Party on, Nepal

Viva Christmas Parties are gearing up around the world. Actually, quite a few have already happened! If you’re getting involved in ‘Your Party, Their Christmas’ or ‘Your Gift, Their Christmas’ you already know that Viva Christmas Parties are not only a blast for kids, but they link vulnerable children up with projects that can provide them with help and support for the rest of their lives. What a reason to celebrate!

In Nepal, though, Viva Christmas Parties haven’t just helped get children connected with projects – they’ve helped make it possible for projects to connect with one another. As in many other places around the world, Nepalese organisations that help children at risk have traditionally tended to keep to themselves. Opening up your management, fundraising and resources to other projects can be a terrifying task. Our partner network CarNet Nepal discovered that Viva Christmas Parties are a great way to develop the trust and rapport between projects that are necessary to form a network.

Big Heart for Cochabambinas

I’ve been in Peru and Bolivia for almost 3 weeks now, and I’ve eaten llama and guinea pig, been horseback riding in the Andean mountains, stayed in 9 different hostels and spent a total of 43 hours on long-distance buses! And today didn’t fail to bring yet another new experience…

This afternoon I stood in front of a lovely red brick house, built at the bottom of a deep green valley surrounded by awesome mountains and framed against a clear blue sky. The handwritten sign above the door of the house read ‘Corazon Grande’ (big heart) and it was one of the most tranquil and beautiful places I’ve seen on this trip. Yet the stories of the girls who currently live in the house are almost the complete opposite.

Party Time!

To most children in the UK, December 25th means a holiday, presents, turkey, stockings and big family gatherings.  But for children all over the developing world it's just one more day to survive -  no presents, feasts or holiday cheer.  If you could throw a Christmas party for thousands of vulnerable children, would you?

We would!

El Salvador Launches New Strategy Against Child Abuse

In 1980 a group of 11-year old boys in El Salvador made a simple agreement: to stick together and defend one another on the dangerous streets they called home. They called themselves Mara Salvatrucha. Today, it’s one of the deadliest gangs in the western hemisphere and has more than 25,000 members across Central America. Street children aren’t just victims of violence. Because of their vulnerable situations they’re perfectly primed to be recruited into gangs, or even form them.

El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America. It’s slightly bigger than Wales, but with 7 million people. A majority of Salvadorans work on farms, usually growing coffee, and many parents send their children out to work in the fields as extra labourers to help feed the family. Extreme poverty causes all kinds of problems within families, and as our regular readers will know the number children who are abused in their own homes is scarily high. These children so often end up fleeing their homes and living a life on the streets, where they aren’t expected to survive longer than about four years… if glue sniffing, disease or malnutrition don’t kill them, violence often will.

Abandoned Babies Part III - Interview

Viva interviews Rogers Mbaziira, who works with our city-wide network CRANE in Kampala, Uganda. Part of Rogers’ job is to work with a group of network members – churches, homes for abandoned babies and other projects – that are committed to putting abandoned babies into local families. (Learn more about this group, called Families For Children.) That means lots of networking between projects and churches and families, with some interesting results. Go ahead, listen in...

Viva: Rogers, you have an amazing job. Can you tell us what your normal day looks like?

RM: I used to visit the foster families a lot, but now more of my time is spent on ‘mobilisation’. Most parents call in and some email FFC for advice. I spend most of my time replying to them, and often that involves referring them to different agencies or projects that can help. That’s why it’s so important to work as a network, because we have these other contacts we can put them in touch with. 

Abandoned Babies Part II - Africa

Working at Viva’s office in Kampala, I hear a lot about abandoned babies through the city-wide network, CRANE (we’re in the same office!) Nearly 200 babies are abandoned every year in Kampala alone, the capital city of Uganda. One lady I’ve met, Grace, has a special story about an abandoned baby though – Grace became a mother when someone else didn’t want her child.

Grace remembers falling in love with baby Nabulungi as soon as she met her in the hospital where she works. Nabulungi was tiny – a premature baby of only a kilogram – and the fact that her mother had abandoned her at the hospital made her seem even smaller. “Seeing her arrive to the world, so vulnerable and small, I bonded with this little one that needed so much attention and care,” recalls Grace.

For the first few weeks of Nabulungi’s life, Grace’s job was to care for her. She wasn’t sure where it would lead. As the time drew near for Nabulungi to leave the hospital, Grace couldn’t face the fact that ‘her’ tiny baby would be going into an institution… she needed a family home. 

Abandoned Children Part I - Latin America

Carolina was born to a mother struggling desperately with a drug addiction. There seemed to be little hope for her future. Like 40 million other children in Latin America, she faced a life of abuse and possibly living on the streets. But now she is safe with me and my wife, safely part of our family. Let me tell you how that happened.

The life expectancy of a Latin American street child is only four years, and they usually succumb to hunger, drug addiction or violence. Yet fostering has never taken root as a solution to Latin America’s growing number of street children. Fostering a child can be expensive for parents struggling to care for their own children, and there are also many emotional issues that foster children bring with them, as a result of their previous family lives.

Running for Their Lives

Remember this? “Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.”

Viva posted that back in May. But long before that my heart was broken by the hundreds of thousands of girls in Cambodia who are in this exact situation. I don’t even want to imagine it. But child sexual exploitation in Cambodia is something the world can’t avoid imagining. We need to be confronted with it, address it, end it, and then help to heal the girls who have gone through it.

Saved from Slavery... by a Sandwich Cart

Veata’s family live in a village outside Phnom Penh. She’s 15 now, but she’s been working since she was 11. Veata, her mother, and her siblings work as trash collectors to earn money – three siblings work collecting trash while the other three attend school, and then they swap. Veata’s father is a construction worker.

A few years ago, Veata’s mother enrolled her in the Phnom Penh network’s ‘Get Ready’ programme, a project that keeps girls out of brothels by helping them develop skills that will help them get work. That way girls are educated but are still available to help their families earn money –a balance that is really necessary in poor Cambodian villages and families. (For those of you who don’t know, the network in Phnom Penh, called Chab Dai, is a group of projects that Viva helped bring together and continues to support, to prevent girls from being sold into sexual slavery in Cambodia.)

Churches Rebuilding a Slum

I am a bishop with the Assemblies of God church in the slum area of Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city. A year ago I attended one of Viva’s Vision Conferences, designed to get pastors involved in mobilising their churches to serve children in their neighbourhoods. In the local language we have a word, mabadkilio, that perfectly describes what’s happened to my ministry: it’s been completely transformed since this conference.

The slum I work in has 250,000 people, two-thirds of whom are under 18. The local government doesn’t provide any services in this slum: people have to leave the city to get health care, and water has to be carried in and sold because there aren’t reliable water pipes. As a result, the poorest often can’t afford to buy water. All the schools are on the outer edge of the slum, because of the high building density in its core. Most families in the slum have four to six people, and the majority of these families are in one-room houses. My church is one of ten operating in the slum.

The first thing my church did after this conference was to join with Viva and the city-wide network in Kisumu, called Arise for Children, and get involved in that community of Christians working on behalf of vulnerable children. I can’t explain how happy I am to be part of the network. All sorts of new opportunities have arisen because of my church’s membership; our church has grown markedly; and the neighbourhood is undergoing changes that are both deep and wide…

Children Stopping Child Abuse

There are some moments in life you just can’t beat. Running around Cochabamba’s equivalent of the Houses of Parliament with kids from the Fundacion Emmanuel project (the ministry for children of prostitutes that I was telling you about in my previous post), campaigning for good treatment of children last week was definitely one of them. 

Try saying this to twenty irrepressible children: “This is an important government building so you need to be good. Don’t run and don’t shout!” It just didn’t work. They went nuts, and who can blame them? 

The Good Treatment vaccination campaign is all about children voicing their rights. They approach adults with recipe cards. On one side are the ingredients for good treatment of children: a bit of respect, understanding, a portion of humour, an abundance of tolerance, a piece of patience, and others. On the other side is a space for the recipient to write his or her name, sign and date – and voila! – they’re vaccinated. Along with the card and a leaflet, they receive a sweet.

Switching it up - Police in for Child Questioning!

On my first day in Kampala, I was taken to the Old Taxi Park. It was a dizzying maze of hundreds of small minibuses, known locally as matatus, and we were trying to find the one that would take me to my placement hosts. There is seemingly no system of getting in and out, and I was actually knocked by the side mirror of one as it was squeezing past us to get out. I remember thinking ‘What have I done? Where have I come to?’ My sales job in the UK was, a week after finishing up with the company, a lifetime away.

Yet a month later I had mastered the matatu system and there I was navigating my way to Stand Up Uganda, a community organisation that helps disadvantaged people, all by myself. The organisation is a member of Viva’s partner network in Kampala, the Children at Risk Action Network (CRANE). They told me “Pick a taxi at the matatu stage and then after the big junction look for the small white sign, after the garage and opposite the white building”. After passing what I assumed was the big junction, panic rose within me as I saw a garage, and then a white building and then another garage, and then a white shop… but then, looking across the road, that small white sign gleamed at me. I had made it!

Saving Girls from Sexual Slavery

You may have read my post about a trip to Nepal this summer when, along with six child care professionals in business suits, I travelled eight hours by bus and spent the night in a church, in order to attend an important graduation. (I might mention that on the way we saw a lorry tip off the road and get pulled up again by just five men with a rope and pulley – the power of working together!) Celebrating this graduation wasn’t the only thing I did in Nepal though. I also checked up on what’s happening with the Daughter programme, which is now being run by 145 churches around Nepal. 

Girls reading the Daughter leaflet

Many people think of Nepal as a ‘shangri-la’ of mountains, centring around Kathmandu – a hippie haven filled with bright flags and colourfully dressed locals. Less popular with tourists and foreign imaginations are the southern plains that produce most of Nepal’s agriculture and border with India. It’s here that Daughter is having the biggest impact, because it’s here that children are taken from (or sometimes sold by) their families into bonded labour, circuses, and sexual slavery in India’s cities and Nepal’s brothels. What I have for you now are some stories about how Christians working together are saving real children from a life of slavery and abuse.

Like Mother... Like Daughter?

I’ve been volunteering with Viva in Bolivia for the last few months. (You may have seen my personal blog already.) I live with a local family in the city of Cochabamba, and work in different projects that are members of the Cochabamba network Viva set up with ongoing support from Toybox. So far the network is working out nicely for me because I get a taste of so many different kinds of projects and can really get a feel for how Christians are responding to children at risk in Bolivia.

One of the projects I’ve spent some time working in is a project called Fundacion Emmanuel that cares for the children of women involved in prostitution. This may sound like a very specific ministry, but these children have very specific needs. The project is open three days a week. They’d love to be available to the children every day, but they can’t afford it. They usually have 20 children a day, between six and 14 years old. There’s one boy and 19 girls! Good thing I was there to provide some male companionship.

Viva at the All African Bishops Conference

If you were paying close attention, you may have heard that 398 Anglican Bishops from dioceses all around Africa met from the 23rd to the 29th of August in Entebbe, just outside Kampala. The theme for this All Africa Bishops Conference was ‘Unlocking Potential and Securing our Future’. Viva was invited to share a stall with World Vision representatives at the conference, and as Viva’s Regional Director for the Africa region, I took up the challenge.

It was a great opportunity to bring the issues facing Africa’s children to the attention of the Anglican Church, and right on topic: we at Viva happen to believe that children are the key to unlocking potential, and the embodiment of our future! It seems they listened. In their Conference Statement, released at the end of the conference, the bishops added a little something proposed by Viva and World Vision:

“The children and the youth are the embodiment of the future and the church seeks to unlock the inherent potential in this generation. Therefore, the Church in Africa commits itself to providing biblical upbringing of children and youth and give a special attention to their needs and rights.”

You Voted for it: Helping Pakistan Heal

Last week Viva posted a poll asking our readers who they think should aid Pakistani flood victims. Because we allowed you to pick more than one option, the results sound funny:

66% thought wealthy governments should respond to the flood;

53% said international non-governmental organisations should be providing aid;

80% thought the global church has a responsibility to help;

and 73% voted that local agencies should respond.

It's interesting to note that in no case did 100% of people agree on an answer: not everybody thinks rich governments have the responsibility; and we don't all agree that the global church should respond either. Maybe this helps explain why the international response to the disaster has been so slow.

Why Does a Zebra Cross the Road?

To keep children safe, of course!

This summer dozens of children from Viva's network of projects in Kampala, Uganda took to the streets - one street in particular - to engage in community advocacy.  What does that look like?  This:

Roads in Kampala can be difficult even for grown-up pedestrians to navigate, especially in poorer areas where most children at risk live.  Just crossing the street can be a life-threatening activity for a child in these neighbourhoods!  So a few projects put their heads together and decided to make their neighbourhood safer for the children in their care and those living in the area.  They painted a zebra crossing.

Donning safety vests, these children took turns painting the stripes of the crossing and handing out lollipops and leaflets - taking advantage of the traffic caused by their work to teach passing drivers and pedestrians about child rights and child protection.  

This was a great way for children to make new friends, learn to advocate for themselves, and take responsibility for the safety of their neighbourhood.  We're hoping to bring more zebra crossings to other neighbourhoods throughout the city!

Take a look at the rest of the pictures on Viva's Facebook page.

A Step Towards Friendship?

Last week Viva posted a blog about the effects a government's decisions can have on on its country's children, refering to Pakistan's consideration of India's £3.2 million aid offer. Though the two countries have been at odds for the last 63 years, we hoped that this could be a turning point in their relationship.

So we were very pleased to hear that on Friday Pakistan did accept India's offer of aid, despite the history of conflict between the nations, and we hope the money will be put to use to directly benefit flood victims, especially those most vulnerable - the children. Viva is continuing to support the amazing ongoing work of the local projects and churches that make up our networks in Pakistan and India, as well as that of our international partners working to bring relief to those who have lost everything in the floods.

Let Your Light Shine

How do you dispel the damaging myths surrounding HIV and AIDS? How do you teach communities that children suffering from HIV or AIDS didn't do anything to deserve it? What's the best way to make sure children living with or orphaned by HIV or AIDS get the most loving care and support?

I’ll tell you – Let Your Light Shine.

Given its name because it's all about helping kids to realise their value and live in the light of it, Let Your Light Shine is a video-based tool that helps train caregivers to provide better care for children suffering from or affected by HIV and AIDS. Suffering from this disease comes with heavy stigma in Africa, where many people don't have correct facts about the causes and spread of HIV and AIDS. As a result, many children who have been orphaned by AIDS or are living with it themselves are kept out of school or treated differently by the people who should be taking care of them.

When do neighbours become good friends?

If you saw two children arguing – yelling, calling names, sulking – you’d want to intervene. An adult can pull two children apart and talk sense into them. But when two nuclear-armed countries are behaving that way, nobody can really do anything about it. That’s the situation neighbours India and Pakistan are in today.

We’ve all heard about the devastating floods that have ravaged Pakistan this month. You may not have heard that many parts of northern India have been stricken by floods too, with hundreds killed (including 18 young children who were killed when their school collapsed under heavy rains yesterday in Dehradun).

3.5 million children are estimated to be at risk of contracting water-borne diseases in Pakistan because of the floods. Their parents have lost their livelihoods; their homes have been washed away; and their friends or family members may have been killed. India has offered $5 million (about £3.2 million) in aid money to Pakistan, but because of longstanding political and military clashes and a deep mistrust of its giant neighbour, the government of Pakistan has not yet accepted and is still considering the offer.

Kids Caring for Kolkata

With more than 15 million people crammed into its metropolitan area, Kolkata is India’s third-largest city. It’s also one of the fastest-growing, with new migrants arriving to look for work every day. ‘Informal labour’ makes up nearly half of Kolkata’s economy – roadside hawkers, rag pickers, and other people who don’t have a guaranteed income each day. A third of Kolkata’s residents live in slums. No wonder Mother Teresa picked Kolkata to live in and serve the poor.

Recently 45 children from Christian projects working in these slums came together for a one-day workshop called “Why should we have rights?” In areas like Kolkata’s overpopulated slums, the needs of children often get overlooked or pushed aside for more pressing matters like feeding the family or finding a proper latrine (normally impossible). But that doesn’t mean these children’s rights aren’t just as important of those of kids in the developed world, or in the richer parts of Kolkata. And that’s just what they learned.

You voted for it: Child-Friendly Churches

In last week's poll we asked you how child-friendly your church is.  About two thirds said their church was "Very friendly!" and the other third thought theirs was "Pretty friendly".  But what actually makes a church child-friendly?

Viva believes a child-friendly church is one that treats children as an integral part of its congregation, and where children are invited and encouraged to worship and serve just the same as adults (but with a child-friendly twist).  Programmes like Sunday school are great for teaching children about God, but Sunday school can't be the only thing a church offers its children.

Children Fighting Bad Treatment

The Child Advocates are getting down to business. Recently 61 of our Bolivian child ambassadors and youth leaders met in Cochabamba for their 6th Annual Meeting, a weekend of planning, leadership activities, devotions, and of course a talent show. 

Viva’s Child Advocates (Protagonismo Infantil in Spanish) have been causing a stir around Bolivia. Their Good Treatment campaign ‘vaccinated’ more than 28,000 adults against child abuse this year, and the advocates themselves are often arranging interviews with radio hosts, television programmes and government authorities to get word out about treating children properly and respecting child rights. 

Viva’s city-wide networks throughout the country provide the platform for these little leaders to get together and talk about successes, plan out strategies and events, and learn from one another – at neighbourhood, city and national levels.

Child-Friendly Church

I’ve been living in Uganda for two years now. Working with Viva, I meet lots of pastors and am always in contact with local churches. I love my church here, it’s filled with people who truly want to be there together, are really excited about worshiping God and serving their community.

But the Ugandan church, just like everywhere around the world, suffers from contrasts in faith, actions and beliefs. What do you see when you picture an African church? Maybe a building without walls or with a thatched roof … maybe a bunch of colourfully dressed people singing under a tree, raising their hands and swaying with African enthusiasm. The reality is that African churches are unique in their own way, but also very similar to churches everywhere else.

You voted for it: Caring for Workers

In last week's poll we asked you what child care workers need most.  Of course the people who care for vulnerable children need many more things than what we listed, but if we started including things like 'malaria pills' you'd never be able to choose.

6% of our readers thought child care workers need more money,

68% thought they need better training,

and 25% of you thought they need a vacation.

You're all right.  Although it sounds materialistic to say child care workers need more money, they certainly do!  Not only for themselves, but simply to run the projects properly.  Many of the projects Viva works with are just generous people who open their homes to orphans, or give their time to care for disabled children.  They try to stretch their income to cover the costs and elicit donations from others in their community, but funds are usually hard to come by.

A New Generation of Slum Children

As a Network Consultant for Viva India, one of the best parts of my job is visiting the networks Viva works with and seeing what all the projects are doing. Recently I was on a whirlwind tour of India, travelling from Bangalore in the south to Vijayawada in the southeast, and then all the way up to Dehradun in the Himalayas, and finally back to Delhi where I work. It helped me to remember what a huge, diverse and beautiful country India is … but also how much work there is to be done.

I’d like to share some good news from Dehradun. This is one of India’s oldest cities and is home to half a million people today. It’s snuggled between the feet of the Himalayas and the vast plains of northern India, surrounded by the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Imagine coming from the hot Indian plains and arriving in a place surrounded by forests, mountains and cool rivers! Or, if you like wildlife, you could look around for tigers, snow leopards, cheetahs, or Himalayan bears.

Finding Asuncion's Most Vulnerable Kids

Last week I told you about a Vacation Camp being run through Viva’s network of projects and churches in Asuncion, Paraguay. At the beginning of the week it was so cold that the kids weren’t leaving their homes, and we had fewer campers than we’d expected. But our teenaged volunteers from two local projects – a day centre for youth suffering the effects of HIV/AIDS and a care home – braved the chilly streets and invited local kids to come join us for the rest of the week. On Monday we had 30 children. By Thursday we had more than 100 children and 40 teenagers!

On the surface, the goal of Vacation Camp was to warm up the local children during the week’s winter holiday, and give them something to do. In the impoverished neighbourhoods where our network of projects and churches operate, many homes don’t have heating. Even if they did, the parents can’t afford enough fuel to keep the house warm all day. On top of that, parents have to work every day just to feed and house their children, and paying for day care is out of the question. Hundreds of children spend their holidays sitting in a freezing house, bored, unable to go out because the streets are so dangerous.

You voted for it: Raising the Status of India's Girls

It's official... educating Indian women is the best way to release them from the dangers and discrimination that accompany their low status.  At least, that's the popular choice of our readers:

93% voted for educating women,

7% thought creating quotas in the workplace would raise their status,

And none of our clever readers thought banning the dowry would do much at all.

You're right.  The dowry - a bride price, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his parents, often extracted through blackmail just before the wedding - has been banned in India for years.  But it's still a widespread practice, entrenching the societal belief that girls are just burdens to be born (or killed before birth).  Read our blog on the topic for more information.  The problem is so bad that more than 5000 women are killed by their husbands or in-laws every year, because the bride's family can no longer afford to pay them off.

Graduating Good Workers

A few weeks ago I travelled to Nepal to attend a big event in that country: 18 project staff were graduating from our Viva Equip People programme. 18 might not sound like very many – until you remember that Christians account for less than 3% of Nepal’s population, and that each one of these graduates will have a ripple effect on their church, project and community.

Viva Equip People is a big deal, especially here in Nepal where many children are at risk, and often little value is given to them. The people we’re equipping are working with children at risk in local projects or churches, and are amazingly compassionate and hard-working. But their work with children can be limited because they have very few opportunities to develop themselves and improve their work.

Warming Up in Paraguay

All this week dozens of vulnerable children in Paraguay are having the time of their life, while at the same time building life-saving relationships with projects and churches that want to help them … thanks to the power of working together! We’re calling it “Colonia de Vacaciones”, or Vacation Camp.

It all started last Christmas when Red Viva Paraguay (‘Red’ means ‘network’ in Spanish) threw Viva Christmas Parties for almost 1,500 children in several central neighbourhoods of Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital city. These Christmas Parties are a great way to introduce kids to projects that want to help them, and for projects in our Paraguay network to get used to working together. Throwing Christmas Parties for hundreds of vulnerable kids takes a lot of teamwork!

The Best Way to Prevent Child Abuse

Last week we had a little poll: What's the best way to prevent child abuse? And we sneakily only let you vote for one answer.

77% of respondents thought the best way is to teach adults about children's rights.

22% thought that it's best to empower children to advocate for themselves.

And nobody voted for creating laws that ban child abuse!

Of course, all the answers were somewhat right, but you need all three to be really effective. Laws and policies that ban child abuse are helpful.  But child abuse will always continue if it's culturally acceptable, as it is in countries like Bolivia where 40% of teachers admit to thinking physical punishment is an acceptable way to discipline a student.  We've used this figure before -- 80,000 Latin American children die every year in their own homes because of domestic abuse. 

Growing Girls in India

Growing up in India can be hard, especially if you’re part of a large family. But in my experience, it’s nearly impossible for girls growing up in India to become the women they want to be. I was born and raised in Andhra Pradesh, a state on the south eastern coast of India. My family was Catholic – in a state where 90% of the people are Hindu and 8% are Muslim! But the culture of mistreating girls pervades everywhere in India, even into Catholic homes.

I know that if I hadn’t fought hard for my education, I would have ended up married off right after secondary school, living in a village in Andhra Pradesh with a husband I didn’t love. This is real life for the vast majority of Indian women. In fact, in India today nearly half of the women who are now between 20 and 24 years old were married before they turned 18. That’s our modern generation!

NEWSFLASH: Kids Win 2010 World Cup

I can’t believe the World Cup’s finally finished ... and what a roller coaster it’s been. Normally I live and work in Kampala, Uganda where I’m the Communications and Fundraising coordinator with Viva’s Africa office. But in June I travelled to South Africa to be involved in a day camp programme called Keep Them Safe, which Viva’s network in South Africa is helping roll out to make sure local kids stay safe during the heightened risk of trafficking and abuse that’s followed the FIFA World Cup here. Keep Them Safe was held in 13 communities around Cape Town, and reached more than 1000 kids each day!

South Africa wasn’t entirely as I had expected it to be. Wearing two pairs of socks, having porridge for breakfast each morning and seeing snow capped mountains in the distance -- the weather in the Western Cape was not quite the World Cup ‘summer’ I had in mind when planning my trip here! However, I simply cannot complain about the cold, especially when some of the children we were working with turned up barefoot.

Veggie Magic ... or Hydroponics?

Whether or not you believe in climate change, you can’t deny that the environment around some of the world’s poorest cities is being significantly hurt by human activity. This is the case in San Jose, capital city of Costa Rica, where high-yield agriculture in the countryside is resulting in dirty rivers, and rapid city growth is causing deforestation and soil erosion. For a child living in the slums of San Jose, this translates to an unstable home and little access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Fact: The World Bank estimates that by 2013, two-thirds of Latin America’s poor will be living in cities. That's a lot of crowds.

Another fact: 20 of Latin America’s largest cities are built on steep hills that are prone to landslides and flooding during the rainy season. One of these is San Jose.

What does God think about Child Abuse?

The fact can’t be denied that millions of children everywhere in the world are physically, emotionally and sexually abused. Child abuse has been called a ‘national emergency’ in the United States, and in India 223 million children (73 million of whom are boys) have had some kind of sexual activity forced on them.

Abuse isn’t just physically harmful to a child – although every year 80,000 Latin American children die of abuse-related injuries in their own homes. Adults who have survived child abuse are often haunted by fear, mistrust and poor relationships with their own spouses and children. It’s a crime that affects multiple generations.

Attention World!

Over our World Weekend of Prayer, more than 2000 vulnerable kids from Viva’s network of projects around Cochabamba, Bolivia flooded the streets of their city.

First they met for a prayer meeting in the stadium, then they unleashed their advocating power by marching through the city with banners and balloons. Everyone noticed! Local authorities, businesses, and government bodies ‘woke up’ and started asking questions about the kids living on their own streets.  

A few thousand kids who have caught the spirit of advocacy are literally changing their entire country.

Daughters in Danger

Nepal has captured the world’s imagination for centuries. Until recently it was known to the world as a Himalayan Hindu Kingdom, though in 2008 it became a Democratic Republic after 10 years of Maoist insurgency. It’s also the home of Mt. Everest and eight of the world’s ten highest mountains. It’s caught between India and China and currently hosts more than 100,000 refugees from Bhutan.

Thanks to their long and interconnected history, Nepalis can travel to India with no visa and work there without any restrictions. While this is great for adults seeking their fortune in their giant southern neighbour’s cities, it means all sorts of trouble for Nepali children. It’s estimated that up to 7,000 women and children are trafficked across Nepal’s porous borders into India every year, where they’re forced into prostitution – 20% of these are under 16. Nepali females are easy prey: while 69% of males in Nepal are literate, only 42% of females are. As a result of this lack of education and inability to stand up for themselves, 200,000 children of Nepali prostitutes are thought to be living in Indian brothels.

MDG's Part 4: Gender Equality

If I’m totally honest, I’ve often thought of gender equality with a yawn and a roll of my eyes. (I’m a woman, so that’s kind of allowed!) It reminds me of militant bra-waving feminism, and in my own experience I’ve never been discriminated against for my gender, so it’s just never been an issue. But as I’ve looked into it further, I’ve discovered that ‘Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women’ is actually a one of the most important Millennium Development Goals to strive for.

In western nations women are pretty much free from oppression. But if you take a look at countries such as India and Nepal, or throughout the Middle East, you see that there is still much work to be done. In India for example the culture of paying a dowry still exists (a ‘bride-price’ paid to the groom by the girl’s family, either money or goods) and it is taking the lives of thousands of women each year – millions if you count unborn girls.

Working for Christ in India ...

… is HARD WORK. I have just taken up the post of Regional Director in Viva’s Indian office, and I have been on the road for weeks - first to England, then to a conference in India, then moving my family from Mumbai to Delhi. Finally I’m in my new office, getting to know the intricacies of how Viva works in India. The need is huge, and individually we are so small. But together we can accomplish many things, and I’m very excited to be here, at work for Christ! Let me tell you a little of how I came to be here.

I became a Christian as a teenager living near Mumbai. Shortly after my conversion I was prophesied over, that I would “set the captives free”. I started my career in a mutual funds company, but saw that my real calling led in a very different path: working in social and church issues.

I began working with a Christian organisation in Mumbai, helping to free drug addicts from their addictions. During my time there I witnessed many miracles. Our method of rehabilitating drug addicts was this: pray constantly for ten days. We would never give them any alternate medication, but rather did the only thing we really knew how to do: share the love of Christ and pray. Often by the sixth day the man we were praying for would be free from his addiction, with no withdrawal pain! Now that’s what I call Jesus at work! There is no denying that prayer is a powerful thing.

MDG's Part 3: Combating HIV/AIDS

Newspapers and scientists sometimes brings us terrifying predictions of worldwide epidemics like SARS, and various kinds of flu from different animals like birds and swine. How about the one that’s already raging across every continent – AIDS? It’s deadly enough to have been included in the Millennium Development Goals … but death isn’t the only result of this disease. The people suffering with AIDS, especially children, are often ostracised and discriminated against because of cultural myths and factual misconceptions. Even schoolchildren whose parents have AIDS suffer this social stigma.

Good thing Viva has teamed up with more than ten international charities to begin to change that! We’re working with World Vision, Compassion, Tearfund and others to deliver training called ‘Let Your Light Shine’ to hundreds of adults who care for children. Let Your Light Shine uses a DVD that teaches caregivers how to provide the best support and care for children suffering under the personal or societal effects of HIV and AIDS. Let Your Light Shine has been specially designed to be useful to churches, orphanages, schools, communities and individual caregivers. 

Lukas goes to Uganda

Last week I went to Uganda on business, something I do a fair bit. But this time I brought my eight-year-old son Lukas along with me. The idea was to show Lukas how people live in other parts of the world, and teach him to be compassionate. Our trip was filled with lessons even before we left – having to get shots before you go to a place is a major lesson in the physical challenges facing the world’s poor!

“Dad, what’s typhoid?”
“Well, it’s a preventable and curable disease that kills 600,000 people every year, and these shots will make sure we don’t catch it.”

While I ran about between meetings in a suit in 30˚ weather, Lukas was working at Sanyu Babies Home (a long-standing member of our Kampala network of projects) helping take care of 16 abandoned babies. Having the CEO of a charity for a dad means you hear lots about orphanages, but actually being in one changed Lukas’ life. Not only was he overwhelmed with the concept of babies having been abandoned by their parents, but he was overwhelmed with the task of taking care of all of them! He spent a day and a half playing with the babies and doing crowd control while the Sanyu ladies fed them. “How was it?” I asked him at the end of the day. “Noisy, but well-managed” was his very serious reply!

Kids and the World Cup

Blow your vuvuzela, get flag socks on your wing mirrors, make your way to a fan zone…the World Cup is about to arrive in Africa!

Around South Africa, the atmosphere is reaching fever pitch. Arriving in Johannesburg airport, the first thing I saw was a giant football floating in the air to let everyone know that this was a host city. Fans in all colours were queuing at immigration, the most memorable being a Mexican in his green shirt, big hat, comedy sunglasses and a replica trophy!

So who will win the World Cup? After my next flight to Cape Town, I was whisked to a church in a township that was participating in Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer. I asked the children of the township the same question, and was deafened by the shout of “South Africa!!”

Prayer at Work

God has been hearing from us a lot these past few days. Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer for children at risk was a huge success, with myriad prayer events going on around the world. We’re still waiting for news from many of these events, since it’s not uncommon for the people organising them to have no access to the internet, or even to electricity! But keep an eye on our website, since they’ll be coming through over the next couple weeks.

(Also, if you organised an event, please let us know how it went and what the results were on our feedback form!)

But for now, here are some of the things that went on during the World Weekend of Prayer that people have already told us about...

Ready, Set, PRAY!

As you may have heard, this weekend is our World Weekend of Prayer for children at risk. Around the world millions of people – the majority of them children! – will be involved in prayer events in churches, hospitals, orphanages, city streets and around breakfast tables.

But you don’t need to hold a special event to pray - if you’ve got a minute you could even just spend 60 seconds devoting prayer to children at risk. If the same numbers as last year are involved, then that would mean more than two million people taking a minute to pray – which amounts to almost 4 years’ worth of prayer for children over one weekend! Very exciting. So let’s look at what we can pray about...

Protagonismo Infantil - Child Advocates

Have you heard? Children are standing up for themselves in Bolivia and getting the word out about child rights! Through our city-wide networks of local projects and churches in Bolivia, Viva is bringing up child leaders who are making a lot of noise about their rights in their own neighbourhoods and communities.

In Bolivia, education and child health are being improved in the interest of national development. But the root problem isn’t being addressed, and Bolivia still has a culture of child neglect. UNICEF says children in Bolivia are often thought of as property, which explains the astronomical level of abuse in schools.

The easy thing to do would be to tell Bolivian adults to respect children, and then hope for the best. But that solution would hardly last generations. Instead, Viva is teaching the children themselves how to bring about change. Through our networks we’re reaching children at more than 130 local projects and 41 local churches, all over the country. This is why working together is so great – we can reach so many more children than just one project working alone.

MDG's Part 2: Universal Primary Education

It’s easy to see why eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is a good development goal. Obviously millions of children should not be constantly hungry. But why is universal primary education an achievement the world should aim for?

Education is key if you want to do more than simply interrupt the poverty cycle – and we want to smash right through it for good. People who have been educated in some way are simply more likely to find a better job, no matter where they are. They generally have a wider variety of skills and are likely to receive more opportunities, and ultimately better education often means better rates of pay.

Little Shoes on Brothel Doorsteps

Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.

Close to 100,000 girls are right now enslaved in Cambodia by sex tourism, pornography, forced child marriages and prostitution. The number of these girls who have been sold into the sex trade by members of their own families is shockingly high. Imagine the impact that would have on a little girl’s soul. Not only is her innocence taken from her, but she feels she can’t trust her own family. A typical response is to turn to drugs and forget the pain. Diseases like AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections are common. If she somehow escapes and goes home, her family and friends turn their backs on her because of her profession.

So what can we do?

David Cameron, Feeding Centres and the MDG's

Only a few days in power and already the pressure is on! Our new Prime Minister David Cameron has a huge opportunity to impress Britain and the world by doing his part to reach the United Nations’ eight Millennium Development Goals.

These goals include things like reducing child mortality, combating diseases like HIV and malaria, making sure primary education is accessible to everyone and ensuring environmental sustainability. These sound like such big objectives, but lots of great work is already going on around the world to make these goals a reality. Like what Viva is helping to do in Costa Rica to meet Goal #1- Eradicating Extreme Poverty and Hunger...

Working Kids in Bolivia

Bolivia could definitely stand to be voted Adventure Capital of the World. If you're looking for Amazon jungles or Andean peaks, this is the place for you -- just remember to bring your strongest bug spray. But is it a safe place for kids?

In Bolivia, one third of children are employed as workers in extreme conditions in places such as mines and sugar plantations -- that's 320,000 kids working from dawn till dusk for very little money. Many of them have started school, but are forced to leave to support their families.

While lots of the child workers are in the countryside, thousands of kids in Bolivia's cities are also working. Parents have to sacrifice the education of one child, usually the oldest, so that the rest can eat and go to school. Often these children go around the city streets with little carts, selling whatever they can. And it's not a big step from working on the streets to sleeping and living there full-time.

Community Albums

“I wish all adults, and parents, and all guardians, would give respect to children because at one time in the future they’ll be big, and very useful people in our communities.” ~ This is the voice of Norbert, grinning as he speaks for the children of Kampala through his very own Community Album...

A month into my stay in Kampala, things are getting really exciting. Last week I had the opportunity to meet two guys who flew here from the UK to start something called Community Albums with our network projects. Through the group of 113 projects we have linked up here in Kampala, Viva is hosting Community Albums on its first venture outside of the UK.