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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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

Stan Walker, Australia’s 2009 Idol winner, came to Colorado Springs after his recent trip to Haiti with Compassion Australia. He shared about his faith journey, his experience on Australian Idol and his time in Haiti.

After the interview ended, Stan sang several songs for us, which we didn’t include in the video above because copyright restrictions prevent us.

However, the video below gives you an idea of what we got to experience. “Amazing Grace” was the last song Stan sang for us. It’s powerful! Particularly when you know his story.

Going forward, it’s our intention to regularly share our chapel messages on the blog. But to give you as much flexibility as possible, we’ve also created an audio podcast of our chapel messages, which you can subscribe to via iTunes. Hope you enjoy them.

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

Nevertheless, they eagerly counted down the days . . . I too was keen for the FAST to be over! Skipping a meal a day hurt.

The FAST has come to an end, but despite having to experience the pain of self-imposed deprivation, God’s given me a spiritual FEAST! So far I’ve experienced moments of intense hunger and vulnerability, yet contrasted by immense joy and freedom. I cannot tell you enough about the good things He’s done in me and revealed to me over the past month!

The hunger pangs have given me a glimpse of what our precious friends living in destitution experience day in, day out. They’ve also reminded me of how lucky I am to be hungry by choice and not due to personal circumstances. I–AM–BLESSED!

Another thing I’ve been challenged by is to give more of myself . . . not out of my budget, but out of my heavenly inheritance. So I’ve been meditating on Luke 12:32-34. I found The Message version easy to relate to:

“What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself. 

“Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bank robbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.”

Enough said!

While I’ve yet to fully discover what my heavenly inheritance entails, I know that it comes from a good and kind God who is love Himself . . . a God who does not change and cannot deny Himself (of His goodness, kindness, grace etc.).

I’m convinced that rather than struggle with the recurring tension within me to give sacrificially, by focusing on how unchangingly good He is, and His continuous goodness towards me, I would learn to give as He does. Surely, it is by focusing on the ways of the Kingdom that we’d learn to live on earth as it is in Heaven . . . .

I wonder whether the offering of an average Joe (be it the equivalent of a basket of fish and bread) would be given in faith by everyone across the earth, so that I would live to see a miracle – the end of starvation?

P.S. I set up a Facebook event for FAST for FOOD. Some people commented on the event wall about the timing of the campaign. So I wanted to clarify my thoughts:

If the idea of FAST for FOOD has captured your attention, you can participate in the campaign (with your friends and family) at a time of your choosing.

• The videos
• The prayer calendar (347 KB PDF)
• The poster (460 KB PDF)
• And the PowerPoint presentation (3,465 KB PPT)

have been created without a specific beginning or end date.

Besides, the Global Food Crisis continues . . . . 

– Irene Kao

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And this is his sister, Gracia. She was the second child registered by Compassion Togo.

They don’t have sponsors yet. And neither do these Togolese children.

If you:

• sponsor a child from Togo between now and December 31
• AND you sign up for automatic credit card payments
• we’ll send* you a really keen pocket-sized, leather NIV Bible with the Compassion logo on it

If you want to sponsor David or Gracia, you’ll have to talk to Compassion Australia about that. Give ‘em a call.

These Togolese children are also available for sponsorship through Compassion Australia. They’d love sponsors too.

*Please allow two to three weeks for your Bible to be delivered. The free Bible is available to children sponsored through Compassion U.S. only.

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

If you drink at least a cup of coffee a day, the thought of fasting from coffee is probably pretty painful. But we weighed up the facts:

• Firstly, it’s something they could live without . . . albeit sacrificially. For the first week of the fast, they had massive headaches and their bodies screamed for coffee 24-7. I felt their pain.
• Secondly, a cup of coffee costs more than what some of the materially poor earn in an entire day. So the money we save as a part of the fast is then donated towards the Global Food Crisis fund.

We’re almost three weeks into the campaign and my colleagues have honored their commitment — not a single drop of coffee. They’ve also resigned themselves to the fact that it is still a luxury they would like to enjoy after FAST for FOOD.

Still, I respect their choice to wean from something that’s become a part of their daily lives, and that they choose to hunger for God when their bodies beg for caffeine. Although, I’ve found that the reward of abiding in Him is truly incredible. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” — Matthew 5:6 (NIV)

The Message phrases “hunger and thirst for righteousness” as to “[work] up a good appetite for God.” Clearly, our appetite for God doesn’t develop in the same way that our body naturally hungers and thirsts for food and drink. We need to make the decision to work it up.

The Amplified Bible defines righteousness as “uprightness and right standing with God.” Therefore, righteousness is a position where we know we are right with God. He promises to bless us if we seek to be right with Him in whatever circumstance we’re in.

Not only this, if we choose to focus on who He is rather than our circumstances, we would be “filled” (NIV). In other words we would be “blessed and fortunate and happy and spiritually prosperous” (AMP<). 

No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, the principle to becoming "filled" remains the same. Like Apostle Paul, we could be content whether we live in plenty or in want (Philippians 4:12). But it is by choosing to seek a person rather than a thing that we learn contentment. Surely, when we’re filled with Him we’d be in a better place to give and bless those suffering in the Global Food Crisis, just as He fills us.

Ah, the joy of simple faith.

Irene Kao

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

The thing is, I’ve always tried to avoid challenging my friends and family to be more engaged with my personal passions. I’ve tried not to impose my personal convictions upon them (after all, each to their own, right?) But perhaps I haven’t pushed the envelope enough, because all along I’d secretly hoped that they‘d be more than interested (in my passions) for my sake. I’d hope for them to ask questions and come to their own convictions about making a positive, lasting difference in the lives of others. 

But over the past few weeks, I’ve learnt that there are many others like my beautiful friend who would like to be offered an opportunity to respond. I’m amazed at how, by simply sharing my heart, I’ve invited others to search their own, and respond to what’s on theirs.

Over 2,400 children have been sponsored through the 10,000 Children campaign. 

We didn’t reach 10,000 sponsorships in 10 days, but over 10,000 eyes and ears have seen and heard the desperate cry of the children in poverty. 

We didn’t reach 2,400 sponsorships within 10 days, but we saw a record number of children sponsored through a single event. 

By trusting our Lord throughout the 10,000 Children campaign, our faith has been stretched, our hearts have been expanded, and our praises to Him multiplied. 

Janine, our national prayer director, also saw the 10,000 Children campaign as an impetus for a boundary shift in our faith.

It is a time that God is encouraging his people to dream big. In all areas of our lives and ministries, if we make room for the miraculous in our life, He will come. I believe we stretched the tent pegs and prayed with faith for God to increase our influence. We were blessed.

I can’t wait to hear the stories of these newly sponsored children and the impact their sponsorships will have in their families and wider communities. As a result of over 2,400 child sponsorships, over 10,000 lives can be transformed into a Christ-like image. Can you imagine what that looks like? 

To Josh, our events & partner artist manager, the hard work is all worthwhile because of the lives that are now linked to our Creator. Josh paints a picture of a Compassion church partnership and what 2,400 sponsored children means to him:

I recently returned home from a trip to see Compassion’s work in Bali, Indonesia.

In Bali, the team and I travelled to a remote mountainous village called Munduk. While I was there I spoke with the local church pastor who had been spreading the gospel there for over 20 years. He explained to me that one of the most significant things the church had ever done was to partner with Compassion in establishing a child development center to help over 140 children from their village.

I watched that afternoon as the impoverished village children streamed into the project and were given tuition, food for lunch, and taught to sing and dance. I was struck by the immense love displayed by the church pastor and project staff towards each individual child. I was blessed with the opportunity to see the fruit of what was accomplished at this year’s Hillsong Conference.

Hillsong Conference for me is not as much about the logistical preparations, the crowds, the final results, (as it is about) the one child, who is linked to the local church and introduced to their Creator.

Even though it has been an insane few weeks for some of our staff members before and after the conference, we continue to celebrate before God.

For Kaye, the manager of our supporter engagement center, the 10,000 Children campaign was a reminder that “with God all things are possible”. She extols Paul’s instruction to the church in Ephesus: “Convince them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” – 1 Timothy 6:18 (NIV)

Throughout the event my own faith was increased by responding to the phone calls we received into our Engagement Centre immediately following and during the conference, we heard many stories of people whose lives were greatly impacted by the sacrifices they were willing to make in their own lives in order to change the life of a child.

One sponsor told us that not even two hours after he had made the decision to sponsor another child, God performed a miracle in his own life. He said that “sponsoring a child unlocked something in my life that gave way to a miracle.”

Love in action unleashes the miraculous. But we do not love in order to bring about signs and wonders. We love because God loved us first. Our natural response is to love Him and love others. When we reach out in love, we reveal Christ and release His power and authority on earth. When we reveal Christ in us, we share in His glory; we see transformation in our own lives and in others.

Irene

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

Have you ever wondered how your sponsored child’s letter gets to you? The long journey it takes from Tanzania or Thailand to Connecticut or California? There’s a lot more to it than you might think!

Samuel Llanes, Guatemala’s Field Communication Specialist, gives us a peek at the journey of one letter from Guatemala to a sponsor in Australia. (Did you know that Compassion International has sponsors all over the world from Australia to France to South Korea?)

Pamela, a little girl sponsored by a married couple in Australia, says, “I love writing letters to them! When I write my letter, I wish I was right there with my sponsors.”

She has received two letters in the two years she has been sponsored, and she keeps them safely at home. She knows who they are and what they do, and she prays for them before bedtime each night.

When Pamela receives a letter, it has gone through a long journey. First the letter is sent from Australia to the Compassion International field office in Guatemala. Each country Compassion works in has its own field office. The letter must then be translated into Spanish for Pamela to understand.

“Translating is such a blessing to me,” says Julia Zepeda, a pastor’s wife and translator who has been working for Compassion International Guatemala for eight years. “I have taken this as a ministry that helps children, and I know is worth it.”

The translators are given one week to complete all the translations once they’re given a group of letters. The average number of letters that must be translated a week in Guatemala is usually around 180 to 200! After translating, the letters are brought to the student centers where they are distributed to the children. Receiving a letter is a special moment for children — they know that someone out there cares about them and is praying about them.

Letter Day
“Letter day” happens every four months. Pamela, along with all the other children at her Guatemala City student center, writes a letter every four months, though her sponsors may not write her that often.

When Pamela writes her letters, she uses a notebook to write a first draft. She does not want to miss anything that her sponsors asked her in their letter. Pamela’s tutor reads her sponsors’ letter to her, and as it is read, Pamela answers all the questions they asked. If they have sent something special, like stickers, she makes sure to thank them. Then once she has decided what her letter will say, she writes out her final draft.

Letter Day is an exciting day. The student center celebrates all the children for their efforts in writing letters on Letter Day. They give prizes to celebrate every child — and sometimes they even have a clown and piñatas!

Once Pamela’s letter is written, she gets to take her letter from her sponsors home, which she gets very excited for.

On Its Way
Once Pamela’s letter and all the other letters are written, they are brought to the Guatemala field office and translated into English. The packages of translated letters are then labeled and sent to be processed at Compassion International’s Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The children’s letters are sent from Guatemala to Colorado once a week.

Each week, child letters arrive in large boxes in Colorado Springs from all over the world to be tracked and sent on their way.

First, the letters are sorted by where the sponsors are from. All the letters going to U.S. sponsors are grouped together, all the letters going to the United Kingdom are grouped together, and so on.

Each letter is then scanned into a database, using the barcode at the top of each child’s letter, so Compassion can track all of the letters that are sent.

Once all the letters have been recorded in the database, they are bound together according to the letter’s destination country, and shipped out every Tuesday.

So the letters that our sponsored children write to us have been through a long process, passing from one hand to another until they arrive in your mailbox in that envelope saying, “A Message From Your Sponsored Child.”

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