ZOE Short Presentation Guide
(5 minutes or less)
Key Reminders
· Be passionate. If people don’t even really listen to what you’re saying, they’ll remember the name ZOE and that you were passionate, enthusiastic, and excited.
· You want to bring a child to life for the listener. This helps your audience engage and connect.
· You want to motivate your audience to act. In most cases, this is to support ZOE in the level that is most appropriate for them.
· This is your presentation so give it your own style. We are giving you suggestions to get you started, but make the presentation your own.
Begin with a Story
Begin by telling a story of a child in ZOE. If you have been on a ZOE-led trip, you may have one or two children’s story that you remember vividly. Try to remember and write down as many details of their life as you can. However, if you don’t remember exact specifics, like a name of a younger sibling, it is OK to make up a name for him or her. This is preferable than saying “I don’t remember the name, but…” The important thing to remember is that you are telling a story, and details matter.
You can start with, “I went to [Kenya/Rwanda] to visit the program, and one orphan family I really connected with was…”
Describe the Child’s Situation Before ZOE and Challenges (2-3 minutes)
It is important to establish for listeners that ZOE is addressing a dire need – vulnerable children are living and dying in poverty every day. Bring this home to your listener by describing in detail the challenges that your child faced. For example:
“Mary was only 12 when she watched her mother die of HIV/AIDs. She had already lost her father several years before to the same disease. She was left all alone to raise her younger sister, Sabine, and her brother, Jean Claude, who was just a toddler at the time. Mary would spend every day trying to find work to feed her family. She would work all day in neighbor’s field, only be paid in a few potatoes for her family to eat for dinner. She and her sister and brother went hungry many nights. Her sister was often sick from malaria, but there was nothing she could do to help her…”
If you can’t remember all of their challenges, many of the ZOE orphans face similar challenges, which all stem from a life lived in poverty. These challenges include:
· The loss of one or both parents, and/or a parent who is sick with HIV/AIDS or another illness
· A daily struggle for food, either begging, working in farms for food, or domestic work for exploitatively low pay.
· A need to drop out of school because he or she could not work and provide for the siblings. Siblings who had to drop out because they couldn’t afford fees, materials or uniforms.
· Suffering from one or more health problems, such as malnutrition from lack of food, malaria from lack of mosquito nets, worms and skin diseases because they had no home to bathe in or parents to teach them how to stay healthy.
· Occasionally there is abuse from those who have either beaten them for stealing or taken advantage of them physically/sexually because of their vulnerable state.
· These children are isolated in their communities. Community members avoid them for many reasons, including: they are afraid of contracting HIV/AIDS because they of the way the childrens’ parents died, the children have begged from them and they cannot give them food because they are also poor, the children are dirty and may have infectious diseases. The important point is that the children are struggling to provide for their siblings alone.
Describe Briefly How ZOE Helped (1 minute)
After you’ve spent about 90% of your time introducing your child and his or her situation prior to ZOE, you can then talk briefly about how ZOE changed this child’s life.
“After years of struggle Mary met a ZOE social worker who invited her to join a group of orphans just like her. She was safe and secure and had a group who helped and supported her and her siblings. Mary got a hoe and a package of seeds, and three months later she was harvesting her own food. She learned how to take care of herself and her family, and today they are healthy. Her brother and sister have returned to school. They have broken the cycle of poverty and have hope for the future.”
Children in ZOE make many achievements that you can highlight, but it is important to pick a few and stay brief. Try to remember the details of your child’s achievements, but you can also add elements of the program that most or all children experience, such as:
· Most children grow their own food at their home on their family’s land (some buy food with income from business)
· Some children start small businesses that grow, such as a tailoring shop
· Most children raise animals
· Nearly all younger siblings return to school because older siblings can provide for them
· All children learn to stay healthy and receive essentials to prevent disease (pots to boil water, mosquito nets for malaria)
· All children learn about their rights, some are able to reclaim land that is theirs because they know their legal status.
· Often, groups come together to build homes for homeless children.
· All children learn how to become successful entrepreneurs.
End with a Question (30 seconds-1 minute)
First, quickly describe any existing partnership the group you are presenting with has with ZOE already, such as: “Our church council/missions committee has approved our becoming a Sustaining Partner/Hope Companion/etc.” Then, end with this: “An investment of $7500 supports a working group of 75-100 children... (pause) That is less than $100 per child per year...(pause). How much is a child worth to you?”