Whew!

This has been a busy year. Our world is in turmoil and much of that turmoil is affecting Compassion’s work.

Here’s a snapshot of the things I’ve reported over the past 11 months:

military rebellion, slum fire, dengue fever outbreak, H1N1 virus outbreak, flooding, strike, civil conflict, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heavy rains, political unrest, hotel bombings, protests and violence, typhoons, meningitis outbreak, polio outbreak, cholera outbreak, famine, landslide, tribal war, ferry sinking, riots.

As an organization entirely dependent on your trust, we have made a commitment to be honest and transparent in everything we do. This means, among other things, that we do our best to let you know as soon as possible when your child is affected by a crisis or disaster.

In a perfect world, here’s how the process would work:

• Within 24 hours of a crisis, our Field Communications Specialist (FCS) submits a crisis report via e-mail. This e-mail comes to an inbox that I check regularly.
• As soon as I receive this e-mail, I determine whether funds will need to be raised to provide relief, and summarize the report and e-mail it to our partner countries (the countries where the sponsors live).
• Meanwhile, the FCS is in contact with the Partnership Facilitators (PF), field-based staff members who are contacting our affected church partners.
• The FCS then submits a follow-up report via e-mail, with further details from the PFs about which centers are affected, how they are affected, and any other relevant details, photos or video.
• As soon as the church partners are able to provide specific information on registered children, the FCS e-mails that information to me. I do a quality check and then forward that information to the partner countries.
• Each partner country then contacts all the sponsors with affected children to let them know the status of their child.

Seems pretty cut and dried, right? And often, the process works exactly as I just described it.

However, as we all know, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes a disaster will wreak havoc on the field’s end, thus affecting our communications process.

Let’s take the recent typhoons in the Philippines as an example. (more…)

Embarrassing Fact: Each time I’m about to take a trip, I start humming “Leaving on a Jet Plane” all day long for at least a week before I go.

I’ve been planning a trip to Haiti for several months, and this small Caribbean country has gotten to me. I’ve studied up on the language — Bonswa! I’ve tried Haitian recipes and read stories of its people. I’ve even packed and repacked my suitcase, so excited am I to meet this culture face to face.

Well, all my bags are packed, but I’m not going anywhere. I was supposed to leave on April 12th, and I was hoping to pack you in my suitcase to experience Haiti with me through this blog, but the situation is too unstable to travel right now.

The Haitians are calling it Clorox and Battery Acid — a famine that leaves their mouths white and dry from hunger, like powdery Clorox, and leaves their intestines feeling like they are being slowly eaten by battery acid. Unlike many famines, though, there’s plenty of food on the store shelves in Haiti. The people just can’t afford it.

Because of inflated food prices over the past three months, the 80 percent of Haitians who live in extreme poverty are getting desperate. In January, it cost $2 for a bag of flour. Now it costs $3. It might not seem like a lot to us, but when you live on $1 a day, this 33 percent increase hurts. Thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets in the past week protesting, some holding signs saying “We’re Hungry.” Most are peaceful, but some are getting violent, burning tires and breaking car windows.

The good news is that no Compassion project activities have been affected, although each family is affected by the rising prices as they struggle to feed all their little mouths.

Would you join me in praying for Haiti?

• Pray that the Haitian government can effectively address the situation.
• Pray for the survival of those who are starving.
• Pray for the safety and the health of all the Compassion-assisted children, their families, and Compassion staff.

The trip I was going to attend was called “It Works,” a 5-year interval trip, on which we follow-up on the stories of sponsored children to find out if, indeed, sponsorship works. I hope to still travel to this needy country that has wheedled its way into my heart. I hope to hear the story of Yvette, a former sponsored child who is now a doctor, and of Jean Robert who five years ago was studying accounting through Compassion’s Leadership Development Program, and, of course, I hope to still see the faces of the precious children, who in a glance, despite poverty and beyond reason, remind us of what joy is.