Booming bass, flashing lights, jangling pianos… help for children at risk!

Last weekend about 50 of Oxford’s music-loving 20-somethings helped to raise money for children at risk by going to a rather unusual house party....


“It all began when I bought a smoke machine back in January… you can’t have a smoke machine and not scheme about how to use it!” says self-titled ‘Event Organiser’ Chris Swinburne. “And since we know so many people who are musical and in local bands, it seemed a great idea to have a kind of house party event that could showcase that.”

4-14 European Prayer Conference: empowering youth through prayer.

“Seeing the synergy between prayer and activism was a great awakening!”

Our International Prayer Co-ordinator, Chrissie, recently had the privilege of seeing what children can accomplish for their nations when you just give them the chance.

Friday 18th - Tuesday 21st February witnessed the 1st European 4-14 Consultation of Children in Transformational Ministry, hosted by Viva and Hope for Europe. 4-14 gets its name from a variation on the 10/40 Window theme. It refers to the fact that children between the ages of 4 and 14 are the most open and receptive to every form of spiritual and developmental input.

Chrissie says, “This is an opportune window for a previously silenced group of people to become key figures of transformational ministry. God is calling us to alter the way we view children and to respond to their importance and rightful place in his kingdom.”

December December the month to remember... in Kenya

In the Manyatta slum, opportunities for children to stand up and be heard by crowds of over 800 people are pretty rare. Yet that’s exactly what 12-year old Gaya got to do at the Viva Christmas Party in his community just a few weeks ago.

Gaya’s church is part of our city-wide network in Kisumu, Kenya, and so when the network decided to hold a Christmas Party he was one of more than 700 children to attend the festivities. The meal they ate together provided a welcome change from the daily fare of maize and beans, the presents they received were, for many, the first toys they had ever owned and the games were enjoyed by attendees of all ages.

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…