HOFFMAN ESTATES, IL – Dr. Kevin Dyer established Missionary Enterprises in 1968 following several visits to Eastern Europe, observing many people in extreme poverty. He was particularly burdened for the people of Romania. He wanted to do something to help.

Dyer realized that the local evangelical churches in those countries could be an effective network for distributing essential resources to the masses of disadvantaged people. Experience has proven his concept to be correct.

“We have found building into an already existing unit like the church is more effective in life transformation and helping lift the extreme poor out of their situation than trying to establish something new.”

The world has changed a lot over the past 50 years. So much so that Dr. Dyer’s son, C.H. Dyer, led an organizational change in 1993 that included “a fresh passion and vision to minister to the world’s poorest people.” It was then that Missionary Enterprises was renamed Bright Hope International.

Bright Hope now helps thousands of families “at the bottom of the world’s economic ladder” by supplying essentials like food, clothing, and medicines; training in job skills that create the opportunity to earn enough money to break out of debt bondage; and funding in-country evangelists to minister to the poorest of the poor.

Those three elements comprise Bright Hope’s three-fold mission of:

• Hope for Today: Providing food, clothing, medicine, blankets, mosquito nets, clean water initiatives, and school supplies.
• Hope for Tomorrow: Establishing economic empowerment projects, education, job skills training, and microlending.
• Hope for Eternity: Leading the poor who desire to know Jesus Christ into a healthy and vibrant relationship with Him. Discipling new believers and training pastors.

Today, Bright Hope is blessed with nearly 1,000 local churches in impoverished communities in nine different countries in Africa and Latin America.

Bright Hope sets an example of lifting subsistence farmers out of poverty by continual interaction and innovation. In Zambia, for instance, Bright Hope’s local church partners supply farmers with equipment that processes their harvested products. Bright Hope’s funding for farm machinery that allows them to convert their harvest to marketable products like cooking oil, flour, and other items that, when sold, multiples their income several times over.

Farmers are taught how to store their crops when market prices are low, holding them until demand drives up the market prices.

Resilience in the face of changing geopolitical conditions, thoughtful innovation, a determination to operate efficiently, and to aid those with the greatest needs first, distinguish Bright Hope’s ministry.

To read more news on Extreme Poverty on Missions Box, go here.