The walk through the haphazardly planned township of Fadama is not a smooth one. You have to stop from time to time to scan the road to avoid stepping into wastewater on the ground due to lack of a proper drainage system.

Several child development center workers from the Church of Pentecost Fadama went into Fadama to identify impoverished children in the community to be registered into their new center.

As the four team members turned a corner, they collided with a little boy who had been angrily shoved out of a wooden structure that serves as a place where people go to buy food and eat. Such spots in Ghana are popularly called “chop bars.”

The boy was thin, in worn-out clothes and with no sandals to protect his feet from the filth on the ground. His name was Fred.

Fred is a 9-year-old-boy who lives with his 82-year-old grandfather, Steven, who is too old to do any work.

Food is hard to provide, so Fred sneaks into chop bars to eat leftovers from customers who don’t finish their food. He does this to the annoyance of the bartenders, who subject Fred to harsh treatment when they lay hands on him. Fred does not go to school because his grandfather cannot afford the school fees.

The grandfather, Steven, used to work as a domestic servant for expatriates until 1986, when that service was scrapped and he lost his job.

In 2003, he again got a job as a night watch with a private company, but could not do that for long due to his frequent poor health. Doctors advised him that it was bad for him at his age to work out in the open air at night. He stopped the job and has not had a job since.

Fred’s father died not long after he was born. His mother remarried, but the new husband does not want to have Fred in his home. The grandfather is the only relative who is willing to have Fred now.

After the center workers saw his condition, Fred became the 148th child to be registered into their child development center. He has been enrolled in school and is in class/grade one. He attends the center regularly on Saturdays. Yet conditions did not immediately change much at home.

Food provision continues to be difficult. Granddad still does not earn any income. Sometimes the old man himself has to go to the center to get money from the workers before he can buy food for Fred and himself.

The center staff were worried about Fred’s condition at home, and wondered what they could do to make life better for him and his grandfather in the long term. Then Compassion’s Highly Vulnerable Children’s (HVC) Fund was introduced in Ghana.

The HVC Fund is an initiative through which assistance is given to children in critical situations – children facing devastating conditions that could end their lives or prevent them from growing and developing in the way that God wants them to.

The Highly Vulnerable Children’s Fund works with the poorest of the poor children. It helps children who are poor and need special attention and assistance in order to survive.

For example, HVC might help an orphan whose caregiver is too old, too sick or not in a condition to generate any income to sustain the child. Or some families are so large, sometimes as large as 10 children, with parents who are not gainfully employed, so food does not go around.

Compassion Ghana does not register more than two children from the same family, except in extremely special situations. This means that the once-a-week feeding on Saturday is not going to help a child in this situation that much.

Children like this would need another intervention to bring them to the level of other children in the Child Sponsorship Program. That is where the Highly Vulnerable Children’s Fund comes in.

The HVC Fund provides children supplemental nutrition. This is intended to help the children eat regularly and get the nutrients their bodies need so that they can grow and develop well. Nutritious food will help them develop  cognitively and perform well in their studies.

Every month, rather than giving the families money, the child is given food worth 20 Ghana cedis, which is about U.S.$143. From this money, the center buys nutritional food such as beans, eggs and milk for the child monthly.

Fred receives food supplements every month. He is looking better physically, and is doing better at school.He can now speak a few words of English and does simple arithmetic. His favorite sport is soccer. The center gave him a soccer ball which he cherishes so much.

Another component of HVC is income-generation activities organized for caregivers to give them economic power so that they can also provide for the other needs of the children, apart from what Compassion is providing. It also enables them to take care of other children in the family who might not be in the sponsorship program. Without this, the little that is provided by Compassion would be spread among the rest of the family, which would still not be enough.

Caregivers are trained to identify things they can do to generate income, and are empowered with grant money with which they can start a trade. (The specific amount given to individual caregivers is still under discussion.)

Grandfather Steven is in the process of being helped by the center to start earning an income selling firewood. He is very grateful for what Compassion is doing for Fred.

“I know that I am very old and I do not have long to be there for my grandson. But it is my prayer that Compassion would continue to be there for Fred even when I am gone.

“I was there only in body for Fred, but it was Compassion who gave us hope.”

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Uganda is often held up as a model for Africa in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Strong government leadership, broad-based partnerships and effective public education campaigns all contributed to a decline in the number of people living with HIV and AIDS in the 1990s.

Despite this impressive reduction in the spread of AIDS in Uganda (from 30 percent in the 1980s to 6.5 percent to date), AIDS is still infecting and killing many Ugandans. Uganda’s HIV prevalence rate has stagnated over the past four years, meaning that the country is not managing to reduce the number of new HIV infections.

Damalie Andabati, the health specialist in our Uganda Country Office, says,

“Currently 6.3 percent of Uganda’s population is infected with HIV, and a new issue that has been discovered by the Uganda Virus Research Institute is that 66 percent of the new infections are among married couples.”

The reason for the high percentage in this unexpected group is not yet certain.

It is feared that HIV prevalence in Uganda may be rising again. It has been suggested that antiretroviral drugs have changed the perception of AIDS from a death sentence to a treatable disease. This perception may have reduced the fear surrounding HIV.

As part of our holistic outcomes around health, voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) for HIV is part of the regular health screenings conducted for the parents and children at the child development centers.

Kansanga Child Development Center carried out a VCT session back in March and 233 caregivers and children were tested, which is one of the best success stories of beneficiaries being tested for HIV by Compassion Uganda.

Kansanga, a red-light district of Kampala, is a community in the slum areas, and the child development center is located one kilometer away. Much effort has been put in clearing this district of prostitution and raising awareness about preventing HIV. Many fear being seen going for the test or seeing the results they will receive from the test.

More than 60 percent of Uganda’s population is illiterate and ignorant, and others are even too poor to own radios from which they would hear information on where to go for testing. Our church partner staff, and government officials, are hopeful for the future — that with tireless effort in community training and sensitization this figure will be adjusted.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

After a disaster occurs in one of our countries, we often raise money to help those affected. We do this to help provide things such as food and water, shelter, bedding, trauma counseling or medical treatment, among other needs. Many times we also send disaster relief kits.

Let me tell you what we mean when we say “disaster relief kit.”*

A couple of weeks ago there was an earthquake off the northern coast of Honduras. Buildings and homes were damaged, including some homes of Compassion-assisted children. (Don’t worry … if your child is affected, we will let you know individually.)

In response to the earthquake, the Compassion Honduras office provided disaster relief kits to the affected families and our communications guy sent me a picture. (Thanks, Yuri!) Anyway, I thought you might like to see it …

*This is just an example of one disaster relief kit we recently provided. Contents of other kits may vary.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

They are the most heartbreaking reports I’ve seen during my 12 months in this job. (Not that you can really quantify or categorize something like this, but last week was the first time I cried reading a crisis report.)

Cyclone Aila. If you haven’t heard about it, don’t feel bad. It really hasn’t been in the news much at all.

None of the major world news sites say anything about it. When I checked yesterday, they all had headlines about singing sensation Susan Boyle, but nothing about Cyclone Aila. However, just because there are no headlines doesn’t mean there is no news.

Over the past week, David Adhikary, our communications specialist in Bangladesh, has been sending photos and reports from the midst of the cyclone’s aftermath. They are devastating. Here are a few excerpts from his reports …

“During the disaster night, the children and their families suffered a lot. The cyclone took down their houses, and after that the dams were destroyed. Some of children had to stand in water for the whole night. The center staff found many of the children in a wet condition.”

“The Compassion center staff and the parents of the children are very anxious about the aftereffects of the flood. The dead animals could cause dangerous diseases, and the probability of malaria is very high.”

“There is not a single house in the village that hasn’t been affected by floodwater. The village is near the sea and the river water is very salty. The floodwater mixed with their water sources and made it impossible to drink.

“The water crisis is the major problem for the people. People were seen drinking the polluted floodwater to put off their thirst. The floodwater is very dirty and stinky. The dead animals and fish are floating all over the water. Children of that area are also drinking the same water.”

Worse …

“The affected families have taken shelter at the nearest market. The families are staying with the animals in the market. The marketplace is badly polluted as the people are using the place for all kinds of uses.

“There is no toilet and the people are using free spaces for a toilet.

“The adult girls are staying with their families in the marketplace. Their parents are very anxious about their daughters because at nighttime they have to stay with lots of unknown people together in the marketplace.”

And perhaps saddest of all …

“This morning we received very sad news about one of the children we assist. Her mother committed suicide just after the cyclone disaster. Their house was broken down and she committed suicide out of her frustrations. She lost her husband last year during Cyclone Sidr. She faced many challenges last year and finally gave up. [The children] are now orphans and vulnerable. They lost their father and mother in two consecutive cyclones. Please join us in pray for these children.”

Oh, God.

It feels like it’s too much, doesn’t it? When I read stuff like this, I find myself begging Jesus to hurry up and return and make all things right. It’s difficult not to get overwhelmed with despair.

The crazy thing is, though, God has placed Compassion right in the midst of this mess. Because of our unique church-based structure, our child development centers are distributing food and water where even relief agencies haven’t been able to access!

Families who lost their homes and have nowhere to cook are receiving hot meals at the child development centers. During the next few weeks, the centers will provide them with dry food, oral rehydration therapy and water purification tablets.

Here are a few of David’s photos. As you look at them, pray for the people in the photos and the thousands more you don’t see who are in similar desperate situations.

We have set up a fund if you would like to make a donation to help the victims of Cyclone Aila.

If you sponsor a child in Bangladesh and your child has been affected by Cyclone Aila, we will contact you as soon as we receive information about your child.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

A new day begins in the city of Siguatepeque, Honduras, and with it a routine process caarried out by two girls at a child development center egg farm. They change the chickens’ water and pick up the eggs.

“Hey, here is another one,” says Keila with enthusiasm while they search for more eggs and the chickens walk between their legs.

The center is in a fresh environment with lots of pine trees. The 140 chickens lay eggs to feed the 257 children at the Pentecostal Student Center.

One of the desired outcomes of our programs is the physical development of children, but the rise in food prices has worsened our church partners’ ability to help the children grow healthy.

In Honduras, 70 percent of families in the rural areas live in extreme poverty, and in the past year, the cost of basic grains has doubled. The price of fertilizer has gone up 71 percent.

This egg farm is one of the ways Compassion Honduras is responding to the global food crisis, which has created great difficulty in the holistic development of the children.

The chicken project started as a dream of this student center in November 2008, and the dream came true through our Complementary Interventions program (CIV).

Like any new activity, the center faced many difficulties — especially when moving 200 chickens. Some of the chickens died and others were stolen.

“We decided to move again the whole thing to a better and safer place, and we currently have 160 chickens and 14 roosters,” says Sandra, the center director.

In spite of all the problems 140 chickens are laying eggs twice a day, and the center is collecting approximately 280 eggs daily.

The children now recieve a nutritional, healthy lunch based on eggs daily. The blessing goes beyond that because the children’s families can buy a cardboard box of 30 eggs for a low price, allowing the center to generate the necessary income to purchase chicken feed.

Pentecostal Student Center is now prepared and confident about the future. This activity gives them the opportunity to bless others in need.

“We have been able to rescue families from precarious nutritional conditions, and we are encouraged to keep working hard and bless many families and children in this city of Siguatepeque,” says Sandra.

In the meantime, Keila and her sister Keren continue with their chores at the egg farm, and have a great time playing with the chickens. Both know how important their work is.

In the warm city of Comayagua, another great CIV program is taking place at Vida Cristiana Student Center: a micro-project fish production that intends to help 312 children and their families.

For Yanira, the center director, this idea started as a vision to help many people, especially children who are living in extreme poverty with so many needs.

“We have seen the need of many families, not only for the lack of food but also because many parents do not have a job and as a result do not have the means to buy food for their children.

“We have seen children with headaches and stomachaches simply because they have not eaten at home, so we are here to attend those children who are going through these difficult times, and we feel blessed to have the opportunity to keep their weight and nutrition.”

It was a common desire within the church to strengthen the children’s nutritional lunch at the center during the global food crisis. Perhaps the biggest challenge was to purchase the material for the fish tank, which is sometimes difficult to find in Honudras.

But the church was always confident that God was going to provide the tools for this activity. They were able to obtain the fish tank material, and eventually began to set it up on the hill behind the church.

Currently, the fish tank has 2,000 fish that are being taken care of by young boys like 15-year-old Gerson.

For two months Gerson has been responsible for the fish tank, an activity he enjoys because of the benefits it will bring him and his friends at the center.

Every day he walks 2 kilometers to the site to do his job with enthusiasm and professionalism. His job is feeding the fish thre times during the day, and also activating the pump that add oxygen to the water.

“They have trained me over the handling and maintenance of this fish pond, also about agriculture and many things.”

In spite of having just two months of experience working with this fish tank, the center is starting to see the fish gain weight and size. They continue training young people how to take care of the fish pond.

In the near future, these fish will be part of the children’s daily lunch. According to Yanira,

“In six months, this cycle of fish will be ready and then we will start over with another 2,000 fish. There is a good market to sell the fish, so the fish pond can be maintained economically.

“We wish the children to learn to dream big and hope that this experience will help them to have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs.”

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

After a two-hour bus trip through chaotic traffic, I arrive at a child development center located in the northwestern part of Lima City.

The center is in a quiet place far from the noisy avenues, although the homes of squatters surround the church mission. The houses are built with precarious materials that show the poverty this community has to face. The mission is on a large property with buildings built long ago.

As I walk through the church’s wide, dusty dirt-floor patio, the center director greets me. With a wide smile and wearing blue jeans and a black hat, she looks ready to film the perfect Western TV series. Her name is Miss Pino and she is a graduate psychologist who has also studied at a Bible institute and has specialized in child advocacy and child evangelism. She has been appointed by her mission authorities as center director for Semillero de Campeones Student Center, which started in June 2008.

In this position, Miss Pino has to deal with many things she never thought she would, such as trying to keep the center open. The rising costs of household items – cooking oil, chicken, milk, etc. – has led to a 20 percent increase in food costs for all student centers in Peru.

For Semillero de Campeones, this has made it difficult to manage a program with 166 young children to feed, from which 40 percent do not have a sponsor yet.

Because of the rise in prices, many student centers have had to stop some activities such as camps, retreats and extracurricular activities. The budgets for each center are simply not enough.

Development centers with less than 160 registered children, such as Semillero de Campeones, have been more affected as they have fewer resources to face the crisis. Therefore, in order to continue serving the vital meals to the children, Semillero de Campeones received a special assistance through our Complementary Interventions Program (CIV).

According to statistics, nearly 750,000 children in Peru have chronic malnutrition, a serious problem that is hidden from the eyes of society which links the short size and the glum temper of the poor indigenous and Creole people to their idiosyncrasies and not to malnutrition.

One out of four children younger than 5 years old is malnourished and does not reach the minimum required size and weight. This causes irreversible damage to their physical, intellectual and emotional development, and this situation continues because of the poverty and illiteracy of mothers in Peru, who don’t know how to combat malnutrition.

Investigations show that the lower the educational level of a woman, the earlier she becomes pregnant, and the more likely she is to raise larger families, heightening the probability of chronic malnutrition of her children.

Miss Pino tells me,

“A good number of families prepare their meals using only chicken innards to add some flavor to their meals. Even the fruit has increased its price, and now some very poor families prepare as a supper for their children a cornstarch pudding and a cup of tea, either yams and tea, or simple bread with tea to have something in their stomach to be able to sleep at night.

“Therefore, if not for Compassion, many of the registered children would not have a chance to eat any decent meal at all.”

Because of this serious situation, Compassion is responding in two ways:

1. Educating the mothers who are registered in our Child Survival Program (CSP) to reach the children when they are most vulnerable, as infants.
2. Covering the immediate nutritional needs of the children with CIV funds.

Many of the CSP mothers are illiterate and have only basic education. Education will teach them a trade to help them improve their income, teach them about proper child care, and also how to prepare nutritious meals, with help from a nutritionist. This response began in February 2009 and will last one year.

The dining room at Semillero de Campeones bursts with children at lunchtime eager to receive what they would not receive at home. These meals will ensure the children can receive the nutrition so important to their growth, including proteins (chicken and beans), carbs (rice), vitamins (vegetables and fruits).

Miss Pino and I visit the family of a sponsored child for whom child sponsorship has made a difference. A young man who also works at the center comes with us, as the place is not safe at all.

Although there are no gangs in this community, there are many thieves who commit robbery inside the many poor homes. There is also a problem of alcoholism and many broken homes and single mothers.

It is also quite common for men to abandon their family, and so there are many young mothers who have to work to support their home, and many children who have to stay at home all day alone, a danger for their well-being.

As we enter a small squatter house located on a hill, I see a middle-aged woman in bed. She is Nydia, 42, the mother of Sayuri.

I notice that they live in only one room with a roof of matting and plastic. The house walls are bare bricks, and the only furniture is two beds, a chest drawer with a TV set on it, and the TV cardboard box used as a night table by the mother’s bed.

There are many flies around Nydia and on her bed. She moves her head toward me, indicating to come, and at the same moment, she tries to kill a fly with a swatter.

As I enter the room, I sense immediately a strange odor that takes me back 18 months to the day when we, a group of Compassion workers, entered into one of the towns south of Lima City where a strong earthquake killed many people. Most of the bodies were still trapped in the debris and the strong odor of death made it difficult to breathe.

In fact, Nydia, a single mother of five, is dying day by day with uterine cancer. She was diagnosed in May 2008, and the doctors could do nothing but put her on radiotherapy. Now she is taking morphine to alleviate the pain in her swollen legs that have made it impossible to walk.

Nydia has five children: Jhon, 20, Martin, 17, Luis, 15, Rosa, 12, and Sayuri, 4. The two older ones live on their own and seldom see their mother. Luis works whenever he has a chance and brings home the money to cover the most urgent needs, and Rosa, although she is only 12, had to quit school because they couldn’t afford the school expenses. Instead, Rosa looks after her mother and younger sister.

We begin talking to Luis, and after some minutes Nydia tries to join our conversation. I look at the dirty mattress and blanket where a good number of flies keep landing, but choose to ignore it and sit down on the bed by Nydia’s side with a microphone in my hand and a camera in the other.

“My daughter Sayuri is very picky to eat so I am surprised she likes the meals that are served at the center. I thank Compassion for it because our budget at home is quite low to cope with our needs.”

Before she was ill, Nydia supported her family cooking at a restaurant in downtown Lima, and used to come home late completely exhausted. At the time she learned she had terminal cancer, she also learned about the Compassion program that was beginning at an evangelical mission located about 10 blocks from her home. So she registered her daughter, Sayuri.

Now Sayuri is attending the Compassion program and also attends school through a scholarship at the small grade school the mission runs to benefit the community children.

“If not for Compassion, Sayuri would have been at home just as her older sister. But now besides having a meal, she has a place to enjoy gathering with other children and learning many new things, instead of watching the TV all day as before.

“You see, I am dying with cancer and what worries me most is that I don’t know where my two daughters are going to end up. The boys are already grown up, and they can look after themselves.”

As our visit comes to an end, it is time for Nydia to take the prescribed morphine. After saying a prayer, we leave this home and walk toward the mission, having been a witness that without the loving care of Compassion that Sayuri is receiving now, this family would have no hope.

Nydia lost track of her relatives when she was quite young, and now her only family are the mission church members who volunteer at the center. Miss Pino, who is quite aware of the situation, tells me that the center helps this family by giving them spiritual counseling and some food supplies.

By giving them some food supplies, the family is able to eat at least something simple as a supper and to have a breakfast to help them get started for the day in better shape.

The center also pays for the medical fees and the prescribed medication sold at a special cheap price to Nydia at the hospital, after the hospital’s social workers declared her as a destitute person.

Nydia’s neighbors have also found a way to ensure the family receives a free lunch at a soup kitchen run by the government, where meals of rice and beans with tea are sold to the community for U.S.60 cents a dish.

Miss Pino has hope for this family, as she does for the center in general.

“Pastor Fonseca, who already has 15 years of experience working with Compassion at another center in the city, has been appointed to this church since January.

“He is quite acquainted with many foreign missions and foreign businessmen and professionals who are willing to help him in the development of the mission and will begin soon helping our mission work.

“In fact, in April we began a breakfast program on Sunday mornings for all the children who want to come to listen to the Bible stories after a good breakfast. And there is the possibility to extend this benefit for at least three more days during the week, so that all the community children may be able to attend school after having a nutritious breakfast.

“The beneficiaries will be the Compassion-sponsored children, the mission school children as well as all other children who live nearby.

“Besides, there are two foreign agronomy engineers who are Christian who teach at the Agronomy University in Lima City, they have the desire to help the mission install a small farm with a special method of watering. Since the mission has a big space of land, they want to use it to grow some vegetables to be used for preparing the program’s meals.”

Pastor Fonseca also has a long-term project in mind – to build an orphanage and day-care center to help many children that stay home alone all day and are in imminent risk, just like Sayuri and her sister Rosa.

Though this family still daily faces such serious burdens, the Compassion program has been able to help with their basic needs and provide vital emotional and spiritual support.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Have you ever heard of Atrial Septal Defect (ASD)? Apparently, it’s a congenital heart defect.

If you have a defect in your interatrial septum, the tissue that divides the right side of your heart from the left side, your blood can get confused. And if that happens, you end up with blood that goes where it shouldn’t. That’s bad.

In a normal heart, the left ventricle has to produce enough pressure to pump blood throughout the entire body, but the right ventricle has to produce only enough pressure to pump blood to the lungs.

In the case of a large defect, this pressure difference means that blood from the left atrium can flood and enlarge the right side of the heart and, if left untreated, can result in heart failure.

That’s ASD in a nutshell. And this is why I tell you.

Alexander is an 8-year-old Kenyan boy who has ASD. He is in the third grade and is the youngest child in a family of five. Because his heart has been pumping deoxygenated blood to his growing body for his entire life, Alexander is smaller than most children his age.

In August 2008, during an evaluation at the child development center, a pediatrician noticed that Alexander has a heart murmur. Follow-up tests in Nairobi identified the birth defect and recommended a cardiac catheterization procedure and open heart surgery.

But Alexander’s parents are peasant farmers, and his mother sells fruit at the market to earn extra income. They survive on $13.70 per month.

$13.70 a month is barely adequate to meet the family’s basic needs, let alone pay for open heart surgery.

At this point, heart failure is a real possibility for Alexander. However, studies have shown that patients with a surgically repaired ASD have an excellent prognosis, particularly when the operation is done before the age of 25.

But Alexander’s family can’t afford the operation. It costs $8,303.

Alexander has been waiting to receive the surgery for several months now, since early December, but he can’t wait any longer. His condition has recently worsened – which made me think of something Amanda suggested back in February.

“I am just kicking around a few ideas here. What if Compassion had a “Spotlight of the Week” – or “Spotlight of the Month?” It could be either a child (medical need?), family, or small community need. It could even be in the area of the global financial crisis, disaster relief, Child Survival Program, or some other facet of Compassion. For example, one week you could highlight the (global food crisis) need of a community in Uganda to have goats or seeds for crops (or both). After the donations have been given, you could easily follow up with a story in the blog to share the results of the giving.”

So, Alexander has a need. And our objective is to give him a normal heart. Can we do this for him?

Make a donation to help pay for Alexander’s surgery. (Update: May 21, 2009 – You did it! And more. You contributed around $10,000. I expect to have the exact amount tomorrow.)

Thank you for loving this child.

As I receive updates on how Alexander is doing, I will share them with you. I can’t promise you updates with any degree of regularity though. I can just promise that there will be a follow-up.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

On a recent trip to Africa, I met a man. A man named “John” who is living positively with HIV and even AIDS.

• A man who watched his wife of 35 years die of AIDS-related causes.
• A man who has nine children, all born again.
• A man who has known his status for four years but hasn’t been deterred.
• A man who boldly stood in front of my camera when I wanted to respect his privacy but still get a photo of his humble and dilapidated dwelling.

This man with a gaunt face but beautiful eyes shook my hand strongly and with great confidence.

He shared with me his story, one that brought him from finding out his status to living and breathing today as a positive, incredibly inspiring story of someone who has decided to live his life with thanks, not fear.

When I asked John what he wanted others to know about HIV or being HIV positive, he said that everyone should be tested and that AIDS is still a killer disease. He said that if you test positive, you should not fear, for fear will only exacerbate the illness.

John is being helped by Compassion in many ways: by support of his multiple income-generating projects, which include selling used clothing and small foods as well as ironing others’ garments.

He is given other support as needed based on the child development center’s close communication with him. He seems to be a proud man, not ashamed of his circumstances, and very grateful for what the Church and Compassion are doing to help him.

Though we all come from different backgrounds and bring a wide spectrum of abilities to our work, we all comprise a body of Christ helping a man named John. A man that most of us will never meet but who many of us will be impacted by as we gain energy from his story.

John has two children in Compassion’s programs. Two boys who are benefiting both directly through our programs and indirectly because their father is getting much needed support through the AIDS Initiative.

How could these two boys succeed with an ailing father who doesn’t get the help that he needs? We are helping this man to live so that his sons may focus on their education and future pursuits. A win-win if you ask me.

So please be encouraged that the AIDS Initiative you work to support in a multitude of ways is working quite well and being carried out in the most unique ways with some of God’s most cherished children, those living with HIV and AIDS. Your support allows the AIDS Initiative to be integrated into our programs in Africa.

Thank you for having the patience that I find myself lacking at times; the lack of patience that is embarrassing to admit when standing face to face with those who are HIV positive and have more than I will ever have.

I felt terribly honored to be in that small stuffy room with John, learning about his faith and his life. I felt that I was truly standing on sacred ground.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

The green leaves start to receive the first rays of the sun, leaving the darkness and cold of the night behind. It is 6 in the morning and the harvest looks ready – ready to be separated from the corn bush, ready to become part of a meal, and ready to be part of a change in the lives of an entire community.

This is the fruit of seeds planted with hope, watered with hard work and dreams, and, at last, harvested with joy.

Pastor Damian checks two sacks full of beans. It is just the beginning of the harvest and the fruits already look promising.

Another man, Brother Juan, a seasoned farmer with dark skin and gray hair, is a perfect example of a Salvadoran farmer – thin but somehow robust, quiet and wise. Juan has served as an adviser to Pastor Damian since they decided to implement program “Double Seed.”

Juan talks about the beans and how they should keep some leaves and dirt in the sack so the beans will not lose the humidity they need.

“This way, they can last for about a year,” he adds, and smiles, knowing that the efforts made these past three months have given results – promising results that translate into hope.

It has been three months since Double Seed started in the community of Corinto, in Zaragoza, a city located eight miles south of the capital city, San Salvador, in El Salvador.

These past months meant sweat and great efforts for the people, but it also meant hope for a future that did not seem so clear a few months before.

Declarations made by international organizations since the third quarter of the year contrast with the hope at Zaragoza.

On July 13, 2008, the president of the World Bank, Mr. Robert Zoellick, declared to news agencies that they estimated that poor countries will need over $6 billion in assistance because already rising food and energy costs will continue to climb until 2012.

The economy section of El Diario de Hoy newspaper the next day showed that the cost of staples has increased 40 percent. But numbers are not as compelling as individual stories.

The journalist recalled a scene at a street market where a woman who preferred not to be identified collected the grains of maize that fell on the floor after the salesman weighed the grain to put it in bags and sell by the pound.

After much effort, this woman collected about one pound of maize just from the grains that fell on the floor, which would her feed her family that night.

Since the global food crisis filled the headlines and breaking news segments, Compassion El Salvador and its partner churches began to create strategies to face this threat. Among the strategies are agricultural development programs for the families of Compassion-assisted children.

The crisis experienced all around the world has complicated roots, and the truth is that the most affected are the people in greatest need. Now Compassion is striving to provide help, hope and the Word of God to those families at greatest risk.

Compassion El Salvador created multidisciplinary teams at the country office level, which developed a strategy that first takes into account the valuable input of pastors and church leaders.

This strategy has been implemented in two stages. First is the short-term response, where families  most in need receive immediate relief through our Complementary Interventions program (CIV). They are receiving enough food for their families to cover six months.

The second stage involves the church more, since the purpose is to support the families at the child development centers, and start income-generating activities such as chicken farms and hydroponics.

Among these programs to secure food for the short term is Double Seed, implemented by our church partner, Iglesia Jesucristo es El Señor, which runs the child development center, Nuevo Amanecer (New Sunrise).

In rural communities like Corinto, most of the people do not have a steady job and survive with what they can harvest with the seeds they receive from the government. The real hope and help they have comes from churches and organizations like Compassion. Churches like Jesucristo es El Señor and Pastor Damian understand this and have taken the challenge to make a difference in the lives of the children.

Sister Sandra, partnership facilitator for Jesucristo es El Señor, says the church received $2,000, and there will be another $700. With that money the church was able to buy seeds and other materials they needed to begin the harvest.

The land was borrowed by the pastor’s family, and the labor was the result of the collaboration of the families of the children at the development center. So far, they have sowed five acres of corn and one more of beans.

The most impressive part of this plan is the name, Double Seed. “At the place where they have sowed the beans, the church has a small group that meets to share the gospel,” says Sister Sandra.

It is called Double Seed because they are not just planting grains that will secure food next year for the families of the children from the child development center and the church - they also are planting the gospel that will secure the salvation of the families that are not Christian.

For now, Double Seed has been a short-term immediate response to the food shortage and is intended to secure food for the families of the children enrolled in the program for the next several months.

The church is becoming a holistic oasis in that poor community, where people are not only finding support for their children, but also for their families and for their souls.

“The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.” – Psalm 85:12 (NIV)

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