See Beautiful Grant Applicant: Epos International

The feature below is brought to you by Epos International, 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 Epos International, please visit their website page: here.

From the seeds that were shared yesterday

There’s a busy intersection on the streets of Tirana, the capital city of a country that few have even heard of. The country of Albania is in the heart of the Balkans, a beautiful part of the world full of history and culture. Many from the West tour highlighted places throughout Europe and tend to miss the places where there is still such beauty but there is also great poverty and need. It’s another view of Europe that few can imagine even existing.

In this busy intersection the Roma people, as they are often referred to, are continuing a cycle of previous generations where as children they are placed on the streets, left to earn money for their families by begging and prostituting. Their faces are dirty, their bodies are small, frail, and hungry, their hands reaching out asking for coins of the people that pass by. 

Epos International is a US registered 501c3 with a vision to bring individuals and organizations together to change this story for future generations.  We are convinced that having an inclusive, tri-strategy of education, faith, and social programs can in fact change an entire generation and people group to re-write a story of awareness that brings hope, justice, peace and equality.

We have partnered with local charitable organizations throughout Eastern Europe who are continually building relationships with the Roma and are sharing life-changing solutions for them that will serve a long-term benefit for them as individuals, families, and an entire culture of people. We believe in freedom for them, breaking the cycle, and showing them their true beauty. We give them opportunities to learn a trade, sponsorships to go to school, and justice and opportunities to get off the streets at an early age so that they can become people who are a life-giving part of their society.

We have taken the approach of “teaching them how to fish for life rather than just handing them a fish to solve their hunger for a day”. It’s a never-ending, resource-oriented, highs and lows, hard work that produces the most beautiful outcome imaginable…the story of a person who has been rescued.

These stories are so much more than words on a page or even images for people to see, they are lives, families, children, men, women, and entire culture groups that have been given a chance to break their chained mentality, generational cycles, and society prejudiced lives. They are not mere numbers or even people that are seen and then forgotten, but they are truly miracles of what someone with nothing can become when given hope and the opportunity to choose who they will become.

Epos International has been working in Eastern Europe for the past ten years, only becoming a registered 501c3 as of January 2020.  Now in this second stage of our mission, we hope to bring even more awareness of the injustice that has been living throughout Europe for years.  We hope that through the See Beautiful grant opportunity, we will continue our work and bring together education, faith, and social programs to rescue the next generation of this beautiful, diverse, and dynamic group of people called, The Roma. 

Join us by sharing our story of lives changed, generations rescued, and people who once depended solely on the handouts of others passing by and now have become professionals and positive contributors to their society and surrounding countries.  It is said that "all the flowers of tomorrow are from the seeds that were shared yesterday". They are beautiful stories of people who know what it means to be given an opportunity, rescued, and able to pass it along to the next person who needs a little help changing the narrative that was penned for their life. You can find out more about what we do by visiting our website at www.eposinternational.org ​

Submitted by: Amanda Chapman