Think about it for a second. A birthday may be the most special day in a little kid’s life. Yet nearly 9 million kids a year never make it to their fifth birthday.

Our Child Survival Program helps fight the infant mortality problem plaguing these vulnerable children.

We’d like to introduce you to Josh Durias and his photography.

Josh was born and raised in Seattle. He’s a father of two, and a husband to one.

We’re plagiarizing here … jes so ya know.

He’s a son of Philippine immigrants and grew up with his mother and father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, two aunts, four uncles and five cousins (among other houseguests) in the 18 years he spent at home.

He enjoys people. And likes to laugh … even courtesy laughs … ha ha.

We met Josh through this blog. He sent us an e-mail with some photos he took on a Compassion trip. They are stunning. See for yourself.

We also asked him to share a little bit about the trip to help put the photos in context. We hope you enjoy Josh’s perspective on children in poverty.

Gearing up for my Compassion trip to Ecuador, I told my wife, “Ya know? In some ways I might have more in common with the Compassion kids than with the folks I’m traveling with.”

She needed a bit more convincing.

I reminded her that my cousin was a Compassion child in the Philippines, my mother grew up in a poor farming community in Zamboanga, and many of my family members are still living in situations like the ones I’ll see on the trip.

“Wow,” she replied. “I hope people can see that in your photos.”

With that, my challenge was set: Tell the stories of these kids as if they were my own family.

Back in June, I traveled with a group of donors to Quito, Ecuador. The first stop was Bernabe Student Center for a Child Survival Program (CSP) presentation. This was the same center where I met Edison and Paula.

Edison and his family opened up their home for us to see what typical living arrangements look like in this area of Quito.

After lunch with the family, the highlight of the day was Edison’s birthday cake. No, it wasn’t his birthday, but for Edison’s first five birthdays his family didn’t have the funds for a birthday cake. So on that day, Compassion sponsored Edison’s very first birthday cake!

We encouraged him to “go for it,” but Edison wanted us to slice the cake up for everyone to enjoy.

When we returned to the center, a little girl named Paula waited anxiously for one of the families on the trip – her sponsor family. She was shy, but excited about the meeting. Her sponsor family greeted her with open arms and grins from ear to ear, but what really broke the ice were the gifts.

The family unveiled (among other things) a “Dora the Explorer” blanket. Paula loved Dora.

From that point on hugs, smiles and tears of joy were shared by everyone in the room. To think, this is just the start of years of support.

The last center we visited (Jesus Rey de Reyes Student Center) was located in Otavalo. Here we met Jessica and her family and spent much of the afternoon doing typical tasks around their home.

A few of the members on the trip tried their hand at picking corn. Others worked the wool that the family used in weaving belts that were sold at the market. Some of the most brilliant colors and intricate weaving I’ve ever seen!

On the flight home, I realized how thankful I am. I am thankful for an organization like Compassion whose sole purpose is to release children from poverty.

I am thankful that kids like Edison, Paula, Jessica and my cousin can be given hope in places where there may be no hope. And I am thankful that I, the son of a poor farmer’s daughter, get to share the story of kids growing up in his own mother’s shoes and sharing them through photography.

Holistic child development has four aspects: physical, socio-emotional, economic and spiritual, and there are different issues that we have to grapple with when applying our child development model to the child survival and child sponsorship programs.

This is what holistic child development looks like in eastern India. (more…)

The Child Survival Program in a tiny village in India may not be vastly different from hundreds of other Compassion centers around the world, but to this community it is a powerful, unique and tangible demonstration of God’s provision and an essential lifeline for mothers and their children.

Villagers speak the Bhil language, which has no written form. They are classified as tribals by the government. They remain close-knit and marry only within their community. They worship animistic spirits and believe sickness represents the spirits’ anger toward the people. Major illnesses are ignored by the family, and the sick family member is left to die without any medical help. But many ailments are simply the result of insufficient food and malnutrition.

The village is a primitive agricultural community with no clean water, no sanitation, no electricity, no streets, no medical facilities and no modern transportation. Abuse of arrack, their home-made alcohol, is commonplace. Understanding and practicing hygiene is absent from local customs. To discourage theft, a family’s animals are brought indoors at night to share the living quarters, contributing to a dangerous health environment for the entire family.

Yet in this desperate corner of India, God is moving through the Child Survival Program. Program workers take the village women to a nearby hospital for regular prenatal and postnatal medical checkups. Most pregnant women in the project are anemic and underweight, so the program additionally provides iron tablets, tonics and calcium tablets, and pays the medical expenses.

Hepshiben Parmar, the Child Survival Program coordinator, elaborates on their duties.

“Twice in a month we monitor the growth of fetus as well as the development of children. I am a qualified nurse and Mrs. Swetha, our Implementer, a qualified nurse trained to check the fetal heartbeat. If we find any variation from the normal level, immediately we take the mother to the hospital for further treatment. In spite of this, some miscarriages have taken place because pregnant women are forced to do heavy work in the fields.”

Demonstrating the powerful love of God by serving the village families is the heart of the Child Survival Program’s mission.

“We pray before food distribution. When we go on a house visit we pray for the respective child. We teach them the importance of the true God and knowing God personally. We teach them how the love of God leads us to help others.

“The Child Survival Program deals with the most difficult and sensitive issues in this tribal area where many social evils are still rampant. In a community where giving birth to a girl child is considered a bane and where child care is negligent and taken for granted, the Child Survival Program’s role is laudable and paving a way for healthy living and a prosperous community.”

Being a mother takes courage. Being an expectant mother in desperate poverty takes courage and so much more.

Each year more than 500,000 mothers die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications, most of which are preventable. The babies who survive while their mothers die are much more likely to die in their first year of life.

Facts About Child Survival

• About half of all deaths of children younger than 5 are caused by malnutrition.
• Brain development starts five weeks after conception and is most affected by nutrition between mid-gestation and 2 years of age.
• Four million babies die each year in their first month of life. Half of these babies die in the first 24 hours of life.

Our Child Survival Program strives to reduce the troubling mortality statistics. (more…)

After passing by a hazy eastern tip of Cuba, our American Airlines flight banked steeply to the right and within minutes we were passing over the northern peninsula of Haiti, so recognizable due to the heavily rutted landscape.

The French had not been kind when they ravaged the once-lush western half of Hispaniola of all the mahogany trees and shipped the lumber back to Paris to make fine furniture.

More than 200 years later, the nation is still 90 percent barren, and what little good topsoil remains is eroding into the Caribbean.

We circled over the Canal du Sud strait approaching Port-au-Prince, a teeming city I had not been to in 19 years. As we touched down on the single runway “international” airport, memories began to take focus.

Child Survival – What Does Ti Chape Means?

I’ll never forget that trip. A wiry American with a unique accent was my guide. He had been living in Haiti for six years, assisting with various ministries, and eventually signing on full time with Compassion. His name was Wess Stafford.

It was on that trip that I snapped one of my all-time favorite photos: a little child of about 3 with a distended belly, wearing a ragged striped T-shirt and nothing else, proudly hoisting his torn little handmade kite on a 10-foot string made of scraps of twine and wire he had found.

The breeze was only keeping the kite about 5 feet aloft, but the boy was as gleeful as any child I had ever seen.

Wess was seated next to me in our van, and noticed my fascination with the tiny urchin.

“Ah, yes … another little Ti Chape.”

“What is a Ti Chape?”

“It’s a Creole phrase that many parents in these poorest areas of Haiti use with their youngest kids. I’m sure you’ll hear it often over the next several days as we visit homes. It’s a term of endearment … but also a harsh reality that reminds everyone of how devastating each day can be for people living on the brink. Ti Chape means little survivor or one who has escaped death.”

As a very tenderhearted man, Wess could not conceal his passion, and tears began to well in his eyes. With a catch in his throat he continued:

“Sadly, for the majority of the poor here in Haiti, the infant mortality rate is as high as 50 percent for children under the age of 5.

“Often parents won’t refer to their littlest ones by their birth name until they celebrate their fifth birthday because they know all too well that many of them won’t make it that far.

“While they are still in this most vulnerable toddler stage, the children are affectionately called Ti Chape.

“I guess it is often too painful to consistently call them by their real names for fear of assigning too much hope to their prospects.

“This same phenomena happens, by different names of course, in other desperately poor cultures around the globe.”

I watched intently for a few more minutes as that toddler joyfully tried to keep his tattered toy buoyant on the air. Then we lurched forward in the traffic flow.

For the rest of our stay I pondered what that child’s chances of survival really were.

Even now, whenever I look at that tyke’s photo in my collection, it gives me great pause, and those feelings all came back to me as we drove through the packed streets of Port-au-Prince again.

On the trip’s final day, we drove out the N2 highway along the southern Massif de la Hotte peninsula, weaving past colorfully painted tap-taps (old pickups converted into buses often over-loaded down with upward of 20 people), soot-spewing diesel trucks, and U.N. troop patrol vehicles that help keep the peace in the politically unstable environment.

We were headed out to see one of our child development centers — one that had been in existence for 23 years, but had added a new program just a few years before, a program that is helping revolutionize our work: our Child Survival Program. (more…)