2020
Impact Report
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Table of Contents 4
Record Year | She is Priceless
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Thriving in 2020
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Waves of Mercy
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New Retail Location
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Celebrate Event
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The Journey of a Single Fair Trade Product
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Artisan Impact
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Our Global Presence
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Founder’s Letter
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Financial Review
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2020 Highlights
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Our Vision
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Our Model
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Our Values
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She is Priceless
RECORD YEAR
BY FOUNDER, KRISTEN WELCH
Home. It was the last place I’d planned to be. I should have been on a long plane ride to Kenya, but instead I stayed home for another long week of 2020. This season brought a new kind of grief — the kind that comes with staying instead of going. Yes, the pandemic has provided disappointment and discouragement. At the same time, it offers us the gift of perspective. It’s the kind of present that is hard to unwrap — a way to look at our loss and mounting problems from a new vantage point. It’s the kind of gift that offers to show us what we have, instead of what we don’t. It doesn’t make our loss less, and yes, there has been so much loss — but sometimes just seeing what others don’t have makes us grateful for what we do have. While North America bemoaned the boredom of quarantining day after day, the Global South went to bed hungry night after night. While we absorbed the impact of cancellations and church online, children in poverty went to bed on empty stomachs. Social distancing, staying home, stimulus checks — this is the vocabulary of the privileged. Those who live on less than a dollar a day cannot comprehend our luxury. Instead of flying to Kenya with Mercy House Global, I was feeling the First World loss. Instead of hosting an art camp for teen moms, I was registering my daughter for her art lesson online. In the middle of my homebound days, I received this urgent message from our Kenyan staff:
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“The greater majority living in the slums and streets have no concerns towards the spread of this dreaded disease. People in the slums live hand to mouth. In order to survive, they have to step out and look for casual jobs, open their small businesses where they sell vegetables. Their deplorable living conditions have meant that access to safe, clean water and hygienic conditions is a mirage — something that can never be achieved. They don’t see the sense in following the government directives of staying indoors to curb the spread. This to them only translates to spending days and nights without food. Friends, my beloved friends, while some of us complain about boredom due to necessary quarantine and isolation, the poor complain they are being denied their source of survival: food.” These words have both haunted me and reminded me that while my full pantry and stocked refrigerator at home don’t erase my loss of income or diminish my disappointment, they do remind me that I have so much to be grateful for in the middle of a global pandemic. The message also offers me an opportunity to share my own abundance by remembering the poor. Each year Mercy House Global raises funds to rescue 6-8 new pregnant girls. The goal is to bring them home. We step into their lives and remind
Thanks to your generous support, our
them that God loves them. Together, we say, you are priceless. Kenya was on a strict lockdown for months. At the
She Is Priceless Giving Day
time, we couldn’t rescue new girls, but we raised
provided for 7 rescues
enough money to sustain all ministries in Kenya and the USA — as well as set aside funds to rescue six pregnant teens in the fall of 2020. $163,445 — It was a record-breaking day, doubling our original goal!”
Thriving in 2020 Mercy House Global began in 2010. It was a challenging year in every way imaginable — as it often is with starting something from nothing. Against all odds, we endured. And for the last decade, we have watched this seed grow into a tree of life, offering protection and hope to so many. While our 10th year was definitely unexpected and challenging — and it blew our tree around a bit — we are thriving in the storm. And that’s because of you. At the beginning of the pandemic, we asked God for creativity and wisdom. Early on, we pivoted and moved all our Fair Trade product sales online and to weekly live sales on social media. This kept our sales up when our store doors were closed for months. Once we hit a specific goal, it provided us with the opportunity to have a Mercy House Global app created (for free) by the company that facilitates our Facebook Live sales.
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Waves of Mercy Every year, Mercy House Global announces an overarching theme that we build our spring and fall product collection around. From jewelry to art to color palettes, this theme, based on scripture and truth, keeps us focused on our mission. Early in 2020, Waves of Mercy helped prepare us for the upcoming storm. This year’s theme is based on Luke 1:50, “His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him.”
Spring 2020: This global collaboration was inspired by the ocean that connects us to our sisters around the world. From the beaches of Kenya, to the lakes of Rwanda, to the island of Haiti, to the waterfalls of Azerbaijan, the stunning spring collection built a bridge between us. Each piece was a reminder of the constant ebb and flow of new mercies. Fall 2020: This worldwide collection was the ultimate example of tenacity in a tempest. Every piece a miracle, produced from the most difficult of circumstances, in a tumultuous season. The colors were inspired by the brilliant deep red of African sunsets, the golden harvest sunshine of Guatemala, neutral hues of East Asia, and the ebony represented the beauty from ashes stories of our refugee friends. The collection represented a new arch of empowerment, reminding us of God’s faithfulness in our darkest days and his never-ending mercies in the stormy seasons.
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MERCY HOUSE GLOBAL
New location in Tomball, TX Who rehabs an old building and opens an adorable Fair Trade store on Main Street in Tomball, Texas — 2020, the year retail would crash and burn? Mercy House Global is not afraid of doing hard (and scary) things! Even though we canceled our grand opening (scheduled for the week in March that the world shut down) and delayed opening the doors for months, this little place is stunning and falls perfectly in place on our long list of miracles at Mercy House Global. The Tomball, Texas, store opened six days a week in the fall, and the reviews have been amazing. It sits next door to a delicious coffee shop that does good in our world and across the street from a fabulous Saturday farmers market. Plan a trip and come shop, stay, sit awhile, and help us keep changing the world.
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Virtual Celebrate Event After canceling multiple trips to Kenya, shopping and speaking events, and store openings, we had to add our annual in-person fundraising event to that list. Every year, this important night helps us establish a budget for the following year. Once again, our team pivoted and decided to create a low-tech, lowcost virtual event to celebrate what God has done in the last decade. It worked! It was a huge success! Thanks to the free app we earned earlier in the year, we turned our shopping app into a giving one and raised more than $145,000! After such a trying year, the virtual event was a fun one with giveaways, inspiring stories and an announcement — Mercy House Global released its first children’s book! The book educates donors and shoppers about the world’s poor and provides support for Rehema House.
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IN 2 020
What does it take to get one product to you? Pine needles were collected from the tall pine trees that grow abundantly in Honduras. They were bound together with colored thread and attached to the rims of the clay pottery bowls that were hand-formed from white clay harvested from the mountainside. The clay pottery bowls take weeks to dry, depending on the weather. The artisans of SoloHope live so remotely that they don’t have access to roads. Once the talented artisans finished the order of nearly 1000 clay bowls for Fair Trade Friday, they strapped the bowls to their backs and hiked them out to trucks waiting on the nearest road. Then the artisans followed for two hours making sure the pottery didn’t fall off the truck. Once the fragile pottery was safely delivered to the SoloHope office in Honduras, they were carefully wrapped, packed, and layered in pallets for the long journey to Mercy House Global in Magnolia, Texas. After professional photos were taken, Mercy House Global volunteers carefully unpacked each clay pottery bowl. The pieces were then repacked with the other beautiful, coordinating items from around the world. Once the September Grace Case boxes were all prepared, they were shipped to homes around North America.
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Artisan Impact
What Mercy House Global has done since 2014 through Fair Trade Friday
Shipped approximately 300,000 packages from our Magnolia, Texas warehouse.
Purchased approximately $6,000,000 in Fair Trade product, Created 12 artisan groups in 5 countries providing countless jobs to that make custom product exclusively for women around the world. Mercy House Global to sell. In most of these groups, money saving clubs have begun and artisans are being trained to use their proceeds from the product as seed money to begin their own businesses.
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Where W e W or k YOUR SUPPORT EMPOWERS
WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD
go, fly, roam, travel, voyage, explore, journey, discover, adventure.
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• Swaziland • The Philippines • Peru • Cambodia • Kenya • Haiti • Bangladesh • Ukraine • Malaysia • Ethiopia • Nepal
• India • Zambia • Uganda • Ecuador • Mexico • Costa Rica • Honduras • Malawi • Azerbaijan • USA • Tanzania
• Mozambique • Guatemala • Rwanda • Indonesia • Ghana • Sierra Leone • Jordan • Thailand • Israel • China • Vietnam
A LETTER Hello, friends,
From our Founder
You received this impact report because you have made an eternal impact through your support of Mercy House Global. We have so much to be thankful for — even in a challenging year like 2020. We continue to see God’s hand at work as we push deeper into His plan for this ministry. In 2010, when I offered that inadequate and feeble “yes” to God, I had no idea what would happen! I can assure you, I didn’t imagine we would be here today with nearly 60 teen moms, their babies, and thousands of members across five subscription clubs — empowering countless artisans around the world. As challenging as this year has been, Mercy House Global continues to thrive thanks to your ongoing support. The last decade has been a beautiful and brutal journey, but together, we are making a difference. Our God is big. We will continue to celebrate what He has done with you as we move deeper into this story. To celebrate a decade of ministry, we are including a gift to say thank you for your generosity. For our 10th birthday, we wrote our first children’s book to educate and celebrate all God has done.
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Financial Review 2019
2018
PUBLIC SUPPORT AND REVENUE Contributions
$1,072,977 $987,755
Gross Profit Artisan Sales
$2,234,308
$1,929,334
Total Revenue
$3,307,285
$2,917,089
Program Services (Rehema House)
$756,108
$673,592
Fair Trade Friday and Retail (Cost of Goods Sold)**
$2,184,146 $1,893,249
Management and General
$193,681
Fundraising
$159,281 $102,478
Total Operating Expenses
$3,293,216
$2,807,353
Fixed Assets Depreciation
$7,736
$9,886
Total Expenses
$3,300,952
$2,817,239
Change in Net Assets
$6,333
$99,850
Net Assets Beginning of the Year***
$633,407
$553,889
Net Assets End of the Year
$639,740
$653,739
EXPENSES
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$138,034
2018 financial data taken from form 990 and CPA prepared compilation. 2019 financial data taken from CPA prepared audit. 2020 financial data not available until filed with the IRS, typically 5 months after the end of the calendar year. **Each product purchased for Fair Trade Friday Subscription Clubs and retail stores helps artisan groups around the world to sustain dignified employment and lift individuals out of poverty! ***Adjustments were made during 2019 that affected the inventory and net asset accounts from a prior period. The net adjustment to the beginning inventory balance is ($20,332.)
Highlights FEBRUARY
RECORD-BREAKING SHE IS PRICELESS
FED 1000 PEOPLE TWICE DURING LOCKDOWN
AUGUST
OCTOBER
HIT $300,000 IN FACEBOOK LIVE SALES
WAVES OF MERCY WHOLESALE LINE LAUNCHED
MARCH
JUNE /JULY
(FINALLY) OPENED OUR TOMBALL RETAIL LOCATION
2020
CELEBRATE EVENT
NOVEMBER
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Our Vision
Mercy House exists to engage, empower and disciple women around the globe in Jesus’ name. Engage those with resources to say yes to the plight of women in poverty. Empower women and teenage mothers around the world through partnerships and sustainable fair trade product development. Disciple women to be lifelong followers of Jesus Christ.
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Our Model
Mercy House Global is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Our primary ministry is funding Rehema Rescue Center, which rescues pregnant teen girls, outside Nairobi, Kenya. Rehema, the Swahili word for mercy, is a registered foundation and currently owns two residential compounds and leases a third transition home in undisclosed location. Every Fair Trade product we sell online in the Mercy House Global Marketplace, in our two local retail stores, and through our four Fair Trade Friday subscription clubs provides dignified jobs in Jesus’ name. All profits from these sales channels sustain these homes in Kenya. We currently purchase products from over 100 artisan groups in more than 30 countries, empowering more than 5000 women.
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Our Values
We value the gospel: to make God’s glory known by living out the redemptive story of Christ. It is the power we rely on for transformation (emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual) of the broken lives we seek to rescue. We value the dignity of all life, from unborn babies to aging widows – we believe every life matters and is precious to God regardless of the circumstances under which that life was created. We value keeping families together, preventing orphans and supporting the vital role mothers serve in the lives of their children. We value telling the story of Mercy House with dignity and grace to engage others to say yes to God right where they are in order to make the Great Commission a daily mission. We value education and equal rights for oppressed girls. We believe every girl deserves the right to an education. We value integrity and transparency in our role as stewards of the financial and physical resources, so we do not detract from the overall mission. We value economic empowerment of women as means to better the lives of their families and halt poverty. We value prayer, servanthood, hard work, and sustainability.
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8000 Research Forest Drive, Suite 115-110 The Woodlands, TX 77382 info@mercyhouseglobal.org mercyhouseglobal.org