Author: Becky Giovagnoni

Disaster Relief Kit: What’s Inside?

After a disaster occurs in one of our countries, we often raise money to help those affected. We do this to help provide things such as food and water, shelter, bedding, trauma counseling or medical treatment, among other needs. Many times we also send disaster relief kits.

Heartbreak in Bangladesh: Cyclone Aila

They are the most heartbreaking reports I’ve seen during my 12 months in this job. (Not that you can really quantify or categorize something like this, but last week was the first time I cried reading a crisis report.)

Cyclone Aila. If you haven’t heard about it, don’t feel bad. It really hasn’t been in the news much at all.

None of the major world news sites say anything about it. When I checked yesterday, they all had headlines about singing sensation Susan Boyle, but nothing about Cyclone Aila. However, just because there are no headlines doesn’t mean there is no news.

Over the past week, David Adhikary, our communications specialist in Bangladesh, has been sending photos and reports from the midst of the cyclone’s aftermath. They are devastating. Here are a few excerpts from his reports …

“During the disaster night, the children and their families suffered a lot. The cyclone took down their houses, and after that the dams were destroyed. Some of children had to stand in water for the whole night. The center staff found many of the children in a wet condition.”

“The Compassion center staff and the parents of the children are very anxious about the aftereffects of the flood. The dead animals could cause dangerous diseases, and the probability of malaria is very high.”

“There is not a single house in the village that hasn’t been affected by floodwater. The village is near the sea and the river water is very salty. The floodwater mixed with their water sources and made it impossible to drink.

“The water crisis is the major problem for the people. People were seen drinking the polluted floodwater to put off their thirst. The floodwater is very dirty and stinky. The dead animals and fish are floating all over the water. Children of that area are also drinking the same water.”

Worse …

“The affected families have taken shelter at the nearest market. The families are staying with the animals in the market. The marketplace is badly polluted as the people are using the place for all kinds of uses.

“There is no toilet and the people are using free spaces for a toilet.

“The adult girls are staying with their families in the marketplace. Their parents are very anxious about their daughters because at nighttime they have to stay with lots of unknown people together in the marketplace.”

And perhaps saddest of all …

“This morning we received very sad news about one of the children we assist. Her mother committed suicide just after the cyclone disaster. Their house was broken down and she committed suicide out of her frustrations. She lost her husband last year during Cyclone Sidr. She faced many challenges last year and finally gave up. [The children] are now orphans and vulnerable. They lost their father and mother in two consecutive cyclones. Please join us in pray for these children.”

Oh, God.

It feels like it’s too much, doesn’t it? When I read stuff like this, I find myself begging Jesus to hurry up and return and make all things right. It’s difficult not to get overwhelmed with despair.

The crazy thing is, though, God has placed Compassion right in the midst of this mess. Because of our unique church-based structure, our child development centers are distributing food and water where even relief agencies haven’t been able to access!

Families who lost their homes and have nowhere to cook are receiving hot meals at the child development centers. During the next few weeks, the centers will provide them with dry food, oral rehydration therapy and water purification tablets.

If you sponsor a child in Bangladesh and your child has been affected by Cyclone Aila, we will contact you as soon as we receive information about your child.

The Lowdown on Reciprocal Letter Writing

As with many aspects of our ministry, we have a set of standards for the letter-writing process. When I talk about “standards,” what I mean is certain expectations that we’ve given to every church partner. However, as with anything involving fallible humans, this does not guarantee it will always happen.

Rwandan Genocide: 15 Years Later

In 1994 I was 16.

I was in the midst of my self-absorbed teenage years – a time in my life when nothing seemed as important as what kind of clothes I was wearing, and my daily mood was dictated by whether my current crush had said “Hi” to me in the hallway between classes that day. I was the center of my attention.

I distinctly remember the moment that God took my focus off of me.

Throughout my childhood, my mom subscribed to Time Magazine. There were always a few copies lying somewhere near the couch and occasionally I would pick one up and casually leaf through it.

One day, in May, I picked up a magazine with this cover …

I proceeded to read the article, both fascinated and horrified by the words I was reading. As I looked at the gruesome pictures, God did a major work on my heart.

My focus suddenly shifted from myself to those living through the nightmare happening in Rwanda. I was at once both distraught about what was happening in Rwanda and heartbroken for my own self-centered worldview. My world – my concerns, my interests, my dreams, my prayers – suddenly seemed so trivial in comparison.

That was the first time I remember thinking about people outside of the world I knew. I didn’t realize that God was using that moment to plant seeds in my heart – seeds that would eventually bear fruit in my choice of career, where I give my money, and how I live my life.

Fifteen years later I still haven’t forgotten that day or those images.

Elie Weisel, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, said: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

Even though the genocide happened 15 years ago, we must never allow ourselves to fall into indifference. The images can still have a profound impact on many lives.

Pictures tell stories in ways that words never can. So here is the story, 15 years later…

How did the genocide affect your life? Did it alter your view of God? Did it change your perspective on injustice? Have you explained to your children what happened?

Photos and slideshow by Chuck Bigger, one of God’s biggest blessings to Compassion.

If you have difficulty viewing the slideshow in this post, you can also check it out in Flickr.Upload your photos to our Flickr group. Show us how you see poverty.

In the Midst of Poverty

Abortion. War. Recession. Poverty. Terrorism. Injustice. Abuse. Hate. In a world full of so much evil, it’s easy to forget that God is still sitting on the throne. That He hasn’t abdicated His power. That He hasn’t forgotten or abandoned us.

Crisis Updates: Subcribe to a Compassion RSS Feed

Check out the cool new feature on compassion.com that helps you stay informed about what’s going on in your sponsored child’s country.

Slumdog Millionaire and Poverty Tourism

Last weekend I saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Have you heard of it? If you haven’t by now, you surely will soon. Just this week it was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture. (By the way, in case you were wondering, I think it should win Best Picture.)

Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of Jamal Malik, an orphan from the Mumbai slum who gets a chance to compete on India’s version of TV’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (For those of you who are worried about a spoiler, don’t be. In the opening scene you find out that he makes it to the final question.)

Of course he is accused of cheating, as everyone assumes there is no way that someone from the slum could know the answers to so many trivia questions. The movie shows Jamal’s life in a series of flashbacks based on the game show questions, and explains how he knew the answer to each question.

It’s a fascinating concept for a movie. Thought-provoking, funny and often heart-wrenching, it is superbly executed.

Anyway, going into the movie, I had a rough idea of what it was about: a young man from the slums of India. Based on that, I figured that there would be a certain amount of poverty-related imagery. What I didn’t expect, though, was how deeply I was affected by the slum scenes.

Scenes of Jamal’s life reveal abuse, prostitution, drugs, violence … all the circumstances that typically characterize a life in poverty. Though it was a necessary part of the story and none of it was gratuitous, at times it was difficult to watch.

I found myself wondering what others in the theater were thinking. Was this the first time that some people in the theater have seen poverty like that? Did they realize they were seeing reality or did they think it was “Hollywood-ized”? Were they as profoundly affected as I was?

Then today a friend sent me this article about slum tours in India. Apparently the success of the movie has led to an increased interest in the “slum tourism” business in India. People see the movie and then want to see the “real thing.” The article contrasts the movie to the real-life slum tour:

While the show offers Jamal a route out of the gutter, the tour makes a beeline for the squalor from which his real-life equivalents strive to escape: the excursion’s “highlights” include a stop at a stall of six toilets that serves 16,000 people and a stroll alongside a river so black and septic that it oozes rather than flows.

I mean, really?? Ridiculously overcrowded toilet facilities are an “attraction”? I have a hard time accepting that people actually pay to see that.

For those of you who’ve been around here a while, you might remember our previous discussion about poverty tourism. This article showed me how conflicted I still am about this idea.

On the one hand, I think these poverty tourists are despicable for engaging in this overt exploitation of other people’s suffering. On the other hand, they are getting a close-up, powerful (and hopefully life-changing) view of poverty that few get the chance to experience.

So here is a question for you to ponder …

In the case of poverty tourism, does the end justify the means?

In other words, is it worth exploiting the poor in their helpless, and often hopeless, situation if it ultimately changes someone’s heart towards the poor?

I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this one.

The Community That Ended Poverty

Just the other day I read something in the Bible that, although I must have read it a hundred times before, never jumped out at me the way it did this time. The words practically threw themselves off the page. I was reading at the end of Acts 4 …

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continues to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands and houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.” – Acts 4:32-35 (NIV)

Wait a minute … did I read that right? There were no needy persons among them. How did I miss this before?

Back in July we had a discussion about whether or not we should – or even can – end poverty. It was a good discussion with some very insightful comments.

This verse wasn’t mentioned in that discussion, but as I read the verse I started to ponder something.

If the believers in Acts were able to essentially eradicate poverty among their community, why couldn’t we (the Church) follow their lifestyle and do the same today? What would happen if churches would simply start following the model of the Church in Acts? Could we eliminate poverty?

What do you think? Does this verse change how you think about poverty and the Church’s role in ending it?

A Chance to Survive

Hello Compassion Blog readers.

Sorry I haven’t contributed much lately. I’m still here and still handling crisis communications, in case you were wondering. There is something that has been on my mind that I feel compelled to share with you.

I’m gonna step outside my comfort zone for a minute to share this with you. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was diagnosed with it when I was 15, so I’ve had it for half my life, but you’d probably never know it if you met me. I don’t talk about it much. Most people I interact with on a regular basis don’t even know. In the past 10 years, the medical research and pharmaceutical industries have come a long way in treating the disease, and this has allowed me to live to a virtually pain-free, symptom-free life.

But here’s the thing. I have a normal life simply because I happen to have been born in the United States. I have access to powerful drugs. I have insurance to cover the (outrageously high) cost of them. Certainly I am grateful for this, but lately I’ve been thinking about what my life would be like if I were born into poverty in a developing country. What if I was from rural Rwanda? Or a slum in the Philippines? Or a poor community in Nicaragua?

I’d more than likely be totally crippled by now. At 30 years old.

This thought really freaks me out, to be honest with you. I cannot imagine what it would be like to not be able to stand up straight, to walk, or to grip things. To live in constant, life-altering pain. I feel guilty for being happy I was born here. I don’t have to try to live with this disease without the help of drugs. I am not crippled. I assume it’s similar in a way to the guilt a person feels when they survive a car accident where the other passengers died . . . the ugly injustice of it. I understand that God’s ways are higher than our ways, but I struggle to understand why He chooses for some — why He chose ME — to be born into affluence and why He chooses some to be born into poverty. It’s not fair.

Nowhere is this injustice more evident than in the fight against HIV and AIDS. December 1 was World AIDS Day, and Brianne told you about our AIDS Initiative. The amazing thing about this program is that it literally restores justice to an unjust world. Without access to antiretroviral drugs, those battling AIDS in poverty-stricken countries fight an unwinnable war. By providing the antiretroviral therapy, Compassion allows children with death sentences another chance at life. A chance that, had they been born here, they would have had simply by virtue of their nationality.

If anyone is in the position to get this, it’s Godfrey. He understands that he is alive today because Compassion is fighting the injustice of HIV and AIDS in Uganda. His life is his testimony.

Compassion’s AIDS Initiative is more than just drugs. It’s nutritional support. It’s the critical laboratory testing. It’s psychosocial support. It’s treatment of opportunistic infections. It’s transportation assistance. It’s income generation. It’s housing repair. It’s all the opportunities that a person suffering from HIV here in the U.S. would have.

The AIDS Initiative essentially levels the playing field to give every victim of HIV — no matter where they were born — an equal chance to survive this devastating disease.

Give someone a chance to survive by supporting the AIDS Initiative today.

The Price of Greatness

I heard on the radio the other day that it’s probably the biggest thing that’s ever come to Denver. They were talking about the Democratic National Convention, of course. And they’re right … it is big. The local news has been dominated this week by headlines from the convention.

All this political hype has me thinking a lot about who will be the next leader of our country and what that means for children in poverty. While global poverty may not be one of the “hot button” items on the agenda for the convention, it is by no means an insignificant issue.

In fact, I just read this article about how, according to the World Bank, global poverty is much worse than previously thought. Working at a place like Compassion where we are faced daily with stories of injustice and suffering, I have a hard time not making it THE issue of the election.

However, this post is not about politics or my feelings about who should be elected. It’s about children in poverty and our responsibility to care for them.

Don Miller is one of my favorite authors. He said the closing prayer for day one of the convention, and I thought his prayer was worth sharing.

“Father God,

This week, as the world looks on, help the leaders in this room create a civil dialogue about our future.
We need you, God, as individuals and also as a nation.
We need you to protect us from our enemies, but also from ourselves, because we are easily tempted toward apathy.
Give us a passion to advance opportunities for the least of these, for widows and orphans, for single moms and children whose fathers have left.
Give us the eyes to see them, and the ears to hear them, and hands willing to serve them.
Help us serve people, not just causes. And stand up to specific injustices rather than vague notions.
Give those in this room who have power, along with those who will meet next week, the courage to work together to finally provide health care to those who don’t have any, and a living wage so families can thrive rather than struggle.

Help us figure out how to pay teachers what they deserve and give children an equal opportunity to get a college education.
Help us figure out the balance between economic opportunity and corporate gluttony.
We have tried to solve these problems ourselves but they are still there. We need your help.

Father, will you restore our moral standing in the world?
A lot of people don’t like us, but that’s because they don’t know the heart of the average American.
Will you give us favor and forgiveness, along with our allies around the world?
Help us be an example of humility and strength once again.

Lastly, father, unify us.
Even in our diversity help us see how much we have in common.
And unify us not just in our ideas and in our sentiments — but in our actions, as we look around and figure out something we can do to help create an America even greater than the one we have come to cherish.

God we know that you are good.
Thank you for blessing us in so many ways as Americans.

I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice.
Let Him be our example.
Amen.”

Whoever takes the reigns of leading this country in November has an enormous and very difficult job ahead of him. He desperately needs our prayers. One of the best ways I think we can help children suffering from poverty is to pray for the new leadership of our country.

Winston Churchill once said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.” We are the richest nation on earth. The man who leads this nation holds great power. Let’s pray that he uses that power to help right the injustices in this world.