Garments of Praise was founded in 2010 to help alleviate poverty and hopelessness and to restore dignity through job skills training and education, and to support the teaching and preaching of God’s word to the downtrodden in Kenya, Africa.

Orphans in Ethiopia

During heavy rains and flooding in March of 2024, twenty-two orphaned and abandoned children fled from under bridges to pastor Teshome’s church where they were taken in. The children suffered many serious medical issues including typhoid, worms, pneumonia, malnutrition and they had many injuries requiring multiple hospital visits. Along with the medical expenses, the church is trying to feed the children as best they can but inflation in Ethiopia is rampant making it impossible for this young church to meet the needs of the children. Read more about the orphans by clicking here.

Job Skills Training

Garments of Praise Tailoring Institute

In 2010 we started a tailoring school to meet the needs of single moms, at risk teens and widows. Job skills training gives them a way to break the cycle of poverty and become healthy productive citizens in their communities. With the skills gained they also receive hot meals, medical help, spiritual instruction, and counsel. Single moms in rural areas face great hardships without schooling or job training (one mother had her child die in her arms because she lacked the few dollars for the medicine that would have saved her child). Poverty forces young teens from their homes because they are orphaned or there is not enough food for them and their younger siblings. Parents now have an option as their daughters and sons can gain job skills training in addition to food and help with tuition. We have seen many happy endings with our students at our Tailoring Institute. Read more about the Training Institute by clicking here.

University and Trade School Training

Since 2012 we have sponsored students to train in different trades, such as welding, plumbing, cosmetology, and heavy equipment operator. We have also sponsored students at the University level in Pastoral Training, Social Economics, the Hospitality Industry, Electrical Engineering, and Automotive Engineering.

Shalom Learning Center

It is hard to describe the actual lives of the children at Shalom. The children who attend this school would have been forgotten with no hope for a future without an education. This is a very poor area highly impacted by HIV/AIDS. Before Garments of Praise partnered with Shalom, many children didn’t go to school for fear the little food at home would be gone when they returned. Many have no place they can consistently call home. They are orphaned, abandoned, and neglected by those caring for them. Often Shalom is the only place they feel real love. Scholarships for students provides for an opportunity for God’s people, as He directs them, to meet needs of orphaned, abandoned, impoverished, and neglected children with schooling and necessary basic needs. In turn this provides hope for “the least of these” to have a bright future and a way to break the chains of poverty that hold them captive in a destitute lifestyle that they cannot break without help. Read more about the Shalom Learning Center by clicking here.

Jesus Cares Fund

This ministry was set up to help those in need of food and shelter. We also help with medical expenses, keeping families from falling into hopeless poverty. Offering a hand up to our brothers and sisters at times of dire need, often saves lives. Read more about the Jesus Cares Fund by clicking here.

Equipping the Saints

This ministry includes an annual Pastors and Leadership Conference (suspended during 2020-2022, when Covid restricted travel) to encourage and equip pastors, Sunday school teachers and other leaders through teaching and materials. These are held in four different locations with hundreds being blessed and encouraged.

We are reaching many public school children with the gospel through the AWANA program. We provided the Jesus Film to a local Pastor who uses it for outreach to the local villages.

We assist with rent for a refugee church in a very hostile area in Nairobi. Many have been saved and discipled in this church as they await the opportunity to immigrate to welcoming countries. Young men are sent on mission trips to unreached areas to share the Gospel and then train others to share.

We are helping a Pastor that we assisted through University Pastoral Training, who has returned to Ethiopia where he planted a church. This is a growing and dynamic church where they are reaching the lost for Christ. Read more about the Equipping the Saints by clicking here.