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…)

This is the byline on a recent op-ed piece in The Miami Herald:
“Edouard Lassegue is the Vice President of the Latin America and Caribbean Region at Compassion International, the world’s largest Christian child development organization.”

And this is why Edouard says we should care about what is happening in Honduras:

Poverty in Central American countries is the foundation for all other social justice issues. Honduras maintains an unemployment rate of 28 percent, and two-thirds of its citizens live below the poverty line. The instability the country is currently experiencing is not rooted in politics — it is social. It is hopelessness and destitution.

When Central American economies fail to produce opportunities and jobs — and if governments cannot protect citizens — populist demagogues promising reform but continuing the status quo are elected.

Where poverty flourishes, crime and corruption flourish. This is what we are currently witnessing in Honduras.

Read the entire op-ed piece in The Miami Herald.