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We have a vision to see 100,000 communities holistically impacted by 2030.

Our Sto­ry

Our sto­ry begins in 1995 with Raju, a ragged boy from the slums, and the two hearts God cap­tured through his life. Jossy and Jen­ni Chacko met Raju while on their hon­ey­moon, and were so moved by his sto­ry they invit­ed him to join them on the rest of their travels.

Raju had no knowl­edge of his past, no fam­i­ly or rel­a­tives, and had lived his life in sur­vival mode, suf­fer­ing abuse and wit­ness­ing unimag­in­able hor­rors. Jossy and Jen­ni were deeply dis­turbed by some of the things he shared, yet cap­ti­vat­ed by his wis­dom, street-smarts and hope­ful dreams for the future.

After return­ing home, Jossy and Jen­ni strug­gled to return to ​‘nor­mal’. Some­thing had shift­ed in their hearts. Jossy no longer felt so dri­ven by his career, and he soon made a trip back to the field. Dur­ing his trip, he vis­it­ed a vil­lage where every­one was devoid of hope. He realised that peo­ple need­ed a way to escape the dark­ness they lived in.

“I realised some­thing mon­u­men­tal… I had always thought peo­ple lived in pover­ty because they made bad choic­es – that it was their fault. This meant it wasn’t my respon­si­bil­i­ty to fix their prob­lems. I’d nev­er had any real under­stand­ing of their world. Raju opened my eyes to see they were peo­ple just like me. They had emo­tions, just like me. They had desires and aspi­ra­tions, just like me.” 

- Jossy

With their hearts now ful­ly open and sur­ren­dered, Jen­ni and Jossy both resigned their jobs to give every­thing to the new vision, and Empart offi­cial­ly launched in 1998.

Start­ing with a core team of five, today there are thou­sands of indige­nous work­ers shar­ing in the work. With an aver­age of 45 new com­mu­ni­ties start­ed each week, there are now over 38,000 com­mu­ni­ties impact­ed since 1998! We have so many part­ners who have joined our sto­ry in Aus­tralia, Switzer­land, Ger­many, France, Cana­da, USA, the Unit­ed King­dom and Austria.

The work con­tin­ues to gain momen­tum day by day. Will you become part of the story??