Longstanding agreements with other villages limited the sources where each community could draw water. For the villagers of Meagama, accessing water meant a two-hour journey on foot. Because they usually used a bucket to transport their water, obtaining enough water to meet their needs often required several trips.

But the difficulties didn’t stop there; the water the Meagama people put so much effort into getting actually caused them harm.

People often got diarrhea and other digestive problems whenever they drank the water. They also suffered skin diseases because of the poor quality of the water.

Sick people would go to the doctor and get better, but inevitably they would become ill again when they drank the water. But the people from Meagama had no other choice but to drink the water because they had no other source of water.

After years of struggling to get fresh water, the conditions in Meagama have changed. Since Gunung Susu Student Center opened in Meagama Village in 2009, the entire community has benefited from the addition of a water project at the church.

Like other people who come to the church to get water for their daily needs, Delia is very happy because she no longer has to work so hard to find water. She only needs to go to the church.

And other villagers wash their crops at the church before they cook them, instead of bringing their crops to the river, which is quite far away.

People in Meagama Village can take a bath every day. Children can go to the church in the morning and take a bath before they do their chores or go to school. They can drink clean water without having to filter it again, and they can take as much as they need.

Before this, people didn’t bathe or wash their clothes every day because of their limited water supply. They had to be wise in water usage and give priority to their primary needs, like cooking meals. They only used water for drinking, never for washing anything, so it was rare for them to change or wash their clothes.

The villagers would only clean their bodies if they went to the river. These habits also likely contributed to the frequency of skin disease, diarrhea and other stomach illnesses.

Delia, the mother of a sponsored child, is very thankful because the water project has made a great difference for her family. Before it opened, if Delia’s family needed three or four gallons of water for the day, she had to manage her time so she could travel to the river several times. She had to go early to get water in the morning and then go back later to get more water for the rest of the day’s needs.

And Iperina, a citizens of Meagama, also is thankful for the water project. Even though she and her family are among the beneficiaries who receive support directly from the child development center, the water at the church has affected her life too.

“I am very thankful the water project was established in our village. It is very helpful and enables the community to have new lifestyle.”

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

How do you say goodbye to a sponsored child who has died? Have you ever had to do that, or to say goodbye to another child in your life?

As with many things, there’s often the thought, “Oh, that won’t happen to me. That sort of stuff only happens to other people.” Then the world shook in Haiti and changed our perspective.

But children don’t just die or get injured in earthquakes. They die from malaria and AIDS. They die from diarrhea and other preventable causes. They die in childbirth and in accidents. And when they die it’s, well, it’s like this:

I can’t explain how one comes to love a child who they hardly know. But I can say that I felt like Akouvi was part of my family. I loved her. And so often in her letters, she told me that she loved me too.

I don’t think I understood the depth of my love for her until February 23. That’s the day that I found out Akouvi had died. That’s the day I felt like something had cracked open inside of me, filling me with red-hot grief. Sadness that burned so fiercely that even my tears could not extinguish it.

Read the entire post.

I found myself very distracted the day we heard of his death. I wondered how his family is coping. I wondered what kind of ceremony they would have in Tanzania to remember such a precious child. I wondered if his family realized that his sponsor family was at a loss over what to do.

Read the entire post.

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

Because they live in poor countries that aren’t a priority to developed nations. But they’re still a priority to God.

And they can be yours, too – compassion.com/youcan

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

But for whatever reason, one morning last month I woke up early – too early in my opinion, and I could not fall back asleep.

“Might as well get up,” I thought. So, I got a shower in and, wouldn’t you know, not 10 minutes after I stepped out, I hear a loud “CHUG CHUG CHUG!” coming from my cellar.

I ignored it (mainly because I don’t like going into the cellar) and went to brush my teeth. No water.

CHUG CHUG CHUG.

Great.

After mustering up my courage, I ventured down into the cellar where I could hear the pump or softener making a loud racket.

Now, I’m not a Mrs. Fix-It by any means, but I did know that I should probably turn off the breaker so whatever it was wouldn’t burn out. (Pat myself on the back …)

My husband told me to call the plumber, and thankfully by 3:30 that afternoon, the plumber had dug up our well and found that the iron in the water had corroded part of the well pump pipe (or something like that), which caused the pump to stop pumping the water up.

Purely maintenance, but I was happy the problem was solved. To a degree anyway.

I was informed that I was not to use the water for a couple days so that the filter could go through a few cycles to clean the water.

“Roughly 12 percent of the world’s population, or 884 million people, do not have access to safe water.”

“Yeah, okay, no problem,” I thought, but I soon realized that I use water for way more things than I thought:

• brushing my teeth
• taking a bath or shower (which I had to chuckle at, because God made sure I was up before this little event happened … am I that bad before I shower?)

• rinsing off the dishes
• running the dishwasher
• running the washing machine
• cooking

• ice
• flushing the toilet – which was okay to do after they fixed the pump, the water was just a murky gray.
• washing my hands

“Diarrheal diseases can be reduced by more than 40 percent through the simple practice of washing hands with soap and water.”

“The average person in the developing world uses a little more than 2.5 gallons of water each day for drinking, washing and cooking. Whereas the average person in the developed world uses 13 gallons per day only for toilet flushing. “

My water problem lasted only a few days and just required some simple adjustments to our lifestyle. My husband picked up several gallons of water on his way home from work, which allowed us to continue in a fashion pretty close to normal. But as I waited for him to get home with the water, I stood in my house – and I broke down.

What about my sponsored children?

Where do they get their water?

How far do they have to travel?

Is it clean?

“Water-related diseases are the second biggest killer of children worldwide. This is around 5,000 deaths a day.”

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

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.

Child Survival Program Mission

The mission of our Child Survival Program is:

To rescue infants at risk of dying by providing nutritional information to the pregnant mothers, assisting in the birth, and providing prenatal and postnatal health care and nutrition assistance.

Since infant mortality is extremely high in the developing world, our first priority in promoting effective child development is to ensure that children survive the early years when they are most vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. That means educating the mother or primary caregiver, before and after her child is born, about providing critical care during the earliest years.

Our Child Survival Program provides:

• prenatal care and infant survival training for mothers and caregivers, as well as spiritual guidance and education, such as literacy and income-generation training
• ongoing health screenings and immunizations for the children
• child development training for mother’s of children under 4

We have adopted a strategy (GOBI-FFF), developed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, to ensure that we address all the issues affecting immediate child survival and children through the first years of life.

GOBI-FFF is an acronym for:

• growth monitoring
• oral rehydration therapy
• breast-feeding
• immunization
• female literacy
• food supplements
• family spacing

Child Survival vs. Child Mortality

The underlying and structural causes of child mortality include:

• poorly resourced, unresponsive and culturally inappropriate health and nutrition services
• lack of food
• inadequate feeding practices
• lack of hygiene and safe water or sanitation
• female illiteracy
• early pregnancy

Basic health interventions such as breast-feeding, immunization, insecticide-treated mosquito nets and vitamin A supplements are highly successful in lowering a child’s risk of death. And according to the World Bank, immunization and vitamin A supplementation are two of the most cost-effective health interventions available today.

Child Survival Program: How It Works

Our local church partners carry out this ministry and contextualize the program to each situation individually and culturally. The church provides the critical interventions such as nutritious food and medical assistance.

Ultimately, success is based on building open and trusting relationships with the mothers and caregivers, so our church partners invite the mothers and caregivers to get involved in a loving, supportive community. The mothers and caregivers learn how to create a safe home environment and provide the essential developmental opportunities needed to raise happy, healthy children with bright futures.

The families also receive spiritual discipling so they can develop a dynamic lifelong relationship with Christ. Children are stronger, caregivers are more confident, and families and communities benefit from their newly discovered physical, emotional and spiritual strength.

The Child Survival Program is a one-to-one home-based program in which Survival Specialists from the church visit homes and educate mothers in the child’s own environment. There, the actual needs of the baby, mother, family and community will be known, seen and met accordingly.

The program is primarily home-based so we can address the immediate needs of the baby and mother.

When you get into a community and find that most children are malnourished, the best way to get to the root cause of this problem is to visit families in the community.

During the visits, we see and learn what the children are fed and why. We observe the cultural reasons for certain practices, and come up with an action plan from a knowledgeable perspective.

In home visits, mothers learn about parenting practices, including hygiene and nutrition, using locally available foods. Only during home visits can we assess whether what we have been teaching has been put into practice.

Home visits create one-to-one relationships where mothers can open up and share their innermost fears, problems and needs.

Support a Child Survival Program

Sources:

• The State of the World’s Children 2009: Maternal and Newborn Health – UNICEF
• Better Brains for Babies – University of Georgia
• Zero to Three – National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families

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

The African child is a resilient one, as many on the African continent must gather up great energy each day just to survive. The constant onslaught of risks and dangers that they face is more than many of us can imagine and more than any child should bear. HIV, AIDS, malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition…..just a few of the barriers that these children must overcome to live healthy and fulfilling lives.

After having spent a good deal of time living and traveling to Africa, I have been amazed and incredibly blessed by being around these children. They have taught me more than any textbook could, and have given me strength when I needed it most.

Here’s to the millions of children in Africa that could use our prayers and support as they continue to face the harshest of environments.

Let’s commit to remembering them and praying for the continued success of this ministry that seeks to serve them and bring them out of their poverty.

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

Yep! A magnet. Can we get get a “Woot! Woot!” for Judy?

Now, without further ado, here is your answer key.

Answer: Six. More than 9 million children under age 5 die every year, and malnutrition accounts for more than one-third of these deaths. Most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

(Source: www.unicef.org, November 2008)

2. Question: True or False – One-third of the children in developing countries live in poverty.

Answer: True. Of the 1.8 billion children in developing countries, 600 million of them live on less than U.S. $1 a day.

(Source: www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html, November 2008)

3. Question: True or False – In reducing the rate of sickness and death from diarrhea, the supply of adequate quantities of water is more important than improving its quality.

Answer: True. The organisms that cause diarrhea can be spread through many routes besides drinking water; increased quantities of water can improve household and personal hygiene, which prevents the spread of disease.

Each year about 1.7 million deaths related to dehydration caused by diarrhea occur in children under age 5.

(Sources: www.cdc.gov; http://rehydrate.org/, November 2008)

4. Question: Which one of the following is NOT one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals?

• Achieve universal primary education
• Ensure environmental stability
• Provide worldwide access to safe water
• Develop a global partnership for development

Answer: Provide worldwide access to safe water

The Millennium Development Goals were created to develop a concrete action plan for the world to reverse poverty, hunger and disease affecting billions of people. The other five goals are:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Learn more about the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.

5. Question: True or False – Life expectancy in the world’s poorest countries is about one-third lower than that in the high-income world.

Answer: True. Life expectancy in the least developed countries averages 55 years, as compared with 79 years in industrialized countries.

In fact, in most of Africa, average life expectancy is only 50 years.

At any given time, close to half of all people in developing countries suffer from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.

For people in the the developing world, illness, job loss, drought or even pregnancy can mean the difference between life and death.

(Sources: www.unicef.org; www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats, November 2008)

6. Question: What is the definition of extreme poverty?

Answer: Living on less than $1 a day. One in six people around the world lives in extreme poverty.

(Sources: www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html)

7. Question: Which of the following statements about children in the developing world are true?

• 1 in 3 children does not have adequate
  shelter.
• 1 in 5 children does not have access to
  safe water.
• 1 in 7 children does not have access to
  health care.
• All of the above.

Answer: All of the above. Along with malnutrition, these mostly preventable causes are leading contributors to the millions of child deaths each year.

(Source: www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats, November 2008)

8. Question: True or False – The majority of the world’s chronically undernourished people live in Africa.

Answer: False. Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.

Despite the food production rate being better than the population growth rate, there is still desperate hunger in many parts of the world.

(Sources: World Resources Institute, “Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems” (February 2001); www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-andstats, November 2008)

9. Question: What percentage of the world’s population growth occurs in developing countries?

Answer: 95 percent.

Currently, the world’s population totals more than 6.7 billion and grows at an average rate of around 80 million persons per year.

Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, three regions of the world made up of mostly developing countries, account for most of the world’s increasing population.

(Sources: www.worldfactbook.org; www.census.gov, November 2008)

10. Question: What is the United Nations’ deadline for meeting the Millennium Development Goals?

Answer: 2015. The Millennium Project is working with individual countries to help identify and address specific needs, such as access to health clinics, immunizations, teachers, roads and water pumps.

Developed countries have committed to provide increased funding to help reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

(Source: www.undp.org/mdg)

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

That lesson hit me hard this week when my 11-month-old son, Morgan, got sick.  His doctor tells us that it’s a gastrointestinal virus that’s going around. The worst part of it is diarrhea. Poor little guy, he’s just so uncomfortable. So, we’ve been giving him plenty of fluids, trying to get him to take naps (though he’s been extremely restless) and just loving on him…cuddling.

Then I remembered a statistic in our Health Quick Facts section of Compassion’s website: 

There are 1.5 million diarrhea-related deaths of children under the age of five in this world, every year.

1,500,000 children dying of what my little boy has right now.

My son is fortunate. We can afford to take him to the doctor. We have access to clean water and formulas that can help replenish the nutrients his body needs. And I am thankful to God for that. But I pray for those families who don’t have the same. I pray for those who, because of latitude and longitude, have no access to clean water and formula…or can’t afford to visit the doctor.

It’s not really fair, is it? We were born here, so we thrive. They were born there, so they struggle to survive. But poverty has never played fair. And God told us what the great equalizer is: YOU and ME. He called for those of us who have to share with those who do not.

Today, I ask you to pray for children in poverty. I ask you to cross the lines of longitude and latitude and give to those who suffer due to something as silly as geography. Maybe it’s through sponsoring a child. Or maybe it’s giving to one of Compassion’s funds designed to help those in need.

Whatever it is, find a way for your hope to cross the globe.

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