Back in February, you, our fantastic friends, helped us win
the MySpace Impact Award. (This blog was just taking baby steps then, so
unless you were our friends on MySpace or Facebook, you might not have
heard our cheering.)

Well guess what? Another organization, The Love Alliance, has recently won
the MySpace Impact Award. (Congratulations, TLA!) And here’s the cool part
… TLA has chosen to use part of their award to buy mosquito nets through
our Malaria Intervention Fund.

The Love Alliance was started by a couple in Florida who have a heart for
social justice and want to raise awareness about issues and empower people
to take action. Seems they have a special place in their hearts for
Compassion. (Sigh … )

So first, to The Love Alliance and all those who voted for them, we’d like
to say thank you!

And second, when you have a few moments, visit The Love Alliance Web site
and find out what they’re all about.

You decided. The Global Food Crisis Fund ’tis.

Thank you for voting. Thank you for caring. And an extra special thanks to:

• Lisa Miles
• Amy
• Kate
• Juli Jarvis
• Vicki Small
• Andrew
• Grant

for making additional contributions to the Malaria Intervention Fund ($350) and the Global Food Crisis Fund ($50).

You helped us earn it. Now, help us spend it.

Where should the $817.40 donation from Search Kindly be applied?

• Global Food Crisis Fund
• Malaria Intervention Fund

Global Food Crisis Fund
The global food crisis is being called a “silent tsunami” that could plunge several hundred million people deeper into poverty and hunger.

Families living in extreme poverty often spend more than 50 percent of their income on food. And often, the daily income is less than $2 a day. When food prices climb, children in poverty do not eat. Food prices have risen as much as 100 percent in some countries since 2006. Many of the countries we serve are among those that have been hit hard by rising food prices.

Money donated to the Global Food Crisis Fund will help provide life saving food supplies to the children you sponsor.

Malaria Intervention Fund
Each year, more than 1 million people die from malaria. More than 750,000 of those deaths are children in Africa. That’s one child every 30 seconds. And for every child who dies, hundreds more become sick and incapacitated. Though not talked about as much as AIDS, malaria is a silent, fast killer that puts all children and families we serve in Africa at serious risk. And thousands more people in countries where we work around the world live in fear of the disease.

Money donated to the Malaria Intervention Fund allows us to provide mosquito nets and malaria prevention education to entire families of Compassion-assisted children. It also provides medical treatment for children struggling with the disease.

In case you missed our live malaria intervention webcast on World Malaria Day, here it is. Learn at your leisure.

One of the things that shocked me when I visited Uganda last month was finding myself scared to death of mosquitoes. It was the strangest feeling to be afraid of something so small — something we usually think of as just a pest. But in Africa mosquito bites don’t just make your arm itch — they kill.

Malaria, which is transmitted by infected mosquitoes, is killing one million people a year. Most of these are children under age 5 in Africa. That’s right. Malaria, which is preventable and treatable, is killing more than 750,000 children a year in Africa.

Before visiting Uganda, I never really understood how mosquitoes managed to claim so many lives. But when I visited homes there, I understood. Many of the houses don’t have doors — just sheets covering the openings. And the windows are usually bare, too. So at night, the mosquitoes help themselves.

Catherine, a single mother I met in Uganda, told me that before Compassion gave her an insecticide-treated mosquito net, she did everything she could to protect her 10-year-old daughter, Irene. But her efforts were in vain.

“Every night, I tried to cover Irene with a blanket, but she would still get bitten all night long,” said Catherine. “I wanted so badly to buy her a net, but I couldn’t afford it.”

And when Irene got malaria, Catherine certainly couldn’t afford doctors’ bills. “Before Compassion, I would go pleading to doctors for help and beg to pay later,” she said.

Thank God that Compassion intervened! Through the ministry’s Complementary Interventions Program, Irene is now getting medicine and sleeps under a quality net. Today, she’s healthy and thriving.

You can make a difference and help protect vulnerable children like Irene! Since today is World Malaria Day, take a minute to learn more about this disease and see how you can join the fight!

View a slideshow highlighting how Compassion is fighting malaria in Rwanda.

My son, Morgan, turns one year old tomorrow. I can’t believe it. Over the past few months, we’ve been making changes around the house to protect him. Cabinets are locked to keep him away from anything that could do him harm. A gate blocks his access to the stairs. Potentially dangerous items have been moved out of reach. Electrical outlets have been covered.

They call it “child-proofing” your home. Which is actually kind of a backwards way of looking at it. You’re not protecting your house from children…you’re protecting children from your house. 

You can’t protect your children from every possible harm. But there are some things you can prevent. And it would be downright irresponsible of you to not do them.

If only we looked at our world the same way. What are we doing to “child-proof” our world to make it safer for our children? Surely, we’ve made great strides…but there’s so much more to be done.

• If only stopping child abuse was as simple as putting a gate at the entrance of a stairway.
• If only stopping child pornography was as easy as covering the electrical outlets.  
• If only making sure that a child never goes hungry was as simple as locking the cabinets. 

We may not be able to protect the children of the world from every danger. But there are some things we can do now. Take, for example, malaria. Here in the US, we “locked the cabinets” on that disease nearly 60 years ago. Still, malaria kills more people every year than AIDS. That’s why Compassion established its Malaria Intervention Fund. Our goal is to distribute insecticide treated nets to children who are in danger of dying because of something as small as a mosquito bite. To date, we’ve distributed over 178,000 nets. We hope to distribute another 300,000 over the next two years. It’s doable. It’s easy. It’s not even that expensive.

If our planet is our “home” then we’ve got to do a better job of ”child proofing” it. Malaria is one danger we can prevent now. I urge you to take part in protecting children from malaria. Visit Compassion’s Malaria Intervention page to learn how easy you can help bring an end to this horrible disease.