Where They Belong

With at least 80% of children in orphanages having living parents, a crucial question arises: is the world facing an orphan problem or an orphanage problem?

This question became all too real for Dale and Cathleen Jones in 1992. As the communists trickled out of Cambodia, the couple found themselves unexpectedly running an orphanage, navigating cultural challenges, corruption, and the care of hundreds of children. Through this experience, they realized that institutions couldn't replace the role of a family, the God-created structure for protecting vulnerable children and holding communities together.

Join the Joneses, along with Ming Anny and many others, on a journey to discover a better way to care for orphaned and vulnerable children through the founding and continued efforts of Children In Families (CIF). Explore what makes Cambodian culture and families perfect for loving children well and learn how, internationally, children and communities thrive much better with family-based care than in orphanages and children’s homes.

Erin Foley is an American with an international heart. After spending a portion of her childhood in Latin America, she served in Papua New Guinea and Australia with YWAM Medical Ships for two years. She currently lives in Southeast Asia, where she’s been teaching and working with NGOs for nearly a decade. Erin is the author of Kapuna: How Love Transformed a Culture, which received the North American Book Award 2015 for Best Travel Non-Fiction and the 2015 Idaho Author Awards First Place in Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs. She studied Art, Photography, and Journalism at Hillsdale College in Michigan, USA. Her passions include teaching inductive Bible studies, urban gardening, good coffee, wo bats, family-based care, and, of course, books.