While the Bible doesn’t use the word partnership, we see examples in the Bible of churches partnering together from the earliest history of the Church. And the principles we learn from the Bible about humility, equality and mutuality should guide how we work in partnership.

At Compassion, we highly value our relationships with local churches in the countries where we work. They minister on the front lines to the children we serve. They also minister to us.

As Compassion Latin America and Caribbean regional vice president Edouard Lassegue writes,

“Though these congregations may be under-resourced financially, often they are spiritually rich and vibrant and able to contribute in an authentic two-way relationship.”

Much of the Christian Church today has been blessed with significant resources, financial and otherwise. Other parts of the global body of believers struggle with tremendous limitations of resources yet have incredible opportunities for ministry.

Partnering between the resource-rich part of the Church and the resource-poor part of the Church is not something particularly new or noble. It is just what we should do. It is simply what Paul asked the early Church to do.

It is only right and practical for churches in various parts of the world to partner together to care for each other and to advance the gospel and the kingdom of God.

When the Body of Christ comes together in partnership, we honor and obey Jesus’ mandate that His followers act as one. But it takes time to develop a partnership — especially the relational aspects of partnership.

Relationship is central to partnership. In the countries where we work, partnerships are perceived as being primarily relational. But often in North America and many of our sponsoring countries, partnerships tend to be contractual in nature.

True partnership requires the ability to set aside tasks and agendas long enough for the partners to listen to each other, identify their common mission and understand what each partner can contribute.

Edouard Lassegue says:

“Many times we rush through the process of partnership without taking the time to recognize and put in place the necessary building blocks of partnership. We jump into action without developing the foundation of true partnership — solid relationship.

“On one hand, lack of relationship causes a church in [a developing country] to see its relationship with a parachurch organization or congregation [in a developed nation] as a funding mechanism and not as true partnership that demonstrates equality in Christ, mutual benefits, and sharing resources and lessons together.

“On the other hand, lack of relationship causes the church or parachurch organization from [the developed nation] to want to solve problems for the local church in a paternalistic way, treating that church as a child needing direction, provision and supervision. … True partnership is based on solid relationship.”

At Compassion, we seek healthy relationships in spite of these potential obstacles. We intentionally hire national staff in every country in which we serve. Our front-line relationship manager with every church partner (the partnership facilitator) is selected as one who is as close to the partner’s culture as possible to encourage relationship and communication.

We must walk together, talk together, and have tea together before we will be effective in working together. Real partnership is an ongoing journey, and it takes time.

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In the midst of post-election violence in Kenya, one entire church was burned down. We lost all of our paperwork and child documentation — nothing was left.

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

Many of us are allergic to business jargon. Nothing can make people start itching faster than sitting in a meeting and hearing words like “strategy,” “assessment,” or — horror of horrors — “best practice methodology.”

“Partnership” can be one of those abstract business-like words that make our eyes glaze over. The word has been used to mean a lot of things to a lot of people until it hardly means anything to anyone. What is partnership?

Partnership is at the center of what we do at Compassion. We not only partner with you, our sponsors and donors, but also with the local church around the world. So it’s worth understanding what we mean by partnership and how we do it.

The word “partnership” is derived from the Latin word for “portion.” In partnership, we share a portion with each other.

Partnership should achieve a vision that is mutually desired and that cannot be achieved by any one partner alone. It is not simply having tea together. It is having tea in order to work together on something that you both care about and can’t do alone.

With this in mind, this is how we define partnership:

“A Compassion partnership is a collaborative and mutually beneficial relationship between Compassion and another entity for the purpose of releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name beyond the capacity of either partner individually.”

Our definition is based on three things:

1. A common mission to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name. This is the only purpose for which we will enter into partnerships.
2. A collaborative relationship. Both parties must actively build relationship with each other and cooperate willingly on the mission.
3. Mutual respect and mutual benefit. We recognize that we need one another to accomplish the mission.

And based on these three things, we have developed a set of principles that guide us toward healthy, God-honoring partnerships.

They apply to our relationships with you and our supporting church partners; they apply to strategic ministry relationships; and they apply to our implementing church partners.

Partnership Is Founded Upon Our Identity in Christ.

In Christ we are one body with many parts. Each part offers unique service and is equally important to the health of the body. Each partner, irrespective of size, power or resources, is valued. No partner is viewed as more important than the other. This can be achieved only if we are committed to the attitude of Christ and “having the same love … and in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:2-3).

Partnership Seeks Mutually Respectful and Beneficial Relationships

No partner should use the other for its own goals, but should develop genuine, mutually respectful, and beneficial relationships. A partner does not lord over or “do mission” for the other. Rather, a partner seeks to help, empower and serve the other to enrich their shared ministry.

We give priority to relationships over tasks and projects. When relationships empower, rather than impose agendas, all partners are transformed in the process.

Partnership Accepts Mutual Responsibility and Commitment

Partnership takes the commitments made to one another with utmost seriousness and works in collaboration, without dominance, exploitation or condescension.

Increased trust is built through partners being accountable to each other, ensuring that their words and actions are consistent. Partnership requires an enduring commitment to not only the common vision but also to each other.

Partnership Produces Visible Transformation and Outcomes

Partnership does not exist as an end in itself. It exists for the purpose of advancing the kingdom of God further, better and/or faster than either party could do alone.

For us, partnership exists for the shared goal of releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name. The essence of partnership is that one plus one equals more than two. We enter into partnerships in order to do something we cannot do alone or that we can do better together.

“A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, and some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we step back from it, we can see that all these little stones reveal to us a beautiful picture, telling a story none of these stones can tell by itself.

That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world.” Henri J. Nouwen, The Mosaic That Shows Us the Face of God

At Compassion, we are deeply honored to be part of the thousands of little stones that God is using to build a beautiful mosaic. Together we are telling a story that none of us could tell by ourselves.

Through our commitment to and relationship with one another, we are revealing the face of God to the world and advancing His kingdom by releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

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

The Wally Show recently returned from our offices in Asia where they witnessed child sponsorship in action.

We met a woman named Ko who was a sponsored child, and she now works for Compassion helping others. This is one time a vicious cycle is a good thing. She still has the picture of her sponsors from 30 years ago on her desk.

I asked her if there was anything her sponsor said or did that really made a difference in her life. She told me the fact that someone who did not know her would show her such love and tell her about Jesus inspired her to live the rest of her life serving God. That is a sentiment which is echoed throughout the lives of most of the Compassion kids.

Read the entire post at The Wally Show.

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

For the past year, I’ve been working for Compassion Canada as a marketing writer. (Did you know that Compassion International truly is international? Our sponsors come from the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland and South Korea, and God is growing our pool of worldwide sponsors every day!)

Compassion Canada Staff

At first, I wondered what cultural differences I might encounter writing for another country. To prepare for my new role, I watched Canadian Bacon and many reruns of SCTV. So far, the biggest differences are that Canadians walk kilometres to get to their neighbours colourful homes in 0 degree Celsius weather, while Americans walk miles to get to neighbors colorful homes in 0 degree Fahrenheit weather.

But when it comes to sponsorship, I found a couple of ways in which we are different, and several ways that we are the same.

How We’re Different

1. One of the most obvious ways Compassion Canada is different from Compassion USA is size. Although by area Canada is the second largest country in the world, by population Canada is about a tenth the size of the U.S. Accordingly, Compassion Canada employs about 85 people, making it a lean, mean, sponsoring machine.
2. Despite the fact that Canada’s small, we do have some cool services. For example, did you know that as a Canadian sponsor, you can send your sponsored child a paper play set as a gift? You do now! We don’t have the same paper templates the U.S. offers, but you can write your child online and choose to send one photo, 12 different cards (and, yes, one is hockey themed), 3 paper play sets and 6 posters.
3. Because Compassion International’s headquarters are in Colorado Springs, many staff members have an amazing view of the mountains. Because Compassion Canada is based in London, Ontario, they have a lovely view of an industrial park. The marketing team is inspired to creativity each day as they watch feet walk by in the parking lot from their garden view windows.
4. Even though Canada is far more post-Christian than the U.S., we really work to emphasize how the ministry in the field is Christ centred. (Notice I didn’t say centered.) Canada even has a website dedicated to educating sponsors and donors about how Jesus is the true difference in these children’s lives, called The Difference Is Jesus.
5. Although many workers ride their bikes to our headquarters in Colorado, in Canada, they ride moose to work.

Compassion USA Staff

How We’re the Same

1. We are all guided by the same values and principles, and we are supporting the same ministry in the field.
2. We all love (to mock) Justin Bieber. When I was visiting the Canada office, I met a young woman whose family used to babysit the Biebs. Pretty exciting stuff. (And although the Canadians like to claim that they don’t love him as much as they do, in a staff meeting I was in, one of the announcements was that it was Justin Bieber’s birthday. You be the judge.)

If you want to find out more about some of Compassion International’s partners around the world, check them out here.

You can read the UK and Ireland’s blog!

Spreekt u Nederlands? Read the Dutch blog here. Or if you live down under, check out the Australia blog.

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Effective staff communication helps create a more unified, cohesive environment in which our ministry workers can thrive.

The implementation of virtual conferences and online training modules in El Salvador has allowed our staff to move one step forward in how they communicate with one another.

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

A carbon tax. Floods in Queensland; fires in Victoria. Oil spills off Western Australia and Mexico. Mining in the Kimberly; irrigation in the Murray Basin; logging in the Daintree. No matter where you stand along the great climate-change divide, the debate about our environment — and what should be done about it — is hard to avoid.

In Australia, the environmental considerations we face are often long-term and somewhat academic in their repercussions. How would a dam affect local animal populations? Is the disposal of solar power batteries just as bad as the emissions from coal power? What would be the economic impact of restricting uranium mining?

Despite being the world’s worst polluters per capita, Australians live in one of the world’s most pristinely clean environments — even in our cities. Our skies are rarely congested with smog; our national parks are rich and sprawling; our streets are largely litter-free; our sewage is treated and piped away.

By comparison, tension between people and the planet in the developing world is much more stark. The struggle for economic growth has left scars in streets and slums awash with untreated effluent when it rains, waterways choked with garbage, landscapes stripped of vegetation, and urban airways blanketed with thick haze.

With lower levels of resource use and a much shorter history of using them, the developing world’s impact on the environment is much less than its developed counterparts; yet it bears a much higher price for damage done.

The World Bank’s 2009 World Development Report estimates that carbon pollution will cost Africa about 4 percent of its GDP and India about 5 percent — while the cost to world GDP is just around 1 percent.

Inadequate sanitation and housing infrastructure, higher levels of malnutrition and poor health, increased propensity to flooding, greater reliance on the land, and extremely limited resources to prepare or respond make poor nations and their people more vulnerable to environmental crises such as natural disasters.

For instance, both the Netherlands and Bangladesh are highly susceptible to floods, but while the Netherlands spends more than $100 per person per year on flood defences, $100 is a quarter of the average person’s annual income in Bangladesh and far out of reach for the public purse.

The implications for development for nations grappling with poverty — and for their children — are clear.

Securing a safe, healthy environment is essential for ensuring the well-being of an individual. Without it, efforts to improve health, housing, economic security, agriculture and other contributors that raise a person’s, or a community’s, standard of living are undermined.

Protecting the environment is just as important as these other seemingly competing priorities — and as with so many development activities, children are key to the process.

This is one of the reasons our holistic child development programs, which work to impact nations and generations by releasing children from poverty, have included a focus on environmental responsibility, or creation care, since the very beginning.

The other reason creation care is integral to our programs is reflected in our mission: to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

We believe that God created the earth, including men and women. We are made in the image of God, given a privileged place within His creation and commanded to exercise stewardship over it (Genesis 1:26—28).

Care for God’s creation — the environment and everything in it — is a biblical obligation, and we are morally accountable for how we carry out the task (Genesis 2:15).

We believe that creation care is essential to truly working in Jesus’ name and an important biblical teaching to pass on to the children to whom we minister. Therefore, creation care is incorporated into each of our four core programs, reaching children from the womb to the workforce.

The training that mothers receive as part of our Child Survival Program is practical and relevant, designed to improve the well-being not only of the household but also of the community — making caring for the environment an underlying theme.

Lessons on composting and the safe disposal of rubbish help clean up neighbourhoods and provide a useful source of fertiliser.

Training on growing vegetables gives families a cost-effective — and environmentally friendly — supply of food.

Education on the importance of safe water for drinking and bathing not only reduces sickness, but also raises awareness of the consequences of polluting community water sources.

In several development centres, mothers have learned how to make purses to sell using recycled plastic, thus reducing waste while adding to the family’s income.

In Kenya, our staff encourage mothers to beat the drought by recycling water from their washing to water vegetable gardens.

In the same way that children in our Child Sponsorship Program are taught how to wash their hands to avoid sickness, they are also taught to clear rubbish, keep waterways clean, and understand the value of trees to protect and improve their surroundings and their standard of living.

Uganda’s Rakai district is one that has felt the impact of poor environmental management. Uganda lost half of its forests in the civil and political strife of the 1970s and 1980s and another quarter of its remaining forests between 1990 and 2005.

Today, Uganda’s forests are being cleared at a rate of 92,000 hectares every year — a pace that will leave it completely deforested by the year 2052.

The rapidly growing population’s demand for land to grow crops and build houses, and for trees for fuel like charcoal and firewood, is driving Uganda’s deforestation. This demand is exacerbated by the fact that 70 percent of the country’s forests are on private land.

The Rakai district, part of the grazing corridor which hosts 60 percent of Uganda’s cattle population, has been hit particularly hard by water depletion and increased frequency of droughts that have been linked to the deforestation.

Compassion’s Kakuuto Child Development Centre in the region responded by giving each child at the centre four trees — distributing a total of 900 mango, orange, avocado, tangerine and hard-wood trees throughout the community.

The children were taught how to plant and look after the trees, as well as how to use energy-saving stoves that reduced the amount of timber needed for fuel.

In addition to providing shade and helping to reduce flooding and soil erosion, the trees will provide a valuable source of food and income for the families.

As our Leadership Development Program works to develop Christian leaders and empower young people to bring change to their communities and nations, it is also one of the key ways we encourage creation care — simply by empowering the community’s own young people to make their voices heard.

Wanda Medina is one of our Leadership Development Program students and a passionate advocate for the forests and wildlife of her home in the Bahoruco Mountains of the Dominican Republic.

As well as studying education at university, Wanda volunteers at the Unit of Environment Management of the Municipality, working to convince local farmers to preserve the forests. It’s a battle with life-and-death consequences, seen clearly in neighbouring Haiti — where more than 98 percent of forests have been cut down at a rate of 10 million to 20 million trees each year with devastating consequences for the hurricane- and flood-prone country.

By comparison, the Dominican Republic’s 28 percent forest cover looks verdant. But not for long, if the slash-and-burn land clearing techniques that the Environment Ministry says have claimed nearly 310,000 hectares of forest in the last 50 years continue.

“In our meetings, farmers say that they have families to support and the only thing they know how to do is agriculture. They take what they have at hand, which is the land. So we teach them methods of how to reforest and cultivate their land at the same time, like planting tall trees like mahogany and avocado. We also run courses on tree grafting, beekeeping and honey production, and raising pigs, so the farmers have other employment opportunities and skills.

“I want my community to make progress and be developed, that it will go back to be what it was regarding its forest and vegetation. I hope that people will go back to feel for and take care of their environment, all that is around them and their natural resources.”

Compassion’s Complementary Interventions help tackle the barriers that stand between children and healthy development that can’t be overcome through our core programs alone. Environmental factors such as natural disasters, poor sanitation and health epidemics are often among those barriers. As a result, many Complementary Interventions involve improving the way home and community environments are managed.

For instance, thanks to a Complementary Intervention designed to help parents generate income, a group of 15 parents of children attending the Ebenezer Child Development Centre in southern India have been taught how to make paper bags to sell to local shops.

While improving the parents’ work skills, the training also supports a government effort to reduce the use of plastic bags that have caused wide-scale pollution of waterways and streets.

A Complementary Intervention in six child development centres in Kenya’s Machakos district is also supporting government environmental initiatives by establishing fruit-tree nurseries in each centre to propagate seedlings to distribute to children’s families. The nurseries will provide a food source as well as help combat desertification and soil erosion in the region.

Installing solar-powered stoves is another effective Complementary Intervention that has been implemented in several centres. The stoves use a clean and endlessly supplied fuel that doesn’t force people to choose between cutting down a tree for firewood today and keeping it for the fruit it will bear tomorrow.

Because of the toxic smoke they produce, traditional wood, coal and animal-dung stoves are blamed for killing 1.6 million people every year, more than 85 percent of them women and children under 5. Thus, solar-powered stoves help save lives.

Similarly, at least one Complementary Intervention to provide adequate water and sanitation (such as a well or toilets) is put into action in every country we work in every year, for both health and environmental gains.

In the developing world, roughly 90 percent of sewage is discharged untreated into rivers, polluting the water and killing plants and fish.

In Southeast Asia alone, 13 million tons of faeces are released into inland water sources each year along with 122 million cubic metres of urine. This poses a major health threat to people who depend on open streams and wells for their drinking water as well as an economic blow to people whose livelihoods depend upon fisheries.

Water pollution from poor sanitation costs Southeast Asia more than $2 billion a year, primarily from the loss of productive land. In India, it is estimated that water pollution causes 80 percent of diseases. Providing safe water and hygienic toilets is essential to our development efforts.

This post originally appeared on compassion.com.au as The Great Debate.

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We are taking steps forward — one at a time — to ensure that the work of this ministry grows with the needs of the countries we work in. One step we’ve taken in Indonesia is to work in unified teams to better serve our Implementing Church Partners (ICPs).

Our staff and church partners in Indonesia benefit from the collaborative effort between Partnership Facilitators (PFs), Sponsor Donor Services (SDS) and Training Specialists. By working together in unity, we help one another succeed in our individual roles, as this video from our Indonesia office explains.

Project Facilitators have a huge responsibility and the team model helps them know that they don’t need to “do it all” by themselves.

As Sarah Rahadja, Program Communications Director in our Indonesian country office, explains,

“The cross-functional team approach is beautiful for the Project Facilitators because they are not superman or superwoman.”

To illustrate this point, the staff made a fun video we hope you’ll enjoy!

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

I’ll admit it: I’m a child of the 80s. I’ve got fond memories of Expo 88, and I can still sing the theme songs of She-Ra, Inspector Gadget, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Smurfs.

Punky Brewster was my hero. I owned a hypercolor t-shirt, and I wore it tucked into my “happy pants”—think everything you’ve ever seen of MC Hammer, but on a five-year-old.

It’s funny how the 80s legacy lives on, for better or worse. I got more than a little bit excited when Cold Chisel announced their comeback tour this year, and I’ll always be fascinated by Rubik’s Cubes.

And it seems my mum was right when she told me that fashions always go in cycles—although I just can’t bring myself to embrace high-waisted jeans a second time. But it’s not just clothes that seem to have cycled around again.

One of the defining characteristics of the 80s was the “greed is good” mantra that infiltrated consumer psyches across the Western world. It’s no coincidence that one of the most significant events of the decade was the stock market crash of 1987, which devastated households, companies and economies around the world—or that this episode in our history was shortly followed by the infamous recession “we had to have” of the early 1990s. And yet, it seems we still haven’t learnt the lesson.

Greed, say observers including former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the Archbishop Canterbury and the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia, was at the core of the Global Financial Crisis that hit in 2008 and is still reverberating now.

Despite human experience ranging from King David all the way through to Gordon Gekko proving that it would be better relegated to the pages of history (along with shoulder pads), greed came back in fashion this decade, and we are all living with the consequences.

The most disturbing return to the 80s is without doubt the horrifying stories of African mothers walking for days through the desert to beg a handful of grain; of tinder-dry crops and emaciated cattle shriveling under a merciless sun; of children dying for want of food as the world looks on through their big screen TVs.

Again, consecutive seasons of drought in East Africa have laid bare a region mired in poverty, neglect, instability and conflict, leaving 12.4 million people—more than half the Australian population—at the brink of survival.

The television images of Ethiopian children with withered, ancient faces that I remember seeing as a kid in 1984 are back, and just like before, they play second fiddle in our media to news about the latest politician faux pas and celebrity wedding.

How—in a world where junk food, alcohol and cigarettes are among the leading causes of death—are we here again? Have 30 years not been enough to learn how to prevent catastrophes like this?

The fact is, there is enough food produced to feed everyone living right now on Planet Earth—but one in seven people in the world do not have enough to eat.

The reasons why 12.4 million East Africans are facing starvation are complex, but while the drought is the result of not enough rain, experts tell us the famine is man-made.

Self-interest—of local authorities, of inefficient governments, of the architects of an unjust world trade system, and of all of us who have passively accepted it—is again at the core.

Yet, 30 years on, some things have changed. I was a child in the 80s, but now I have a child of my own—though thankfully, she is not old enough to insist on wearing high-waisted jeans. I want her to grow up in a world that has learnt its lesson; that understands that greed is not good. And I am not alone.

The Australian Government pledged $60 million in emergency relief, then boosted it to $80 million. Everyday Australians have added another $10 million of their own. Blog sites like this one have done their bit to get people talking and reaching into their pockets.

Tens of thousands of Australians have chosen to sponsor a child in East Africa, helping to reduce the vulnerability and build the resilience of no less than 32,932 children through year-round nutrition, health, education and income generation support.

This is our time to do things differently than we have in the past; to make sure this is one part of our era that won’t cycle around again. What will you do?

This post originally appeared on compassion.com.au as Child of the 80s. Sponsor a child through Compassion Australia.

The 1980s graphic is courtesy of Kenny Dodge.

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

Fidel had a vision for his community, a poor fishing village in Ghana. Kpone didn’t have a library or computer center and Fidel understood that in today’s world, not to have computer literacy is a great disadvantage.

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