Today’s guest blogger is Suellen Wenz, an editor in our creative agency. Suellen checks the accuracy of the content that appears on compassion.com and this blog, and one day when she was really busy, we asked if we could turn a research paper she wrote for graduate school into a blog post.

We’ve tried to “de-academicize” it for you … you know, “friendly” it up a bit … but when talking about cognitive dissonance a certain amount of “What?” is still going to slip through. So, here goes.

The issue of the relative wealth of Western Christians contrasted with the desperate poverty among citizens of developing countries is compelling. As an editor at Compassion International, I regularly see individual stories of extreme poverty and its effects — stories repeated in the lives of millions of children around the world.

More than 26,000 children under age of 5 die every day, mostly from preventable causes; a staggering 980 million people live on less than $1 a day (UNICEF stats). These statistics are almost too vast to comprehend. So how do we, who live comfortably in wealthy America and other Western nations, confront the extreme poverty of our brothers and sisters in poor countries around the world?

What do we do when faced with this reality, especially as Christians who hold to Christ’s teaching about caring for the poor?

Should it and does it bother us at all?

Why do we have all that we have, and why don’t they have anything? Are we conflicted over this? (more…)

Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers, doesn’t mention Compassion once. But it’s all about what Compassion does: We transform lives by giving children in poverty opportunities to succeed.

Outliers are men and women who do things out of the ordinary. And in the book Gladwell delves into what makes outliers successful.

Conventional wisdom says success comes from drive, skill and talent, which is true, but not by themselves. Drive, skill and talent aren’t worth a dime without opportunity. Success is a team sport.

“When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It’s because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances.” – Malcom Gladwell

Outliers looks at the success of geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars, athletes and software programmers. And the common denominator in all the examples of success Gladwell gives, the foundational bedrock in EVERY SINGLE CASE, is that an opportunity was made available – because of geography, timing, economics, circumstance, etc.

But you shouldn’t have to read Outliers to see that. You can keep reading this blog … because opportunity is what Compassion is all about.

• Lives Transformed
• Geography Lessons
• It’s About More Than Survival
• Leadership Development in the Dominican Republic
• Anthony Njoroge: a life changed by opportunity

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P.S. Outliers is a fun book to read. It’s quick and engaging. The stories are extremely interesting, and Gladwell is a smooth and persuasive storyteller. I enjoyed this book more than The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I liked.

Since November 2005, we have ministered in specialized ways to the needs of thousands of highly vulnerable children registered in church partner centers. We acknowledge that all children in our programs are vulnerable and face a certain degree of risk, some registered children face much greater risks than others.

Highly vulnerable children in our programs are those registered children who are at greatest risk of physical, psychological or social harm relative to the other registered children in the program.

Our Highly Vulnerable Children (HVC) initiative is therefore a targeted intervention, accessed through Complementary Intervention funds, that seeks to provide enough stability to the most vulnerable children to allow them to participate in the Child Sponsorship Program.

Prior to the HVC program being implemented in East Africa, we conducted a survey in all church partner programs worldwide, which revealed that tens of thousands of registered children have lost either one or both of their parents.

In some countries nearly half of these deaths are due to AIDS. Children are also at risk of abusive home environments, chronic illness, exploitation or extreme poverty. Whatever the cause, we recognize that for these children additional measures are necessary to protect and secure their well-being.

We currently utilize a wide range of approaches to respond to the needs of highly vulnerable children. From provision of nutritional support to children who do not have enough to eat, to reconstituting a family for those who have lost both parents and do not have a place to call home, each need is assessed thoroughly by local church partners and an appropriate response given. So far more than 10,000 children have been supported through the HVC initiative in East Africa alone.

Chantal, a 9-year-old girl from Rwanda, was one of the first recipients of the HVC program.

When she was selected as a beneficiary of the first Compassion cottage in Rwanda in March 2006, she and her elder sister Jackie had just lost both of their parents. They were living at the mercies of kind neighbors and strangers and on a daily basis moved from house to house seeking food and shelter for that night.

The risks and hardships that these two young children and many others in similar circumstances face everyday trying to make a living for themselves is unimaginable. It is for children such as Chantal and others living in such vulnerable conditions that the HVC initiative was designed.

The benefits of this initiative are already being seen and felt far and wide. As for Chantal, she is currently enjoying the warmth and protection of a new home, a new “mother” and new “brothers” and “sisters” in addition to her very own biological sister.

Impossible, one may think, and humanly speaking, a situation such as Chantal’s would have proved insurmountable. But thankfully, we serve a God who specializes in such impossibilities!

Please pray for the HVC program and the many children we assist who desperately need this additional assistance.

Benson wakes up at 6:00 a.m. every Saturday excited that he will see his friends and learn Bible lessons. On this particular Saturday, the children at his child development center learn a life-lesson, and child development director, Mercy, takes them through the devotion.

It’s chilly and the teacher starts the lesson. As drum beats fill the air, children fill with excitement — the right mood for a story.

Teacher Mercy starts,

“Once upon a time there were two buckets that hung by the Simenya Well. They kept on being drawn by the residents of Simenya. One late afternoon, tired with the day’s work, they took time to rest and spoke to each other.”

At this point Teacher Mercy coughs and holds two buckets as visual aid while pointing them to the children.

In the background, one hears a symphony of coughs and sneezes from the children because of the weather. Her “classroom” is outside.

She continues,

“One of the buckets was always grumbling. It never looked at life cheerfully. On this particular day, as it rested outside the well it said to the other bucket, ‘I am tired of the life we lead. However full we are when we are drawn up out of the well, we are sent back empty again. This makes me disappointed and dissatisfied.’

The second bucket looked at life differently. It did not grumble because it looked at the positive side of life. It said, ‘That’s true, but I always look at it this way — that however empty we are when we are set down, we are always full when draw up.’”

Teacher Mercy declares the end of the story, looks at the children, sees the cloudy skies, and whispers a prayer to God, “Please Lord, help us build classrooms to house these children.”

For the last three years, trees randomly placed in the Simenya Child Development Center church compound have been serving as “classrooms” for the children. Unfortunately the days can be nightmares for some of the children in the center, especially when they come to the wall-less classrooms, during extreme weather conditions.

According to Mercy,

“The long rainy seasons fall in March to May, while the short rainy seasons are during the months of August to September and sometimes trickle into October.

These are dreaded months by children, teachers and parents alike. One is likely to meet children shivering in the chilly days with hands tightly clasped across their chest, to preserve the little body temperature.

It is during this period, we have seen children affected by periodic fever. These are the times when we see children walk out of class or even stay away from the classes, with parents citing fear of fever attack.”

During the hot season months, we have not been spared either. This area has characteristic dry spells, which leaves the indigenous trees without leaves. Scorching sunbeams through the sketchy branches penetrate the out-door classes. Because of this, Simenya Child Development Center has made numerous efforts to address this immense challenge.

(more…)

I expect that many of you are aware of the global economic situation. Developed economies around the world are reeling. Food prices around the globe have skyrocketed. Businesses are struggling.
Non-profits are laying people off, cutting back programs and scrambling for donations.The world seems dark.

So, how will we respond?

We will not shrink back in the face of adversity. God has called us to be an advocate for children in poverty, and the children need our voice to ring strong and clear when speaking out on their behalf.
We know that when the rich of the world catch a cold, the poor get pneumonia. When the well-off suffer, the poor die. The world needs light now more than ever.

Nonetheless, economics are a reality.

You, our sponsors and donors around the world, are feeling the financial strain already and will likely feel this for months, if not years, to come. So, what do we expect the impact on Compassion to be?

Truthfully, only God knows. But we know that in the end God will prevail.

We know that He will be faithful to His word and to His promises and so, with God’s help, we will prevail. Things may not go exactly according to our plans, but I am confident that God will continue to allow us to help more and more children in a deeper and more profound way, despite the economic and food crises.

In our Executive Group devotions the other day, my co-worker Laurie shared from Isaiah 42 and I think it was Scripture meant for all of us.

Since we are to be Christ in this world, read the passage below knowing that Compassion is God’s servant:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. …He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. …I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles. …I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (VS. 1, 4, 6, 16, NIV).

So, be encouraged. We are all in the palm of God’s hand, and as we pray for the children one million children around the world are praying for us.

The first thing Heidi Partlow does each morning is check her e-mail. It’s always packed. As Compassion’s complementary interventions manager, she gets all kinds of e-mails each day.

E-mails about how to submit a proposal for a complementary interventions (CIV), e-mails from marketing departments about the particulars of a CIV, e-mails about a disaster that has just occurred.

So her e-mail inbox pretty much dictates her day. After attacking the onslaught of messages each morning, she has a cup of tea at 10 o’clock. 

Then she spends a lot of time running around, especially during a week where there has been a crisis, like with the recent hurricanes, getting approvals for funds to be distributed.

But she slowed down enough to give us a peek into CIV and her world. (more…)

“The opposite of poverty is enough.”

Have you heard us say this before?

Answer first, before reading on. (more…)