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.

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.