Critique Our New Blog Design
The time has come — and some would say it’s way overdue — for our blog to get a new look. But not just a new look, a better design — one that is more intuitive to navigate and makes it easier for you to find the older content you’re interested in.
Continue Reading ›Tell Us How We’re Doing
Everyone in our contact center wants to provide the best service possible to you, at all times. But at this time, we don’t have a way to measure how we are doing with this.
Please consider this blog post an open forum to let us know about your experiences calling and e-mailing Compassion, good and bad! Whatever you have to say, we want to hear about it.
Continue Reading ›Overcoming Gender Inequality in Guatemala
Born and raised in Ixtahuacán, Huehuetenango, a town very close to the Guatemala-Mexico border, Silvia’s childhood was very hard.
Beautiful green mountains, fresh air and a quiet small town were the landscapes that surrounded Silvia throughout her childhood and adolescence. But Silvia had to make her best efforts to break many barriers that tried to stop her from becoming a successful woman in a culture that often sees and treats women as feeble.
Three Things All Sponsors Should Know
What three things do you wish someone had told you when you first began sponsoring a child? What three things do you wish you understood about our child sponsorship program?
We asked numerous employees throughout our organization the same questions, but with a twist. We asked them to share the three things they thought you should know, based on the questions they frequently receive.
Charles in Charge: By Design of the Master
Both of Charles’ parents labored hard in the rice paddies all day long but brought home little money. When Charles mother got sick, they did not have money to take her to the hospital.
Charles never found out why she was sick. She just grew weaker by the day, until finally she died. He still wonders if the disease his mother succumbed to was curable.
An Intervention on Beauty’s Behalf
Beauty lost her older sister, Ratna, of tuberculosis in 2008. Ratna’s sudden death left everyone in the family emotionally broken and disintegrated.
In the midst of their grief, the whole family had to undergo a series of medical tests for their safety. The test results uncovered a shocking fact; Beauty tested positive and was in the first stage of tuberculosis.
A SandStory About Children in Poverty
Joe Castillo developed this SandStory presentation to highlight the need of poor children around the world. The song, “Invisible Children” was written and performed by Chris McCall. Guess who shows up at the end of this SandStory.
Who Are the Highly Vulnerable Children We Serve?
Destu and her brother lost their parents and were left under the care of their aunt, who was also a prostitute. Destu assumed the responsibility of raising her brother and managing the house since their aunt was never at home to care for them.
Who Cares About the Poor?
If I cared, I’d be more like Bono or Mother Teresa or even Wess Stafford — someone with influence and name recognition, someone with a story. If I cared, I’d do more, right? If I cared, I’d dedicate my life to serving the poor — as their champion, as their savior.
A Skeptic’s View on Child Sponsorship
A friend of ours in Facebook, Sara Campion, brought this Relevant Magazine article to our attention yesterday. It starts off with some questions we hear quite a bit.
“Do you ever wonder what happens to that $35 you donate every month to a child sponsorship organization? Are you a little skeptical that the money you give is actually going to sponsoring a child instead of a mismanaged nonprofit? If that’s you, I’m with you. A couple years ago, I had convinced myself the money I was giving each month wasn’t actually reaching the child whose picture I had picked out years earlier, so I canceled my sponsorship. It turns out I was wrong, and it hit me like a ton of bricks two years later.”
Read the entire article at Relevant Magazine.
Fewer Children Are Dying
Good news from the government is pretty rare. Good news in the media is even more rare. So when I read this headline the other day, I smiled: “WHO sees good progress on UN health goals for poor.”
According to a recent study by the U.N.’s World Health Organization, good progress is being made on health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
- Fewer children are dying.
- The estimated percentage of underweight children under 5 has dropped.
- New HIV infections have declined.
- Existing cases of tuberculosis are declining.
- The world is on track to achieve the MDG target on access to safe drinking water.
Let’s just pause for a moment to let this sink in. We are making progress. Let’s celebrate this!
Of course, this doesn’t mean we can slow down in our fight against global poverty. If anything, seeing progress should motivate us to work even harder. And, as has been mentioned around here before, eliminating extreme poverty is just a matter of priorities.
The annual income of Christian American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion. The amount of money needed to end global poverty is about $74 billion a year. … Basically, 1 percent of our annual income a year is what is needed to end extreme poverty.
So the question is, what are your priorities?
How Do We Help Sponsored Children With Serious Heart Conditions?
There are nearly 6 million children worldwide with potentially treatable congenital and acquired heart defects that do not have access to care. In 2009, of the estimated 6,000 children in Uganda in need of cardiac intervention, only 172 received treatment (Uganda Heart Institute).
Alex was one of the statistics — a child with a heart problem with seemingly no hope for treatment. Alex’s father recalls:
“It started as a fever. My wife and I took my son, Alex, to the hospital, but it did not get any better. And when we took him to a bigger hospital, his symptoms baffled the doctors. They had no solution for us but to refer us to the Mulago Heart Institute where we started on a course of treatment.
“This went on for three years with no change. At that point I started to pray to God, saying if it is God’s will to take him away from us then so be it. I spoke to Alex as well and he was of the same mind. Because the doctors saw that I was poor they feared to tell me about the operation abroad because they knew I could not afford it.”
Like many children whose heart conditions go untreated, Alex and his family prepared for the worst. (more…)