Trace Thurlby, pictured here with his wife, Kristin, and their four children, is president of The Global Orphan Project. He spoke to College of the Ozarks students at a socially distanced convocation on Monday, Oct. 5.

INTERNAL EVENT ONLY -

POINT LOOKOUT, MO. —On Monday, Oct. 5, College of the Ozarks hosted Trace Thurlby, the president of The Global Orphan Project for a limited-audience, student convocation. Thurlby spoke about the different aspects of The Global Orphan Project, such as the apparel company that provides living wage jobs to families and the online platform that connects child welfare professionals with local churches so that they can meet the needs of foster children.

Thurlby is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, holds an M.B.A. from the Katz Graduate School at the University of Pittsburgh, and is a CFA Charterholder. Before becoming president of a global non-profit organization, Thurlby was an Air Force officer. He transitioned to operational roles in financial services and Christian broadcasting. Today, Thurlby works to ensure that his team can implement the practices that help care for local children and families in crisis all around the world. Thurlby is the father of four children, two of which he and his wife adopted from China.

“The Trace Thurlby convocation was both eye-opening and convicting for me,” said Grace Creer, junior nursing major. “His explanations of what constitutes an orphan were informative and helped me to realize that there are large numbers of orphans around me in the United States, but I didn't realize it. He spoke from the heart. In the midst of the untold suffering of children here in the States and around the globe, Mr. Thurlby has a vision for the Church to rise up and provide families for those in foster care.”

More about The Global Orphan Project

The purpose of The Global Orphan Project is to break the orphan cycle through community, commerce, and the love of Jesus. The Global Orphan Project sets traditional institutional orphan care models aside and instead cares for children and vulnerable families along the entire spectrum: orphan prevention, orphan care, and transition.

The Global Orphan Project has the ability to provide living wage jobs to families in Haiti and Kansas City through their custom apparel business, GOEX. On average, one GOEX worker earns a fair wage that supports six family members. The Global Orphan Project recognizes that the best way to keep families together is to provide strong jobs that create opportunities.

CarePortal is another platform of The Global Orphan Project that directly connects children in need with local churches that can meet those needs. The CarePortal allows caseworkers in the foster care system to submit requests on behalf of the children they are working with; those requests are sent in real-time to churches in the area that can fulfill them. The CarePortal enables churches to achieve goals like preventing a child from entering foster care, making an adoptive placement, or even supporting a youth aging out of foster care.