EMI has begun our 1000th Project!
Today, June 6, 2012, UK office director Michael Woods is leading an EMI team to Thailand to design a Disabled Youth's Christian Vocational Training Center and Group Home. This monumental 1000th project is exemplary of the best of the past and future of EMI: a multi-national design team empowering a local ministry to demonstrate the love of Christ for the least of society.

While 'normal' orphans in Thailand are usually cared for, disabled orphans are rejected by society. Christian Care Foundation for Children with Disabilities (CCD) has been working in Thailand since 1986, providing holistic rehabilitation to over 500 children from government homes, as well as housing and fulltime care to 50 children at CCD's own "Rainbow House". With several of these children growing into adulthood, CCD intends to build a vocational training center for them to learn skills for a variety of occupations, and a group home where they can live semi-independent lives while still receiving support from CCD.

EMI was asked by CCD to design these new facilities, as well as an administrative center to support the strategic expansion of this vocational training model throughout Thailand. In caring for societies' outcasts, CCD is doing exactly what Jesus called us to do: "whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." EMI has served ministries with a similar heart 999 times in the past, and it is our privilege to serve CCD with quality design services as well. For more on this project, please see the EMI UK Project Profile and this Video of the CCD ministry.

CCD being an indigenous Thai ministry is also exemplary of EMI's desire, and the growing opportunities, to strengthen the local church in the developing world wherever it exists. When EMI started in 1982, most ministries were led by western missionaries. Today, many more are led by local Christian leaders like Thai CCD director Wasan Saenwian and his wife Chariya, who say of the children they serve, "These kids need love and caring just like you and I." EMI's designs empower their ministry to show God's love in a way that baffles their countrymen yet draws them to know why Wasan and Chariya are different.

The EMI design team for this project is multi-national in a way that is the future of EMI. Team-members are from the UK, Ghana, Australia, Canada and the USA, indicating the growing global nature of EMI. The Ghanaian team member is a great example of the future potential to mobilize design professionals from the developing world itself. This project is one of the first that our fledgling UK office found, approved and led on its own, indicating how this newest 'sending' office is coming of age.

This is crucially important as much of EMI's growing ability to design more projects for the poor over the last 15 years has come from having additional offices around the world. In EMI's first fifteen years from 1982 to 1997, EMI designed 200 projects. While this was a significant accomplishment, it paled in comparison to what came next. From 1997 to 2012, EMI accelerated to design 800 projects over the next fifteen years as we began to open offices in India, Latin America, Uganda, Canada, UK and the Middle East. As we look to the future, we anticipate additional field EMI offices in places like Thailand and Ghana to increase our ability to even more effectively serve their regions of the world.

More to follow on how this 1000th project served the ministry of Thailand, and the biblical significance of EMI stepping into the fullness of our anointing as we turn 30 years old. Follow the countdown to this 1000th project and the other 19 summer EMI projects serving the poor from Zambia to India to Honduras on EMI's Facebook page.

We praise God for using EMI so fully over the last 30 years and 1000 projects to practically share His love with the poor on projects like this Thailand Handicapped Youth Vocational Center and Home. We are thankful to the thousands of volunteers, interns, and financial supporters who really are entity of EMI: mobilizing technical professionals to Design a World of Hope for a World in Need. Thank You!