See Beautiful Grant Applicant: E4 Project

The feature below is brought to you by E4 Project, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. 

To learn more about E4 Project, please visit their website page: here.

A shared vision of beautiful

This story began with a beautiful friendship that was forged across cultural and language differences between two men in their twenties. Eric was an American living in Gabon attending seminary and Jacob was a local Gabonese man also going to seminary. The two, although opposite in nearly every way - short and tall, black and white, French-speaking and English-speaking - became brothers with a bond that would last a lifetime. The two men remained close friends as Eric went back to the United States and both Jacob and Eric found and married their incredible powerhouse wives.

Over the next twenty years, the two couples remained a family an ocean apart as they both started their own families and named their sons after each other. During this time they worked on small projects together to make a difference where possible. Out of this friendship, a joined vision was born to come together, bring people along in the journey, and help improve the lives of others in a new beautiful way through empowerment. That joint vision became E4 Project, founded in 2011 by Eric and Brynn Schmidt.

E4 Project is a non-profit organization that exists to defend the cause of the poor and needy, by empowering people to thrive who are living on the margins of society. Striving towards achieving equity and justice, while celebrating diversity is the core of all that E4 Project does. E4 Project partners with community members in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo that are creating beautiful in their own communities by elevating the stories of oppressed women, men, and children and supporting and empowering them in new creative ways.

E4 Project strives to identify people already working to make a difference in the lives of others, and come alongside them to make their goal a reality. All of our projects are led by an inside-out approach, where the members of the community that the proposed project will serve create the solution that will be most successful for their context. E4 stands for Educate, Engage, Equip, and Empower. E4 believes that the most beautiful solution is one that comes from this process, ultimately empowering people to achieve their identified solutions.

Over the last nine years, this joint vision between two couples has changed the lives of countless people in so many ways that we will never know the true impact. Some examples of the impact that we do know is that through the partnerships of E4 Project. Last summer 197 people that have crawled along the ground for decades have now received their own mobility cart and have gained independence and autonomy. Through the identifying of a need by a Congolese surgeon, 60 children are receiving healthy food and gaining weight through the E4 Malnutrition Program. Through the vision of a Gabonese Pastor and his wife to start a home for orphaned and abandoned children, Hope House is now a home for 55 children. A hospital in rural DRC now has a stable source of electricity through solar panels.

Through the leadership of community leaders, 16 wells have been built or updated to provide 20,000 people a clean source of drinking water that has prevented countless illnesses such as outbreaks of salmonella and typhoid. A school was built in Nebobongo that now serves 250 children, with a school scholarship that enables 40 children in one of the poorest regions of the DRC to attend. A pastor in Gabon had a vision for getting school supplies to the children living in unstable homes and through this partnership, 150 children were given new school supplies last year. Another local Gabonese community leader had the vision to provide healthy food to 15 children with HIV/AIDS and now those children are receiving this food each month, which is a significant boost to their health care and quality of life. The list goes on and on.

Through each and every story, the same theme emerges: E4 Project comes alongside people to form new partnerships to empower people to create beautiful in their unique context which results in countless lives changed in beautiful ways.

Submitted by: Sarah Lewan

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