I’m a fan of American Idol. I’m an especially big fan this week.

Wednesday marks the second year that the Fox reality show takes a break from their regular programming to do something virtually unheard of on television these days — focus on something other than making money.

Idol Gives Back is an effort to raise awareness and funds for children in need around the world. Last year the event raised $76 million. This year they’re shooting for $100 million.

Whether or not Fox brings in the millions this week that they normally make on the show, the event probably does enough for their public image to make the monetary sacrifice well worth it.

Whatever their motivation, though, it’s refreshing to see the spotlight shining on those who truly need it but rarely get it — children in poverty.

Among the recipients are organizations like the Global Fund, Malaria No More, Children’s Health Fund, Children’s Defense Fund and Make It Right, Brad Pitt’s campaign to help New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina.

There will be celebrities. There will be music. There will be tears. Millions of viewers will undoubtedly be moved to donate. Some will likely be profoundly impacted by the stories they hear and the images they see. Hopefully many hearts will be softened towards the plight of children in poverty and people will do more than just give once … they will begin to get involved.

I’m just excited that for a couple hours this week, children in poverty will have a real voice. That’s really what Compassion is all about.

What do you think? Do you agree? Will you be watching?

While Compassion might not be featured on the show, we are working just as hard to fight for children in poverty. Here are a couple specific things you might like to know about:

Malaria: A Plague of the Poor
In recognition of World Malaria Day on April 25, Compassion has produced a new radio special.

AIDS
Compassion’s AIDS Initiative is focused on Africa. Yet HIV and AIDS are also significant threats to children outside of Africa and for that reason Compassion is also conducting HIV/AIDS work in non-African countries.

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I sponsor a boy in Haiti named Youvens. In the seven years I’ve sponsored him, I’ve never, ever seen him smile.

Even when I visited Haiti and brought him a soccer ball. No smile. He played soccer with me, ate lunch with me and never let go of the ball. But he never smiled.

It’s understandable. He lives in one of the most poverty-stricken places on earth. I’ve seen the devastation in that country, and I can’t imagine what he’s been through in his short life.

As I’m sure you can see, Youvens is a very sad, serious child.

This past January my friend Mark was going to Haiti and so I asked him to take a birthday present to Youvens.

A couple weeks later I got this photo.

That smile is all the proof I need that my sponsorship makes a difference.

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I have a confession: I love reality TV shows. It’s true. Although I’m enough of a realist to realize that as viewers, we see a heavily edited version of actual reality, I still like watching the shows because they tell people’s personal stories. They tell stories about people that actually exist. I love people’s stories.

Communications at Compassion is largely about telling people’s stories. And it’s something I think we do well. However, some stories are most powerfully related by the people who actually experienced them. Something is lost in the translation of a personal story to a secondhand story … when it is no longer “my” experience, but ”someone else’s.” 

While we’ve known about the power of personal testimony for a while, we have only recently begun to delve into an area called social media. This is an exciting new venture for Compassion. There are so many new ways for people to share their stories, and we’re just beginning to explore all the possibilities. Through our social media efforts we want to give people a way to tell their own stories, in their own words, totally free of our “translation.”

We have created a section of compassion.com called Share Your Heart. We wanted a creative forum where users could share their personal experiences with poverty, whether it was something they read or heard, a movie they had seen, a personal trip they took or a trip with Compassion or with another organization. We just wanted to get people talking.

Some of the stories people have shared are inspiring. Some are funny. Some are evidence of God’s perfect timing. Some are challenging. There are also photos that tell stories of their own, in ways that words never could. Go check them out. No doubt you’ll be encouraged.

Do you have a story of your own to share? How has God changed your heart towards children in poverty? Who or what has he used to change you? What one picture from your trip captured the entire experience? Share it with us. Don’t be shy.

You never know whose life will be changed by reading your story.

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As I was perusing the news feed on my Facebook profile the other day, I stumbled upon a note posted by one of my co-workers, Greg Birgy. (Greg is Compassion’s Area Director of Advocates and Church Relationships.)

I was moved by what he wrote and thought it was worthy of reposting. So here it is,
in Greg’s own words:

I have friends in the Philippines right now. As I spent some time praying for them this morning, a strange conviction hit me.

Recently my wife and I were lamenting some of the shortcomings of our present home. We’ve been married for nine years and this is our fourth home (in our fourth state), but this is our first home without a basement. We’ve never had elaborate basements, never a fully-finished one, typically just a cement area with storage, mechanicals like the furnace, and laundry. It’s the storge space we were really missing. We like to think we live modestly, if not simply … yet we do have boxes and crates of “things” that we have to store … things like Christmas decorations, keepsakes, seasonal clothing that doesn’t fit into our closets, kids clothes that we pass from one child to the next, extra items that we don’t have space for in our kitchen cabinets, and so on.

What we do have is a crawl space under a portion of our home … a crawl space we were feeling was rather inconvenient and inadequate. This morning, in my prayer for my friends in the Philippines, I was reminded of my own visit to that country last Fall. While there I visited two different homes that required me to crawl to enter them … a first for me in all my years of visiting the poor. Two homes in which I had to bow my head even while sitting so as not to scrape the ceiling (standing wasn’t even an option.) Two homes that easily could have fit together inside the space of my “small” crawl space. Two homes that collectively had fewer light bulbs than my one crawl space. Two homes that had far fewer possessions than the “extras” I store in my crawl space.

My crawl space doesn’t flood when it rains. I’ve never seen a mouse in it, much less a rat like the one I saw while visiting one of the homes in the Philippines. While I’m sure it is inhabited by an occasional spider, it isn’t infested with cockroaches like the tiny home in Manila. The temperature in my crawl space is always moderate and vented with fresh air. In the homes in the Manila slum, the air was stagnant, humid and swelteringly hot.

I was humbled today, knowing that my crawl space is palatial compared to the homes I visited in Manila. My inconveniences are born out of my abundance … can they really be considered inconveniences? How easy it is to lose perspective and take things for granted. I’m thinking my family wouldn’t last a day trying to “live” in our crawl space together, and I wonder how long we could go on living without even missing the things we have stored there?

Thank you for the lessons in humility and gratitude today Lord … may they permeate my choices, my lifestyle, in order to love you and your people better.

It’s so easy to lose perspective, isn’t it? Especially living in a country so full of abundance. Hopefully posts like this one can help us keep a true perspective on reality and our place in this world.

Do you have a story of how God used a small, seemingly insignificant moment to radically change your perspective? I’d love to hear it!

You can also read others posted on Compassion’s Web site in the Share Your Heart section.

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I ran across this quote on another blog the other day …

“There are only 6,574 days between a child’s birth and their eighteenth birthday. Don’t waste a single one.”

I have no idea who first said it but it kind of puts the brevity of life into a new light, doesn’t it? Makes you want to move “spend more time with my child” up on life’s priority list.

We have a collection of quotes about children and poverty on our web site. Check it out … some of the names might surprise you.

Do you have a favorite quote about children or poverty? Let me know.

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There are a lot of things I love about working for Compassion. In fact, I’m going on eight years here, which is practically unheard of for my generation. (I’m a twenty-something.) But I’ve not stuck around this long by accident. 

I was reminded this morning of one of the reasons I love this ministry. Every Wednesday morning we meet together for chapel. It’s not something that’s required, but every week, it seems, the auditorium is packed out. It’s a great break from our desks, and more importantly, a chance to feel like a family – like the Church body. We sing together. We pray for our sponsors together. And we hear about how what we are doing as “work” every day is changing lives all around the world. It’s very motivating!

This week the room was especially full. Wess, our president, spoke. Anyone that’s been working here for any amount of time learns that when Wess speaks, it will be moving. He has a lifetime of stories. If you’ve read his book, you know that God allowed some pretty extraordinary circumstances in his life to bring him to where he is now. I love to hear Wess speak because every time he does, he shares straight from his heart. And once you hear him speak, you want to hear him again. Apparently employees here have figured this out because there wasn’t an empty seat in the room. 

The talk, of course, was great. But something that he said this morning really resonated with me. He said that what we as employees are doing here is exactly the same as what Jesus’ mission statement was while he was here: 

Wow. A job description literally right out of the Word of God! It doesn’t get much more motivating than that, huh?

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