Are you still with me? Still tracking with these thoughts on eliminating poverty? Good.

Now, I’ll share with you some data – data that show the Millennium Development Goals are on target.

We used to say that 40,000 children under age 5 die every day of hunger or preventable diseases. Then about 6 to 7 years ago this number was 30,000. Today, 24,000 children under 5 die every day of hunger or preventable diseases.

These statistics show that in 20 years the number of children who die every day of hunger or preventable diseases has been cut in half. Yet, the birth rate is actually going up. The population is increasing. (more…)

I heard the other day what many would call “good news.” According to the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, the recession is over.

Only the thing is, the “good-ness” of this news is relative … it’s only true for those of us living within certain geographic boundaries (read: the developed world.)

So, while we may be seeing signs of economic improvement in our part of the world, many other parts of the world are still in dire straits.

I recently received a report from our staff in Guatemala that says there are 54,000 families seriously lacking food. Fifty-four thousand. UNICEF says that almost half of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

While the food crisis is not new, the reasons behind this reiteration of it are different from before. (more…)

Letters are the closest connection that a child can have with her or his sponsor. The donation you faithfully give each month provides the financial support for your child’s development, but your letters provide beyond the material — needs such as love, hope and possibilities.

If poverty had a face, in Brazil it would be the face of a child. According to UNICEF, in 2004 more than 50 million Brazilians were living in poverty — without access to basic needs such as potable water, health care, good nutrition, education — and facing high rates of unemployment and violence.

Nearly 30 million of that number were children and adolescents.

In that same year, 800,000 children from 7 to 14 years old living in these conditions were not attending school, most of them from illiterate families who have no way to help their children in their education. Without encouragement, it is easy for them to just abandon school and start working in order to help their families.

It is an endless cycle as these same children one day will grow up and have their own children.

But there is hope, and your sponsored child knows exactly where to find it. Your sponsored child goes to her or his room, gets an old box full of photos and letters from under the bed, and as this child starts reading a new breath of life fills the heart.

“The letters from the sponsors are very important on children’s social and cognitive development,” says Maura, director of Lar Batista de Crianças child development center.

“Through the letters they have access to another culture and language, learn how to communicate well by speaking or writing, and moreover, they learn about affection and respect. To love and be loved.”

For that reason the correspondence monitor at the child development center also talks with the children about geography and history from their sponsor’s countries.

Luiz is 12 years old and loves getting letters from his sponsors, a couple from Australia.

“I feel that I am a very important person when I say at school that I have friends from another country and we send letters to each other. I also like to know that I pray for them, they for me and God listens to us.”

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One of Luiz’s classmates at Lar Batista de Crianças is also sponsored, but the 11-year-old boy has only received one letter in the two years he has been sponsored.

“I feel sad and sometimes frustrated. I’d really like to know about my sponsor’s life, such as: Where does she work? Is she married with kids? What are her hobbies? Does she have a pet? Things that my teachers cannot answer for me.”

According to Maura, children get excited when they receive their letters. “They gather together and tell to one another what their sponsors wrote to them. It is a joyful moment for each one of them.” And such a moment is special not only for the children, but for all the people who make this relationship happen.

Marta has been working as the correspondence monitor at Projeto Vilamar child development center since 2000. She says that her job is full of challenges, but she understands she is playing the role of a bridge between two people who love and care about each other.

“There was a specific letter that touched my heart. A sponsor whose wife had passed away wrote to his child telling about his pain. I started crying and also the child … at that moment I understood that even living so far from one another we can feel and share feelings with a friend we love.”

To most of our child development centers’ staff in Brazil, the improvement children show in their behavior is visible from the moment they get sponsored.

“They have to concentrate to write well, which makes them think about what they are writing. They are automatically compelled to learn how to write and read correctly. Also, the fact that they have somebody concerned about their lives also makes most of them avoid bad company, drugs and youth delinquency. They cannot accept disappointing their sponsors.”

In the spiritual area, children recognize that the same Lord they worship in Brazil is worshiped overseas.

Very shy, 12-year-old Maria loves to talk about Jesus with her sponsors, a couple from the United States.

“We used to write about our dreams and day to day. But what I like most is when they teach me new things about God’s word.”

Vitória thanks God for her sponsor’s life –- an 80-year-old lady who loves the 11-year-old girl as her own granddaughter.

“She asked me to call her grandma, and that is exactly how I feel about her. She is part of my life and family, even though we never spoke personally. I care about her letters so much that I have a special place for them, inside a drawer … for me, love has no borders.”

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. (more…)

Today probably seems like a normal mid-week day. A lot like the other workdays, school days . . . everything happening too quickly kind of days. But today is also World Food Day as recognized by UNICEF. And today more than 300 million children will go to bed hungry.

Under the burden of the global food crisis, the hungry are more hungry, poverty is more overwhelming. The need for food is more desperate, and the word falling from every hungry mouth, I imagine, is, “Please.”

This is no small please; this is a worldwide please for over $16 million, submitted by our country offices asking for support to feed the children.

Are you overwhelmed? Can you feel defeat slipping in ready to steal your passion to do something? It’s okay, I do too. I feel it too, so much so that I have labored over this issue for quite sometime now, thinking “I am 24 years old, paying my own bills, trying to figure out what this adult stuff is all about. Let me see, *calculating*. . . What? This is what I have leftover to give? That simply will not do. Not in the light of $16 million dollars.”

But I’m not alone. We’re not alone. I can hear a mighty army commanded by the Lord and appointed to bring forth justice, passionate about feeding the hungry, comforting the oppressed. And so there is Please. Compassion’s site dedicated solely to the Global Food Initiative. Members of the army include Rebecca St. James, Bebo Norman, KJ-52….me, you.

Can you hear it now? The marching of the faithful being driven by the heartbeat of the Lord.

Remember when we gathered in prayer and fasting concerning the global food crisis? I remember. I was still pretty new to Compassion, not yet a fulltime employee and I recall feeling so empowered by this organization to do something. Even if I didn’t have money, I had prayer. I have a voice that surpasses all this world claims as important and goes directly into the high courts of the all-powerful God.

Well here is another opportunity:

1. Watch the videos on our site.
2. Get your markers, the watercolors, the crayons, even the finger-paint.
3. Write the word “please” on your hand.
4. Take a picture
5. Upload it to our Flickr site

Also, in case you were wondering, I am a social network fanatic! Facebook, Myspace, Blogspot, Flickr . . . love it! (But don’t judge me). And I love that I can use these channels to let my friends know what I care about. Grab a widget from our site concerning the global food initiative and add it to your social network. Let your friends and family see what you are passionate about.

Let’s join together and watch what the Lord has in store. Let’s become part of an army that can’t lose.

We won’t quit. We’re committed. Strengthened by the love of the Lord and motivated by something hunger and the lies of poverty can’t surpass. And maybe, just maybe, we will start to hear a lot less “pleases.” Maybe we will begin to hear a choir compiled of His little ones exclaiming “Thank you.”

That’s what I want to hear.

One of the great Bible stories we love to talk about at Compassion is when Jesus brought a child into the midst of a conversation He was having with the disciples (Matthew 18). Jesus pretty much stopped a very serious discussion and turned His focus to a child. And, in doing so, He brought that child to the attention of the entire crowd.

I wonder, what impact it would have had if a child had been “in the midst” of different events in history?

What if a child had been in the room during the penning of the Declaration of Independence?

Do you think our founding fathers would have addressed the importance of children by adding a line stating they were seeking independence “for the future of our children?”

Look at John Trumbull’s famous painting of the signing of the Declaration:

Now imagine how that image changes if a child is added to the scene.

How many wars would never have started if a child had been in the war planning room.

Imagine a child asking, “But why? Why do you want to hurt those mommies and daddies?” … or better yet, “Are you going to hurt the children too?”

(Over the past ten years, more children have died as the result of warsthan soldiers.)

What other moments in history might have changed, if a child had been “in the midst?”