Special Hope Staff
Special Hope Network’s founders, Eric and Holly Nelson, have a combined 50 plus years experience in working with special needs populations.
Holly is a certified Special Education teacher certified in Moderate and Severe Special Needs, as well as Early Childhood Education. In addition to the ten years of teaching in public school systems, she has also created the educational program each year for their three children who each have Down syndrome.
Eric has been working, volunteering or parenting children with intellectual and developmental disabilities continuously since he was 17 years old. He holds degrees in Biblical Studies and a Masters of Divinity. Vocationally, Eric has helped oversee and manage several group homes and emergency shelters for adults with developmental disabilities, he has also been Director of Sales and Marketing for a start-up Business technology consulting company in Washington, D.C. and has Pastored for over 10 years.
Together, they have been married for almost 20 years and have four children. The first is an unofficially ‘adopted’ daughter, Shauna, who is now married with three children of her own. This summer will be her 7th anniversary to her husband, Adam. Thanks to Shauna and Adam, they have had the unexpected joy of being grandparents three times over! The family picture is below. Shauna and Adam’s kids are Josiah, Seth, and Abel. 
The next two kids are 16, and adopted from Brazil. They are Maggie and Mollie, twins who spent their first 14 months in a hospital in Sao Paulo. Both of them have Down syndrome.
When we brought them home to the Boston area in August of 1994, they both received the medical care they hadn’t received in Brazil, including heart catheterizations, EKG’s and ultrasounds of their hearts to diagnose heart problems that were not fully diagnosed in their birth country since they were orphans. After these tests, both girls received open heart surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston, and started to get stronger immediately. They walked at almost three years old, started sign language acquisition, and have been a joy and a source of constant growth for us as parents ever since.
Mollie, Sam, and Maggie (L to R)
Samuel is 14, also from Brazil, but from the North Coast of Brazil, a city called Recife. He also has Down syndrome, and had his heart repaired one week after arriving here from Brazil. He was 10 lbs. 2 oz. at 13 months old, and wasn’t expected to live longer than a week. The doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston did all kinds of tests on him to try to figure out whether to get him stronger first, or do heart surgery first. They ultimately decided that he wouldn’t be able to become stronger without a repaired heart, so we increased his calories for a week, and they did open-heart surgery, and he has been growing and getting stronger ever since then. He actually hit 100 lbs. this year! And, he did all the writing and the artwork for our Special Hope logo, so he is a budding artist, as well.
As a family, we love to swim together, hike the Blue Ridge Mountains, sing and worship, and dance. Our kids love to eat, so they are helpful in the kitchen, since the reward of their hard work is a delicious meal. We exercise every day together to try to burn the calories that we love to eat!
Contact them at eric@specialhopenetwork.org or holly@specialhopenetwork.org.
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Beth Bailey, serving as a missionary and functioning as Director of Operations Africa with Special Hope Network, graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Religious Studies. She spent the past four years working with Younglife, a Christian outreach program to high school students, in Charlottesville. Within those four years, she led a team of fellow college students in ministering to teenagers, focusing on evangelism and discipleship.
Beth’s commitment to care for orphans began in college, through various experiences. She did mission work at an orphanage in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2007, where she was first exposed to the problem of the worldwide orphan crisis. Also while in college in Charlottesville, Beth came into contact with several families who had adopted children from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ukraine, Brazil, and the US. Her passion for orphans grew as a result of her interaction and work with these families, and compelled her to join Special Hope Network in the work they are doing in southern Africa.
Contact her at beth@specialhopenetwork.org.
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Catherine Martin, Director of Operations US for Special Hope Network, spent the last three years living in South Africa participating in a program called Year of Your Life. The focus of this program is to equip young people to be genuine Christians as well as effective leaders in whatever sphere of life they are called into. Catherine participated in the program her first year as a student and was then asked to stay on in leadership positions for the nest two years. This involved leading a house of forty ladies living in community and doing extensive discipleship with young women as well as leading outreach teams to rural areas of South Africa and Botswana.
Catherine’s passion to advocate for those who have been overlooked has been stirred through various experiences. In 2005 and 2006 she participated in summer outreaches to Eastern Europe where she was exposed to the tragedy of children forced to live on the streets. Through her experience in South Africa Catherine came into contact with extreme poverty and its impact on children. As she considers the plight of the oppressed, Catherine is pursuing formal studies in Public Policy with the hopes of one day implementing holistic solutions to the problems faced by the oppressed. This desire has made Catherine excited to be involved with the work of Special Hope Network.
