Biography
Since 1967, the Christian ministry at Raintree Village has served God by providing a safe community where vulnerable children can get the love, education and Christian teaching needed to help them change their lives for the better.
Here, young children get a chance to enjoy their childhood, while learning to respect God, themselves, and others. Our professional staff and modern facilities provide opportunities for children to thrive through daily one-on-one interaction, weekly counseling, and quiet times of meditation. And we’ve consistently seen that a child’s trajectory can be changed for the better when at Raintree Village.
At Raintree, children live in cottages that are supervised by house parents who provide daily care, guidance, structure, and support to each child. Our houseparents are members of the Church of Christ and they and the children attend bible classes and worship assemblies in local congregations.
Our Past
Raintree Village Children and Family Services has been caring for orphaned, neglected and abused children for over fifty years! It began in 1967 when a group of godly men and women saw the need for a Children’s Home in Dasher, Georgia where the “fatherless” could be cared for and loved in a Christian environment. This passion to help troubled children was the fervor which sparked the birth of Georgia Christian Children’s Home. Our mission back then was to practice pure religion (James 1:26-27) by “visiting the fatherless and the widows in their affliction…” and to bring children up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
By the early 1970’s Georgia Christian Children’s Home had grown into a twenty-acre campus complete with three residential homes and an administration office. Thirty years later a fourth residential home was added (2004), along with a dining hall and gym. With the expansion of our campus also came an expansion in services... eldercare, maternity, independent living, transitional living and trauma-informed care. So, to reflect our wide array of provided services, our name was changed to Raintree Village to signify not only a residential component, but a specialized array of emotional and behavioral services designed to enhance a child’s mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health.
Our Present
Today our mission is the same: to help as many children and youth as possible, and to make a real difference in their lives. Our mission statement reflects our strong belief in seeing a child grow “in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52): We “offer children and youth an opportunity for a future by instilling within them a strong FAITH in God, a HOPE for a better tomorrow, and a LOVE for self and others.” We have strong Christian values, believing in the great worth of every child. We believe in the importance of commitment, trust, professionalism and integrity. We believe no person is complete without a firm foundation; and we believe it is in knowing God where true strength resides. Raintree Village is a faith-based, 501c (3) non-profit organization, and, since 2008, has earned full accreditation through the Council on Accreditation. We hold ourselves to the highest of standards.
Our Future
While residential services have been our “bread and butter” from inception to today, we recognize the need to serve children and youth outside an institutional setting or group home. Children deserve a “forever home” and a “forever family.” Therefore, Raintree Village Children and Family Services (to serve as many children, youth and families as possible) has made the commitment to renew our foster care license, recruit (and train) foster parents, and provide adoption and counseling services to the community. Foster parents will be recruited within a 50-mile radius of Valdosta, Georgia, with plans to expand to other communities in the future.
Raintree Village is one of the few Georgia homes for foster children that is fully accredited. We’ve become the gold standard in Christian childcare by going “above the expected” every day.
We’re proud of the work we’re doing and of our history of more than fifty years serving Georgia’s children, families and communities. With your help, we can give these unfortunate children the love and security they couldn’t get from their families, and a chance to be children.