It’s my birthday today. 62 years. I’m using the attention that a birthday gets on Facebook to point to a way to care for kids.

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I visited Nepal a few years ago and watched a woman making hand-crafted gravel. She pounded on river rocks until they were small enough to serve as gravel. She bagged that up and, I’m guessing, sold it. It’s not hard to imagine that someone coming to her village and offering work for her children in the city, work that would save them from this work, she might consider.

Which is the kind of offer that takes children into the sex trade. Fortunately, Project Rescue, the umbrella organization for Home of Hope, provides life for them when – if – they are rescued.

At Home of Hope, a child gets food, clothing, education, care, love for about $400 a month. If they weren’t at Home of Hope, someone else would be getting paid for this child. The 22 children in this safehouse in Southern Asia have been rescued from the forced sex trade.

I learned of Home of Hope, and maybe you have, too, from Rich and Becky Dixon. Rich is writing here these days to offer some help to me.

Rich and Becky would love to support Home of Hope for a whole year through the Freedom Challenge. That’s about $100,000. It’s a pretty amazing idea: people riding and running and walking and providing hope in tangible ways for 22 kids on the other side of the world.

I’d love to raise $3000 for Home of Hope by July 16, the day I publish post 3000 here at 300wordsaday.com. That’s one month’s care for 7 children, with a little left over. As of this week, we’re helping 2 children for a month, at $800.

Please join Nancy and me and Rich and Becky and other readers of this blog in supporting the Hope and Freedom Challenge. More accurately, support some children who are finally getting the care and respect kids need.

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The handprints on the shirt are from the children. Actual, living, loved, fed, cared about children.