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.