Compassion

It's time to highlight another awesome organization that's making a difference in the world. This month I chose Compassion International. In their own words here's what Compassion does:

"In response to the Great Commission, Compassion International exists as an advocate for children, to release them from their spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enable them to become responsible and fulfilled Christian adults.

Founded by the Rev. Everett Swanson in 1952, Compassion began providing Korean War orphans with food, shelter, education and health care, as well as Christian training.

Today, Compassion helps more than 1.2 million children in 26 countries."

Monthly sponsorship of a child provides food, health and hygiene training, medical checkups, educational opportunities, and funding for programs at a local compassion center or church. 

We sponsored a little girl last fall. Her name is Ruth and she shares a birthday with Thing One : ) It was something that we had thought about doing for a while, and then just finally did. It's kind of a big commitment. When you sign up you are supposed to plan on sticking with your kiddo until he or she is an adult. Ruth is six. It's going to be awesome to watch her grow and hear from her several times a year. I love that Compassion encourages sponsors to go and visit their sponsored child(ren). I feel like that's a lot of transparency especially when sponsors actually go, which we hope to do someday. I also love the updates we get from Compassion, regional Compassion staff,  and even her local pastor. I feel like they are keeping us in the know and telling us more about what's going on there in Guatemala. 

Sponsoring Ruth has affected our family more than I thought it would. It has turned out to be an excellent opportunity to teach Thing One about poverty, culture, and caring about others. Compassion sent us a book mark with ideas of things to pray for Ruth each day. Every night when we pray for Ruth we also end up talking about what each request means and how we want to develop the same character ourselves that we are praying for Ruth to develop (like tender hearts, the ability to resist peer pressure, and trusting God for everything). Putting our focus daily on someone with so much less, is a constant reality check and one I wouldn't want to do without now. 

If your kids are a little older they might like Quest for Compassion, it's an interactive online program that lets kids learn about poverty and how it affects children; and how other cultures differ from our own. The Compassion website is full of good resources for teaching kids to have compassion and a desire to help others. They even have a little quarterly magazine for kids. We are totally getting this in a few years. 

I hope that you will take a minute to check out the Compassion International website and see the great stuff that is happening with kids in 26 countries around the world. If you are looking to invest in a worthy organization that's making a difference for kids, may I humbly suggest this one?  

Thanks for reading. I'm including a few poverty facts below in case anyone is interested.

-Haley 

Poverty

Learn the facts about poverty and how it affects children in need and their families.

• Every day 1,500 women die from complications in pregnancy or childbirth that could have been prevented. Each day 10,000newborns die within a month of birth, and daily the same number of babies are also born dead.
• Children under age 18 make up nearly 48 percent of the population of the world's least developed countries, compared with 21 percent of the population of the world's industrialized nations.
• More than 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity and modern forms of energy.
• Over 1.4 billion people in the developing world live below the poverty line (U.S.$1.25 per day).
• Annual world economy breaks down like this:
  
  1. Low Income, $935 or less: 37%
  2. Lower Middle Income, $936 to $3,705: 38%
  3. Upper Middle Income, $3,706 to $11,455: 9%
  4. High Income, $11,456 or more: 16%
• In developing countries, approximately 130 million children and teens — age 17 or under — have lost one or both parents.
• More than 9 million children under age 5 die each year. Two-thirds of these deaths — more than 6 million every year — are preventable.
• Approximately one-third of the world's poor people live inIndia.

Sources: www.unicef.org, www.undp.org, www.worldbank.org, www.who.int,
www.freeworldacademy.com, www.un.org, www.timesofindia.com