Current Status: Alumni
Graduation Year: 2016
2016 MBA graduate Amber Corey has found her home serving as the Director of H.O.M.E.’s Guatemala campus. She served there as a short-term volunteer and fell in love with the country and its people. “I’ve always been passionate about orphan care and adoption. Looking back, it's amazing how God began to prepare me for this long before it even crossed my mind.”
H.O.M.E. – whose acronym stands for Homes, Orphans, Ministry, Education – is a place for Guatemalan orphans and street children to live and grow in a healthy and stable environment. The mission at H.O.M.E. is to provide love, care, education, protection, and spiritual formation to the orphaned in order to form Godly men and women. According to UNICEF, there are over 368,000 orphans and street children living in Guatemala. These children have endured unimaginable heartbreak and are left to fend for themselves.
Amber oversees the daily operations and helps to manage the regular court hearings, doctor's appointments, therapy, dentist appointments, family visits, activities, and special outings for the ten children that are living at H.O.M.E.
“All of our children are here because a family court judge has sent them here with a court order. Each child has had their rights violated in some way and there is a legal reason for which they are in need of protective care,” Amber states. International adoption is currently closed in Guatemala and in-country adoption isn't very common.
One of the programs offered at H.O.M.E. is a Family Reunification Program. When a child comes to H.O.M.E., their family situation is immediately investigated to find a safe family member to reintegrate the child into the family. “If the situation is healthy and the child is reintegrated with the family, we continue to supervise to ensure a smooth transition,” Amber explains. “We stay involved in the child's life by visiting periodically, connecting them to a church, providing special activities, educational support, counseling, and guidance.
“This experience has completely changed my life,” says Amber. “It's one thing to hear of a child in need. It's a whole different thing to be the person that receives a hurting child, fights for their justice, provides for their care, works for their healing, and sees hope begin to bloom in their eyes.”
Amber earned an MBA with a non-profit concentration while living in Guatemala. “The classes were directly related to responsibilities I had as I started work at H.O.M.E., covering things like hiring procedures, board policies, and fundraising. This was information I could immediately put into use. Many of the professors at HIU had missions experience so their insight was invaluable.”
