Rooted in faith, a family grew.

While ACE welcomes the love and dedication of people from many walks of life and does most of its work in Africa, it grew from the faith of a woman in Arizona named Jennie Woods.

It was 1969, and Woods saw a need for emergency rescue and childcare for orphaned and vulnerable children on Apache and Navajo reservations. Over the next thirty years, this calling moved Jennie and her team to serve, direct, and found locally-led ministries for orphaned and vulnerable children in Arizona, Guatemala, and Peru.

Then, in the early 1990s, HIV/AIDS infection rates skyrocketed in Zambia, and the unemployment reached 70%. Poverty and disease devastated millions of families, leaving many children in crisis. Government leaders sent out a global appeal to experience people in child welfare to come to Lusaka and help. Jennie and her ministry partner, Sandra Levinson, were quick to respond. They launched operations in partnership with local church leaders in 1998, beginning with crisis nurseries for orphaned and abandoned children.

God created each child one by one. It is our responsibility, obligation, and opportunity to reach them, one by one.

-Jennie Woods
ACE Founder

Although Zambians cared for orphaned and vulnerable children within their extended families and tribes for generations, fostering and adoption were not a common practice outside of these kinship groups.

ACE partnered with local churches and leaders to expand “family” to include orphaned and vulnerable children, regardless of family background or tribal affiliation. In 1999, there were only two adoptions in the entire country. Now, more than 20 years later, we have facilitated over 1,000 domestic placements through reintegration, fostering, and adoption, the majority of those being to Zambian families.