Dream to Save Children - Norma Nashed

Reaching Hearts for Kids - the humanitarian outreach of Reaching Hearts International which is a nonprofit religious organization - is a promising charity organization that has served for orphans and poor children around the world since 2001. It is not a huge organization like UNICEF, but it is worth noticing remarkable passion and will of Norma Nashed who is the founder and director of Reaching Hearts for Kids.

She was an orphan born in Palestine, but her strong belief in God is now leading her to help many orphans around the world. Her devoted passion and love towards kids is a good model showing us how we live as God's children.

I sincerely wish her activities are successful not only to give children a light of hope, but also to deliver God's words and love.

Recently, she contributed an article to the Issue 3 of the quarterly magazine "Motungi" which has been regularly published by Korean Church in Augsburg in Germany. The article is introduced below.

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Dream to Save Children

Norma Nashed

Norma was born in Paletine a land of wars but grew up in Jordan. She works today in her tiny apartment in Maryland and guides her world-wide ministry of Reaching Hearts for Kids.


As a child Norma lived in extreme poverty, nine members of her family living in one-room house and their minimum daily necessities were often lacking and always hard to win. Her father's alcoholism left little for them to eat. But her Christian mother taught her children to trust God and He always supplied their needs.

At age 10, Norma had to walk 2.5 miles to school and clean the school to pay for her Christian education. When she was 15 her father died of cancer and left a 35-year old widow with seven orphans and peniless. Norma's uncles were rich but they told her mother: "These children are ours and we will take care of them, but they cannot go to church with you." Her mother's response was: "My children are God's children and He will take care of them." That same year, one "Good Samaritan" American missionary family took Norma to their home in Beirut, Lebanon, and for six years paid for her high school and college education. After graduation, Norma was ready and equipped to go back to Jordan and help her poor mother who became legally blind and provide for her six siblings.

In 1985 Norma immigrated to the United States and she was diagnosed with cancer. After suffering from radiation and medication, she turned to God and natural therapy for healing. She dedicated her life and left her job, her only source of income, and gave ALL her retirement and bank savings to serve God and save orphaned children worldwide, and this was the birthing of Reaching Hearts for Kids, a non-rpofit organization registered in the U.S.A.

In December 2007 while Norma was building a home for orphans in Ambo, Ethiopia, her own home and ministry office was completely destroyed by fire.. But out of the ashes, her dream continues and she is more determined to serve these less fortunate children. In the Bible God commanded us in Deuteronomy 15:7-11 to open our hands wide to our poor and needy and in Isaiah 58:7 the fast that God accepts is: "Is it not to to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out...." God's promises in Isiah 58:8, 10 11

"Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily....If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul...The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail."

Again Norma claimed these verses and her home was rebuilt after one year and she is back with praise and gratitude that God can use her as a vessel for the good of humanity.

Norma took 31 volunteers in 2007 to build a home for orphans in Ethiopia with a medical team to help the poor in the community. In June 14-28, 09 she will be going to Tanzania to help build another home for orphans there. Reachding Hearts for Kids now serves 2,000 poor and orphaned children of HIV/AIDS in ten countries. They have dug wells, in Kenya and Congo and are planning to do the same in Ethiopia and Tanzania.

They take children from the streets and provide a safe home for them, with nurturing Christians mothers and provide food and clothing and Christian education for them so that they can be the future leaders and can have hope and be saved in His Kingdom. Norma's primary goal is to provide not just for the children's physical needs, but for their spiritual needs as well, to learn about Jesus and His love for them as He is their father when they lost their own parents.