What Is a City of Refuge? Inside a Self-Sustaining Model for Orphan Care

Most orphanages share the same quiet vulnerability: they run entirely on donations. When giving is strong, children eat well and teachers get paid. When a recession hits donor countries, or a founding champion retires, the children’s care is suddenly at risk. A City of Refuge is a model built to remove that vulnerability, and it flips the usual formula: instead of a ministry that consumes donations, it is a small economy that produces its own support.

The core idea

Impact Ministries International (IMI) defines the model in one sentence: building self-sustaining, income-generating Christian cities, wrapped around an orphanage or safe house.

Picture it as rings. At the center is the most vulnerable population, orphaned and rescued children internationally, or trafficking survivors in the United States. Around that center, the ministry builds a working ring of farms and businesses. The farms feed the children and the community; the businesses generate income; and together they fund the care at the center, whether or not this month’s donations arrive.

The name carries its own meaning. The homepage of IMI’s ministry quotes Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” A City of Refuge is meant to be exactly that: visible, credible proof of the gospel in a community, not a walled-off compound.

The five components

The model has five working parts, and each one reinforces the others:

1. Education. A school serves the children at the center and often the community around them. At IMI’s flagship campus in Honduras, the on-site school has a full teaching staff and exceeds the national education standards.
2. Christian missions. The city doubles as a missionary base, hosting short-term teams, training workers, and sharing the gospel in its region.
3. Safe houses. Protected housing for the vulnerable: orphaned and abandoned children internationally, trafficking survivors and at-risk individuals domestically, and shelter for abandoned infants.
4. Commerce. Businesses whose profits fund the ministry. Examples across IMI’s work include a welding school, a grocery store, a coffee shop, storage units, and a retail store.
5. Agriculture. Farms that feed the children first, then the community, and generate income beyond that.

What it looks like in practice: Honduras

The prototype City of Refuge sits near Comayagua, Honduras. It houses and educates 90 children, employs 100 Honduran staff alongside foreign missionaries, and has grown to more than 80 buildings. The campus is nearly self-sustaining and holds a goal that shows the model’s ambition: to feed 10,000 people daily with protein, fruits, and vegetables.

The community benefits are deliberate, not incidental. Under the international model, the surrounding area gains free housing for those in extreme poverty, jobs, discounted farm produce, medical care, and schooling. Recent additions in Honduras include a welding school, housing for families in extreme poverty, and a grocery store. The result is a ministry the host country takes seriously: the campus has national awareness in Honduras, passes annual government inspections, and hosts local universities that come to study its agriculture.

The same model, adapted for the USA

In the United States, IMI applies the framework to a different crisis: human trafficking. After three rescued teenage victims died by suicide in 2020 while awaiting government housing, IMI began building safe houses of its own, now operating in Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri.

The self-sustaining ring works the same way. The Missouri safe house, a six-bedroom home, is funded by a coffee shop, storage units, and a retail store. Each house is partnered with a local church and staffed with counselors and support workers. Government officials have identified housing shortages for survivors; the model exists to answer that shortage without waiting on appropriations.

Why self-sustainability changes everything

IMI learned this lesson the hard way. The ministry was founded in the late 1980s, and after the 2008 financial crisis strained donation-dependent work everywhere, it restructured around income-generating components. That decision shaped everything since.

Three advantages follow from the model:

• Resilience. Children’s meals come from the farm, not from a donor’s discretionary income. Economic downturns abroad do not empty plates.
• Multiplication. A donation that buys a tilapia pond or a feed mill keeps producing value for years. The gift becomes an engine rather than an expense.
• Dignity and integration. A City of Refuge employs local people, trades with local markets, and educates local children. It belongs to its community instead of hovering above it.

Where the model is spreading

Honduras is the first and largest City of Refuge, but not the last. In Guatemala, a City of Refuge is in its beginning phase, and its farm already feeds about 200 people daily. In Peru, land has been purchased for a four-story building, a medical clinic on the first floor with rental apartments above, whose rents will fund the ministry, the first step toward a full City of Refuge there.

Each new location starts differently, with a farm, a clinic, a house, but follows the same logic: build something that produces, wrap it around the people who need protecting, and let the light of the city do what Matthew 5:14 says it will.