unending work of putting them back into a classroom and keeping them there.
School fees. A uniform that fits. Shoes. A bag. Exercise books and a pen that works. Food, so that a child is not trying to learn while hungry. Each of those is small on its own. Together they are the difference between a child who finishes school and a child who does not.
Our vision
Our vision
A Cameroon where no child is out of school because of what happened to their family. Where an orphan finishes secondary school as a matter of course. Where the question asked of a poor child is what they are good at, not whether they can pay.
Our values
What we hold to
The child comes first
Every decision is measured against one question: is this better for the child? Not what is easier to administer, or what photographs well.
Education is not optional
Food and shelter keep a child alive today. Only education changes what their life looks like in twenty years. We refuse to treat it as a luxury.
We finish what we start
Sponsoring a child for one term and then disappearing does real harm. When we take a child on, we intend to see them through.
Account for everything
Every gift is recorded and every donor is told where it went. People who give out of their own modest means deserve nothing less.
Dignity, always
These children are not a fundraising device. We protect their privacy and we speak about them the way we would want someone to speak about our own.
Open to everyone
We support children regardless of background, language or faith. Need is the only qualification.
Keep up with us
The day-to-day of the home, and the children whose school year you helped pay for.