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.”

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.

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.