Stories to Connect You With Compassion & Grow Your Faith

The new global poverty line (of living on less than $1.90 a day) captures income and consumption data. What it doesn’t reflect are other conditional circumstances and deficiencies that strip opportunity and hope from the poor.

November is the time of year that many people contemplate the blessings they have in life. This month’s Second Friday Letter Writing Club theme focuses on gratitude and blessings.

The framework of donor as hero and the poor as thankful charity cases can do long-term damage. It subtly whispers to a person in poverty, “The donors are special; they have the power. You’re poor and different from them.” This can create a mindset of dependency that says, “I can’t do it myself; I’m dependent on someone else to do things for me.”

If you skip a meal, how can you feed an entire family? Hear how one teenager started a movement at her school to help fight world hunger…and how you can join her.

What changes are in the works for our Leadership Development Program and how can you best meet the needs of the child you sponsor? Find out in the last part of the “Ask Jimmy” blog series.

We’ve all been stuck at that red light, and despite our best efforts to avoid it, there we are: eye-to-eye with a person with a sign. Poverty is uncomfortable. And sometimes, it’s just easier to look away and pretend we can’t see.

Inequality in Mexico has increased in the last decade, exposing a growing gap in between the poor and the rich. There is a hurting division in society marked by lack of income and educational opportunities.

In part two of the “Ask Jimmy” blog series, Jimmy unpacks how we select the countries in which we work, shares about some positive global development in those countries and explains why we choose to partner with the local church.

The challenges a church faces when serving a poverty stricken community can appear insurmountable. However, when the will of that community is to have a better future, children have the opportunity to accomplish great things.

Celebrating Christmas at a child development center in El Salvador means giraffes, bumblebees and donkeys! And in the midst of the carols and wrapping paper, God taught me so much about His heart for the poor — and my responsibility to His children.

We recently asked you on Facebook, “If you could ask Compassion president Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado one question, what would it be?” We got a great response and over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing his responses to your questions here in our “Ask Jimmmy” blog series.

Partnering between the resource-rich part of the Church and the resource-poor part of the Church is not something particularly new or noble. It is just what we should do. It is simply what Paul asked the early Church to do.