About OJM

Orphan Justice Mission is a non-profit organization based in Southwest Michigan. We currently work in Uganda and have partnerships with several local churches and non-profit ministries here in the U.S. We have a general board and two full-time staff – an Executive Director and a Ugandan Development Initiative Coordinator. Our primary objective is to help orphaned and vulnerable children grow up into healthy productive adults through the power of Jesus Christ.

Our Story

OJM was founded in 2005 by Tim Stoner and Bill Terpstra, both of Grand Rapids, MI. They were driven by the call of God to bring justice to orphans and vulnerable children. Heartbroken by the increasing number of parentless children, corruption in the adoption industry and frustrated with deficits in what they identified as the traditional "refuge-based" orphan care model, they began OJM, an organization tasked with developing "release-based" models and working in partnership with other NGO's (non-governmental organizations or non-profits), churches and individuals. After struggling to gain traction with an orphanage project in Guatemala, a friend from another Grand Rapids-based ministry contacted them with an opportunity. During a pastor's conference in the Rakai District of southern Uganda, Dean VanderMay of Set Free Ministries saw first hand the plight of the orphan. Each day, around forty disheveled and hungry children would gather outside the meeting tent. When Dean asked one of the local pastors why the children were there, he was told they were the local orphans hoping for the scraps left over from the conference meals. Deeply touched, Dean and the Set Free Team challenged the local pastors to obey God's command to care for these children, and they did. With Set Free's financial support, they started a small school called Glory of Christ Primary School. Soon after, in 2006, Dean approached Orphan Justice Mission to take over funding, feeling they were better equipped to handle orphan care ministry. Thus began the African adventure with Glory of Christ Church in Ddwaniro. Working in Rakai has challenged us to develop and refine a community-led strategy to create sustainable, lasting change and in the process we've had to learn what "release-based" orphan care requires. We’ve come to recognize that taking the role of “donors” who fund local projects indefinitely actually hinders the partnership and harms the community by creating unhealthy dependency. It serves to keep the community and its needy children in the passive role of the victims rather than encouraging and empowering them to grow and reach the destiny that God has for them. This has led us to develop a plan that would maximize the efforts of the local church, generate leadership capacity and work towards systems that would meet the basic needs of the poor in a sustainable manner. It is our hope that what is being done in Rakai will serve as a template for other communities, first in Uganda and then beyond, who must address both the symptom of orphanhood and its root causes. Our model is rooted in the local church, which we believe has been given the orphan justice mandate (see “The Orphan's Cry”) and thus has the foundational motivation to address the need as well as the local, and trans-local, organizational infrastructure. Once connected with a local church near a high orphan population, we help organize an indigenous sister NGO with a general board and sub-committees to address the five areas of release-based orphan care: Spirituality, Health, Education, Family and Business. This NGO (Glory of Christ Community Development Initiative in Rakai) works with OJM to determine their development strategy and propose projects, each involving a community contribution. Over time, the community contributions increase and OJM's financial support decreases. We believe that the local church is the key. U. S. churches are the entities that help support the model both relationally and financially. Our role is to help link these churches, committed to fulfilling their orphan justice mandate, with local "Direct Care Partners". OJM is also willing to participate in emergency rescue of children in immediate and dire need as we are able and we continue to pursue adoption advocacy and other means of providing care for the most vulnerable children. In summary, we see ourselves catalyzing the local church, both here and abroad to care for orphans. To learn more, please log in and download the files attached below: our Governing Policy, which explains in more detail our primary objective as well as our organizational structure and our "Partnership Molecule" diagram, which gives a visual explanation of our networking strategy. If you have questions or comments or would like to assist us in our work, please contact us.