Inception and Growth of RPC

“Remember the Poorest Community (RPC) is one of the ministries called by GOD to make His visitation of Ethiopia real.”                                             Samuel Assefa, Founder and Executive Director

In January 1999 an invitation letter was sent out to eleven of the evangelical churches affiliated with the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Nazareth to hold a convention. The convention was on street and homeless young people. On the final day of the seminar there were twenty-eight participants left. All twenty-eight participants went out to witness to street people and many were willing to accept Christ as their Savior and come to church the following day to receive instruction on the Word of God and have a fellowship meal. The final day of the seminar was a Friday and that evening the participants agreed to continue the work of serving these street people and money was collected, amounting to $ 60. With this money it was agreed to buy food for the homeless young people for the next few meetings. On Saturday over two hundred homeless young people and street children attended the meeting.

As a few NGOs working with orphans and street people started giving service here in Nazareth, Ethiopia, the number of homeless young people who were with us began to decline. As a rule, all the NGOs had agreed that beneficiaries could only receive help from one organization, and so many of the street people were forced to stay within one NGO. As we observed it is more effective to thwart street life by preventing children from coming out on to the street for after coming out to the street, they usually acquire bad habits. Therefore to prevent street life we also began to concentrate our energies on assisting orphans and vulnerable children.

This is how “Remember the Poorest Community (RPC)” was established

	Currently RPC has the following programs:

• Orphan and Vulnerable children support program (603 children) • Street Children reintegration and rehabilitation program (100 children per year) • Education program (179 Kindergarten pupils coming from very poor families) • Beggar women with their children rehabilitation program • HIV/AIDS prevention and care giving program