Simon says ... keep children safe!

Throughout the years of my childhood I played the game ‘Simon says’ hundreds of times. You know – Simon says wave your arms in the air, Simon says stick out your tongue... But never once did I play it as part of a lesson on sexual and physical abuse.

Just before Christmas I visited a school in Manchay (a district in the desert-like hills above Lima, Peru) that is using all kinds of games, songs and stories to teach children about the value of their bodies. On the day that I was there I arrived just as a class of 10-year olds were finishing off a fairly chaotic and laughter-filled game of 'Simon says' (Simón dice in Spanish) and then watched as the teacher proceeded to relate the game to real life. 

Helping Churches Respond to War

As Viva’s International Prayer Co-ordinator, I get to travel around to conferences and events worldwide, as well as helping local children get involved in prayer right here in Oxford and throughout England. I’ve recently come back from Sri Lanka, where I was a keynote speaker for a conference on intercessory prayer for Asia. Needless to say it was exciting!


Viva doesn’t have an official network in Sri Lanka, but we’re building relationships with projects and churches around this beautiful island that want to work together to address the enormous needs facing Sri Lankan children in the aftermath of decades of war and ever-present poverty. After my speaking engagement in Colombo I did two days of workshops with children’s workers (and children!) to help the adults learn to involve children in prayer, teaching them to hear God for themselves from a young age.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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!