When New Goals Need Deeper Meaning

Finding Purpose Beyond Resolutions

Each January, millions of people make resolutions that often fade by February. But what if this year could be different? What if instead of focusing solely on personal improvement, you set goals that change lives – not just your own?

Many of us feel a pull toward something more meaningful. We want our faith to take action, to make a real difference in the world. This yearning for purpose isn’t just a feeling – it’s a calling that deserves attention.

Faith-Based Goals vs. Personal Resolutions

Service as Spiritual Growth

While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve yourself, faith-based goals offer something deeper. Instead of just tracking steps or saving dollars, you can count smiles, hugs, and moments of hope you bring to children who need them most.

When you volunteer in Colombia with a faith-based nonprofit, you’re not just checking a box – you’re living your faith in tangible ways. This kind of service becomes spiritual formation, shaping your heart as you serve others.

Why Mission Trips Are a Powerful Way to Start the Year

Setting a Tone of Giving

A new year mission trip sets a powerful tone for your entire year. It helps reset priorities and puts into action what often remains just good intentions. By stepping out of your comfort zone to help children in Colombia, you create momentum that carries through the months ahead.

The beauty of mission work isn’t in what you accomplish in a week or two – it’s in how it changes your perspective for the other 50 weeks of the year. Your presence matters to the children you serve, and their presence in your life will matter to you long after you return home.

Serving Children in Colombia: A Goal with Eternal Impact

Making a Lasting Difference

When you focus on serving children in Colombia, you invest in something with lasting value. These children need stability, love, and hope – things that can’t be wrapped and put under a tree, but that make all the difference in their lives.

Even short-term volunteers support important long-term work. Each person who comes to serve adds to the consistent care these children receive. Your time there matters because you become part of their story of healing and growth.

How The Emiliani Project Helps Turn Calling into Action

Joining a Mission with Heart

The Emiliani Project is a faith-based nonprofit grounded in a deep, abiding faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that following Jesus means loving sacrificially, serving the vulnerable, and caring for “the least of these” with compassion and humility. Founded by veterans and inspired by Saint Jerome Emiliani (the patron saint of orphaned children), The Emiliani Project exists to put faith into action by providing long-term care, stability, and hope to children who need it most.

When you volunteer through The Emiliani Project, you join a community of people who share your values and your desire to serve. You’ll find structure, support, and meaningful ways to help that align with your faith and skills.

Is This the Year You Say Yes?

Taking the First Step

If you’ve been feeling that tug on your heart to do something meaningful this year, perhaps this is your moment. Serving children in Colombia could be the most important goal you set this year.

Don’t worry about having all the answers or skills – just bring your willingness to serve. The children don’t need perfection; they need presence and care.

Ready to make this new year truly new? Consider joining a mission trip to Colombia. Your life will never be the same – and neither will theirs.

Visit our volunteer page to learn about upcoming opportunities to serve. This could be the year everything changes!

Every great mission begins with a story of transformation. For The Emiliani Project, that story starts five centuries ago in northern Italy with Saint Jerome Emiliani, a soldier whose faith was born in the darkness of war.

As a young officer during the Venetian War, Jerome was captured in battle and imprisoned for years. In the silence of confinement, he turned to Our Blessed Mother for comfort. Through prayer and surrender, his hardened heart softened. When he later escaped captivity, he dedicated his freedom not to vengeance but to service.

Leaving behind his military life, Jerome became a priest and eventually founded The Somascan Fathers, a religious order committed to caring for orphans, the poor, and the sick. He built homes and schools for children left fatherless by the very wars he once fought and ultimately gave his own life after contracting illness from those he served.

Saint Jerome Emiliani’s journey from warrior to servant shows that God can turn even our deepest wounds into instruments of grace.

The Emiliani Project: Carrying His Mission Forward

Centuries later, Saint Jerome’s spirit of compassion lives on through The Emiliani Project, a faith-based nonprofit for children serving the vulnerable in Medellín, Colombia.

The organization takes its name from this humble saint, whose example continues to guide its work. Just as Jerome’s heart was transformed through hardship, the project’s founders, all U.S. veterans, share a story of redemption and renewed faith.

They, too, once served in foreign wars. They, too, faced seasons of doubt. Yet through those experiences, each rediscovered purpose in the call to help children who, like those of Jerome’s time, have suffered from conflict and poverty.

The Emiliani Project transforms the will to serve into a mission of mercy, turning battle scars into blessings for children in need.

Faith and Service: A Bridge Between Centuries

When Saint Jerome walked the streets of 16th-century Venice, he saw children left destitute by war.
Today, The Emiliani Project sees the same need in Colombia, children longing for stability, education, and love.

The connection between these eras is striking:

• Jerome built shelters and schools for orphans.
• The Emiliani Project helps build brighter futures through housing, mentorship, and community care.
• Both missions flow from faith, compassion, and a desire to restore dignity where it’s been lost.

Through prayer and action, The Emiliani Project continues Saint Jerome’s legacy, serving not just bodies but souls, reminding every child that they are seen, valued, and loved by God.

Faith in Action: Volunteer and Serve in Colombia

For those inspired by this story, there is a way to take part.
The Emiliani Project invites volunteers to join mission trips to Medellín, Colombia, where faith meets action in meaningful ways.

Participants can:

• Spend time with children in caring, faith-filled environments.
• Assist with construction and maintenance projects.
• Lead educational or recreational activities.
• Share prayer and fellowship with the community.

Each trip blends tangible service with spiritual renewal. Volunteers return home changed, grateful for the chance to help children in Colombia and experience the joy of self-giving love.

Explore upcoming mission trips and learn how you can volunteer in Colombia.

Living Saint Jerome’s Legacy Today

Every generation needs its saints, ordinary people who let God use their lives for extraordinary love.
For Saint Jerome Emiliani, that meant leaving the battlefield for the orphanage.
For The Emiliani Project, it means standing beside Colombia’s children and walking with them toward hope.

“Charity is the soul of faith, makes it alive; without love, faith dies.” — Saint Jerome Emiliani

Whether you give, volunteer, or pray, you become part of the same story, a story of faith, redemption, and love that bridges centuries and continents.

Learn more about The Emiliani Project’s mission and meet the team carrying this legacy forward.