The History of The GOD'S CHILD Project's Mission Statement
The GOD'S CHILD Project Mission Statement was written by project Founder and Executive Director Patrick Atkinson in 1993. The project had been struggling to stay alive and pay the bills it was incurring to raise and educate the burgeoning number of children under its care, and after a long bout of physical fatigue caused by 120-hour work weeks, Mr. Atkinson became seriously ill with convulsive fevers. Unable to afford private medical care, Mr. Atkinson was cared for by project volunteers where he lay on a single foam mattress that lay on the floor in the project's small rented house in Colonia Manchén, located on the north side of Antigua Guatemala.
As his weight dropped from 160 to 105 lbs., the older children in the project began to quit the program, convinced that Mr. Atkinson was going to die and that when this happened, they would have to drop out of school anyway. Mr. Atkinson overheard two of the older boys telling a project volunteer that this was their rationale for quitting school, and so he resolved to recover and to expand the program beyond himself as the project's sole employee and full-time volunteer.
Six months later, he wrote his commitment to share the responsability for the quickly growing GOD'S CHILD Project with all parts who had a hand in its creation, support, and purpose. In 1994, Atkinson's prose was accepted as the project's Mission Statement by unanimous vote of the full board of directors.