The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Combating an orphan crisis
Local couples launch 30 Hearts organization to help Ethiopian children
Two local couples are determined to help the crisis in Ethiopia after seeing firsthand what’s taking place with approximately 4.6 million orphans.
North Ridgeville resident Jeff Mancinetti and his wife, Emily, and Avon resident Joe Seestadt and his wife, Ranae, have launched 30 Hearts.
30 Hearts is an organization that is dedicated to placing 30 Ethiopian orphaned and homeless children in a family environment, that will include a mother. It will get them off the streets and place them in a safe and nurturing home in Bako, Ethiopia.
For three to four years, the children and mothers will build relationships in a new family development home. Once they have bonded, the mothers can legally adopt the children. After that, each family will move to their own rented home in the community.
Emily Mancinetti said that it all started for her in 2005 when she began sponsoring a 6-year-old girl name Weinitu from Ethiopia.
“I really have a heart for Africa so I just picked Ethiopia somehow,” she said.
Throughout the sponsorship, Emily wrote letters to Weinitu, in which she asked her to come visit her in Ethiopia.
When Emily and Jeff Mancinetti got married in 2009, they started talking about that visit, and through his work connections, they were able to go in 2011.
The Mancinettis were able to meet Weinitu and her grandmother. Her parents passed away when she was 6, the time that Emily Mancinetti started sponsoring her.
“Her grandma explained to us how important this was, how much they were so grateful for us,” she said. “This is a really amazing experience, I think beyond what we ever thought.”
From that trip, the Mancinettis were drawn to Ethiopia.
After that, Jeff Mancinetti talked with a contact about the orphan crisis in Bako.
“We started coming up with 30 Hearts and so while we were coming up with this plan through email we had started getting involved and talked to Joe and Ranae about it and they were on board and wanted to help,” he said.
The goal was to start small and help 30 children first.
“We don’t think twice, he said.” We just see them as a statistic or a number and we want people through 30 Hearts to see them as hearts, you know, beautiful children with souls and hearts.
That’s how the name came to be.”
Jeff Mancinetti just returned from a trip with Joe Seestadt in September.
Seestadt said that six mothers are coming from local churches in Bako to be a mother for five children.
“They’ll stay as family units and go into regular com- munities to live as real families,” he said.
“When I was there (in September), my heart was torn for these children,” he added.
The organization is focusing on family sponsorships.
“We’ve been very blessed to have had over two-thirds of needs met through sponsorships,” Seestadt said.
They also are looking for donations through the organization’s website.
Joe and Ranae Seestadt also did a sponsorship in Africa as well.
“It really became real when we adopted our fourth child,” she said, adding that she was adopted last year.
Even though her 20-monthold daughter was from just outside Chicago, it addressed the topic of orphans.
“Still it was just recognizing a need (for homes),” Ranae Seestadt said.
When she held her daughter, she said to her that it is no different from when she gave birth to her other children.
“It was the same love, same bond, same connection,” she said.
There are many orphans that their parents would provide and care for if they had the means to do so, Ranae Seestadt said.
Children are hiding on the streets, fending for themselves, she said.
“It broke our hearts and we said somebody has to do something.”
For more information, visit http://30hearts.org/.