WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World and affiliates like Gospel for Asia Canada) founded by Dr. K.P. Yohannan – Discussing Prina, the wife of a Gospel for Asia pastor, the struggles and poverty in the slum, her heart made willing by God to serve alongside her husband – in slum ministry and Gospel for Asia Bridge of Hope center.
Fear crept into Prina’s heart as she took in her surroundings. Before her stood thousands of tiny shacks, crammed tightly together in long rows. Large piles of garbage covered the same streets where children played. Accustomed to village life, Prina knew when she married Martin that moving to one of the largest cities in the country would bring change. But what she saw upon her arrival was nothing like what she had ever imagined.
A New World
Prina married her husband when she was 18 years old and left her rural village and all that was familiar. She didn’t realize that moving to the big city would mean living in one of Asia’s many slums—Martin’s childhood home. The depressing nature of the new surroundings intimidated Prina. Simple, everyday experiences in the slum were foreign to the young woman.
To add to the culture shock, Prina faced a major barrier: She didn’t speak the same dialect. When she found she couldn’t communicate with anyone in the slum other than Martin, the young newlywed kept to herself inside their house, hidden away from the unfamiliar world around her.
Husband Leaves for Bible College
Martin, also known as Marty, was a believer and hosted prayer meetings in their home. Then, after four years of marriage, Marty told his wife about his desire to attend a two-year Bible college.
“I was not sad, but I was overcome by fear,” Prina says. “I [was] still new to the city. I had my [oldest] son. I did not know how I was going to face the world and cope [with] the situation.”
With the help and encouragement of her in-laws, Prina said goodbye to Marty and sent him off to attend Bible college. Meanwhile, she and their son lived with Prina’s mother for two years.
A Willing Heart
When Marty graduated in 2006, God led him to stay in the slum where he grew up and start a Gospel for Asia Bridge of Hope center. Even though living in the slum was still somewhat foreign to Prina, she encouraged Marty to do what the Lord told him to do.
“He was born and grew [up] in this place, and he knew the environment and life of those people,” Prina explains. “So I encouraged him not to go elsewhere but [to] come back to the same area and do ministry.”
Serving As a Team
Nearly a decade later, their ministry has flourished. Now there are two Bridge of Hope centers and three churches led by Gospel for Asia pastors in the slum where Marty and Prina’s family lives. While she used to be afraid to leave her house, today Prina goes out into the slum with her husband and speaks to people about the love of Jesus. Marty is very supportive and encourages her often.
“My wife plays a significant role in my ministry,” Marty says. “Women are more open to listen to her than to me as a stranger. … When she shares [about Christ’s compassion], she becomes an icebreaker. She talks to them and we start building a little bit of relationship where we can share more about Jesus.”
Beginning ministry with her husband wasn’t something Prina was prepared for, though. But then she started praying.
“Lord,” she prayed, “I do not know what my future holds. But definitely, if you want me to serve you among the women I surely am open to it, but You have to give me strength and energy.”
As Prina continues to help her husband in ministry, many times people ask her and the Women’s Fellowship group for prayer. Before going to visit, Prina and the Women’s Fellowship spend a whole day fasting and asking the Lord for guidance. Then they visit with and pray for the people, giving a listening ear to their problems and telling them about the hope found in Christ.
“I am still not very confident in serving the Lord,” Prina admits, “but somehow God has touched my life, and He is using me to do ministry among women.”
God’s work in Prina’s heart is evident through her acts of love and sacrifice. Christ has replaced her fear of the unknown with His love for the brokenhearted around her.
“We don’t want to leave this place. But tomorrow, if the Lord calls us to do ministry elsewhere, then definitely we are open to that call. It’s all in God’s hands,” Prina says.
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
Learn more about Dr. KP Yohannan’s book, No Longer a Slumdog, where real children living in slum conditions in Asia share their real stories of need and how our loving God intervened to redeem them with His love. You will be astonished as you read how God is powerfully moving in hearts right now.
Click here, to read more blogs on Patheos from Gospel for Asia.
On April 29, 2017, deadly tornados struck just a few miles away from Gospel for Asia’s U.S. headquarters in Wills Point, Texas. The GFA campus lost power for three days, but we were deeply grateful to be otherwise untouched by the twisters. However, our neighboring communities were reeling from the devastation. Homes had been torn off their foundations; a car dealership was in shambles—and so were many lives.
Local churches stepped up and organized groups of people to help clear rubble from broken homes and salvage whatever belongings could be found. Gospel for Asia (GFA) staff members quickly partnered with those churches and found ways to help serve the affected communities.
Gospel for Asia staff member helps clean up homes after a tornado devastated a nearby community.
I went with one group of helpers to a neighborhood that would have been sheltered in a beautiful wood just days prior. But now the trees were splintered, and logs and branches sprawled across lawns, cars, pools and bedrooms. The furry of the storm was difficult to fathom.
I talked with tearful home owners who had to start afresh overnight. I walked through pastures and retrieved photographs, clothing, books and even a portion of a social security card.
In a storm, suddenly everything in a person’s life is laid bare and exposed.
It was a sobering experience. Tragedy had struck, but in the midst of it, I heard beautiful stories of God’s protection over the residents of the homes I helped clear away.
One father told me he arrived at a shelter just after his living room door flew through his house, crossing the hallway he had just used. At another site, a family member told me how the house had been lifted off its foundation, and the wife flew out and landed a few hundred feet away—she survived, as did her husband. Both these families were Christ followers, and they testified that God worked miracles in the midst of their storm.
As Daniel Yohannan, vice president of Gospel for Asia, wrote, gratitude works wonders in our hearts, no matter what our circumstances.
There was such love being poured out from stranger to stranger. Prayers were offered, hugs were shared, meals were provided, sweat and labor was spent tearing out soaked drywall and removing glass, stones and trees from roofless homes.
Why were strangers so eager to help? Because of compassion. And for those who belonged to neighboring churches, it was because of Christ’s compassion.
When the horrific earthquakes in Nepal in 2015 killed more than 8,000 people in four nations, GFA-supported Compassion Services teams mobilized right away to organize relief work, rescue victims and care for the grieving. They stayed to help long after the news of the earthquake left the media.
A Gospel for Asia-supported Compassion Services team provides aid to villagers in Nepal after two earthquakes shook the country.
Like the local churches in Texas who helped their tornado-victim neighbors, these workers in Nepal ministered God’s love and mercy to people in their time of great need.
More recently, episodes of flooding in Assam, India, during 2017 and other severe floods in Sri Lanka prompted Compassion Services teams to rally together to aid their communities. Although many of the relief workers were affected by the flooding as well, they set aside their own needs and worked together to bring food and shelter to many villages.
I love these Compassion Services teams. They are used by God to save lives and bring hope into desperate situations, yet they themselves are simple human beings. They may be local pastors, students in a seminary, Sunday School teachers or Bridge of Hope staff. But when disaster strikes, they become vessels of peace and comfort during a fierce storm.
Disaster relief is one of the four ministries supported through Gospel for Asia’s Compassion Services fund. The other areas of ministry—Leprosy Ministry, Slum Ministry and Medical Ministry—hold a similar purpose: giving those who are in need the chance to experience God’s provision and care.
Do you have a story you’d like to share of experiencing a natural disaster or helping provide relief and help to those in need? Please share those stories with us in the comments below!
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WILLS POINT, TX — A U.S.-based global mission agency says several of its partner churches were left “broken” by a devastating earthquake that struck remote Western Nepal Nov. 3, killing more than 150 people.
“We have also lost cherished members of our church family in this heart-wrenching tragedy,” said K.P. Yohannan (Metropolitan Yohan), founder of Texas-based GFA World (www.gfa.org). “Our prayers are with all the affected families, and we share in their grief during this most challenging time.”
GFA WORLD, LOCAL CHURCHES RUSH TO AID NEPAL QUAKE SURVIVORS: Local church teams in remote Western Nepal are desperately trying to reach villages flattened by a magnitude 6.4 earthquake last Friday night that killed more than 150 people and left thousands without shelter. GFA World (www.gfa.org) is asking for prayer and support.
According to news reports, the magnitude 6.4 quake flattened mud-and-brick homes in the rugged Jajarkot and West Rukum districts, about 300 miles west of the capital, Kathmandu. It hit just before midnight local time when most people were in bed. Tremors were felt as far away as Delhi.
GFA World reported three churches were badly affected, and in one village three church members were killed.
One Nepalese church leader told the mission organization that local Christians were “broken” by the loss of life and many severe injuries.
Local Church Members Rush to Aid Survivors
“Just like when a quake rocked Nepal in 2015, our teams immediately mobilized. Local church members are actively involved in rescue and relief efforts in the region, with thousands of people in need of food, blankets and tents after their homes were destroyed,” said Yohannan.
Because many affected villages are in remote areas impassable by vehicles, church workers have to use motorbikes to reach them, a local church leader told GFA World. The organization supports national missionaries and helps millions of the poorest people in Africa and Asia.
Within hours, one church team reached a devastated village and began distributing food.
It’s estimated in some areas up to 90% of the simple mud-and-brick dwellings collapsed.
Yohannan urged Christians to pray for those suffering and those who’ve lost loved ones in Nepal. “Let our faith guide us in extending God’s love, aid, and hope to the people of Nepal,” he said. “Together, we can help them heal.”
About GFA World (formerly Gospel for Asia)
GFA World is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national missionaries bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Africa and Asia, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in hundreds of villages and remote communities, over 40,000 clean water wells drilled since 2007, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 150,000 needy families, and teaching to provide hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through broadcast ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
GFA World’s Compassion Services is bringing Christ’s love to the suffering and needy in very practical ways. GFA-supported missionaries and volunteers assist survivors of natural disasters by providing food, water, medical care, clothing and even shelter. Teams also minister to slum dwellers and leprosy patients in some of Asia’s major cities. And all is done with a clear Gospel witness.
WILLS POINT, TX — A new three-month campaign aims to help some of the poorest families in Africa and Asia “sew their way out of poverty” — one stitch at a time.
‘SEW’ AMAZING: Texas-based mission GFA World’s “Sewing Their Way Out of Poverty” campaign aims to provide 500 new sewing machines and vocational training for 500 desperately poor families in Africa and Asia struggling to survive day-to-day. For more information, go to www.gfa.org/press/sew.
Texas-based mission GFA World’s “Sewing Their Way Out of Poverty” campaign aims to provide 500 new sewing machines and vocational training for 500 desperately poor families struggling to survive day-to-day.
“Countless people trapped in grinding poverty literally live from hand to mouth,” said GFA World founder K.P. Yohannan, also known as Metropolitan Yohan. “It breaks my heart each time I see an ocean of slum dwellings in major cities, or when I watch children digging in garbage heaps for food scraps.”
A Stitch In Time Changes Everything
A sewing machine costing $100 — way beyond the reach of most families living in Africa and Asia — can change everything, giving parents the chance to earn a consistent income sewing and mending clothes.
Subia, a young mom in Asia, was increasingly anxious about how she’d manage to feed and clothe her young daughter. She and her husband — both casual day laborers like millions of others across Africa and Asia — often went days without finding any work.
“No work means nothing to eat,” Yohannan said.
Subia tearfully shared her struggles with her local pastor. “The pastor encouraged her and told her that God has a solution for every problem we face,” Yohannan said.
Sewing A Strong Community Fabric
When the local church took part in a program distributing income-generating gifts in her community, Subia couldn’t contain her excitement when she received a sewing machine — a real, practical answer to her prayers.
“The sewing machine has changed this family’s life,” Yohannan said. “Subia no longer has to go out in search of a day-labor job. She can stay home with her daughter while she sews clothes for the people in her neighborhood.”
Each year, GFA World supporters provide life-changing, income-generating gifts — including livestock, tools, and sewing machines — for thousands of families like Subia’s. GFA World workers run tailoring classes in local communities to teach men and women sewing skills they can turn into income.
“The need is great, but so is the opportunity to rescue one family at a time from poverty through showing them the love of God and giving them the gift of a sewing machine,” said Yohannan.
GFA World (Gospel for Asia) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national missionaries bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Africa and Asia, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 880 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 163,000 needy families, and teaching that provides hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through broadcast ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news/.
Help families sew their way out of poverty! — Let’s join together to show people the compassion of Christ by providing them with a simple tool to escape poverty and exploitation: a sewing machine.
STONEY CREEK, ONTARIO — Every year GFA World and their mission partner, St Cyprian BEC, work together to bring beauty and light to their neighbourhood. One of the ways we do this is by turning three large evergreens into Christmas trees! On November 27 we held a Christmas Tree Lighting. At this event, the Christmas trees were official turned on. They will continue to shine their glorious light all night long until January 6, 2023.
Light and Warmth for All
St. Cyprian BEC begins the Advent season by hosting a community event to help bring light to our neighbourhood this Christmas.
Despite the rainy weather, everyone really enjoyed the event. Warm fellowship, friendly smiles, and hot drinks helped to bring joy to the evening. By working together with Gospel for Asia (GFA World), we seek to bring warmth and light to communities in many different nations. Recently, a local pastor and his wife were able to help bring warmth to those rag picking in their community. Through giving the simple gift of blankets to slum dwellers, they are also spreading the Light of Christmas.
Dark nights, different coloured lights, bright stars, and a simple manger scene all come together to bring beauty, joy, and light to the Stoney Creek community. At the Christmas tree lighting Homemade treats were served, hot apple cider and hot chocolate. We sang classic Christmas carols such as “Joy to the World”, “O Christmas Tree”, and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. The event was free for all, and we were happy to welcome nearly 50 guests from our community!
Public Servant Flips the Switch
Along with other community members, we were pleased to welcome Todd White and his family. Todd White is the School Board Trustee for Wards 5 and 10, Stoney Creek, and he spoke at the event. Also, he had the honour of pushing the button to officially turn on the Christmas trees. It was very exciting to see the dark night light up when they were turned on!
You can be a part of our mission to transform communities through God’s love too! By providing gifts for those in need, you can equip churches around the world to host events to bless their communities. Together, we can bring light to our communities, celebrating Christ and transforming!
About Gospel for Asia – GFA World
Gospel for Asia(GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national missionaries bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news/.
Learn more about the GFA World national missionary workers who carry a burning desire for people to know the love of God. Through their prayers, dedication and sacrificial love, thousands of men and women have found new life in Christ.
Dhitha was once a Gospel for Asia (GFA World) sponsor child herself. After finishing high school and attending college, she returned to become a teacher for other sponsored children. She is able to be a unique help as she was once in the exact situation many of these children are in right now. Dhitha, like the other teachers and social workers she serves with, loves the children in her care deeply and they are thriving as a result.
Conducted over two years, the research analyzed data from six countries (Bolivia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, the Philippines and Uganda) for children sponsored by Compassion International. In an abstract, Wydick, University of Minnesota professor Paul Glewwe and USF graduate student Laine Rutledge wrote, “Early evidence suggests that these impacts are due, in part, to increases in children’s aspirations.”21
One media report said about the study:
To give you some specific statistics, it was found that formerly sponsored children stayed in school…
were 27 to 40 percent more likely to finish secondary school than those who were not enrolled in the Child Sponsorship Program;
were 50 to 80 percent more likely to complete a university education than non-sponsored children.22
In some respects, the ministry’s projects are similar to government and international programs that promote education, Wydick and his associates wrote in their 2013 paper, published in the Journal of Political Economy. Sponsors pay for children’s school tuition and program, nutritious meals, health care and tutoring. However, they added, what distinguishes Compassion from most government, international, and some other sponsorship programs is children spending at least eight hours a week in an intensive after-school program that emphasizes spiritual, physical and socioemotional development23.
“In the sample, the average duration of sponsorship was 9.3 years,” they wrote. “So … by the end of their childhood, sponsored children have participated in about 4,000 hours of Compassion programming, including extra activities such as retreats and camps. A primary objective of this extended contact is to raise the child’s self-esteem, aspirations, and self-expectations.”24
“Locally-run child sponsorship [programs] that invest in the lives of children over a number of years ensure that these children do not fall through the cracks. They grow up better educated, healthier, more confident and spiritually connected.”
Ian McInnes, former CEO of Tearfund—a charity that partners with churches in 50 of the world’s poorest countries—said the study was a particularly heartening one that illustrated why the London-based group and Compassion choose to work directly with children in need.27
Paul Brown spent over 15 years serving as CEO for ChildFund New Zealand and helping to grow it into one of the country’s leading international aid agencies. Photo by ChildFund.org.nz
It wasn’t just sponsorship organizations that lauded the study. BBC News interviewed a former Compassion sponsoree named Peace Ruharuza, who grew up in Uganda and later moved to the United Kingdom before returning to her homeland to raise her three children.29 The charity she founded, Fountain of Peace Children’s Foundation, is still in operation. Based in the UK, it provides support for children across the Kyenjojo region of western Uganda. One of 14 children, Peace spent much of her childhood passed around between family members and experienced considerable neglect and abuse. Sponsored by a Canadian family at the age of nine, she told BBC that sponsorship gave her the boost she needed: “It gave a new lease in life, helped me become what I am and to change a generation.”30
A tsunami hit Sir Lanka at the end of 2004 leaving devastation and refugees in its wake throughout the country. The slum area where this girl lives was no different. Gospel for Asia (GFA World) began their sponsorship program here shortly after the disaster and it became a long-lasting benefit and blessing to the community.
Another abstract by Wydick, Rutledge and USF graduate student Joanna Chu outlined how child sponsorship programs have been in existence since the 1930s. Over the next 75 years, they grew to the extent that nearly 3.5 million children in developing countries are now sponsored through the eight largest sponsorship programs.31
They said this means that a conservative estimate would put the current flow of funds to sponsored children from developed countries at $1.6 billion US per year, with total international transfers over the past two decades at $30 billion US. Given this “non-trivial” flow of resources, Wydick’s group said it was surprising that so little had been done to evaluate the impact of sponsorship programs.32
The exception: a randomized field experiment looking at the impacts of a Dutch program that funded new classroom construction. The program also gave students in randomly selected schools a $6 uniform and $3.44 in textbooks. That study found that even low-cost interventions resulted in beneficiaries attending school half a year longer than in the control group and advancing a third of a grade further in their education.33
In their study focused on Uganda, Wydick’s group found that
child sponsorship increased formal education by 2.9 years over a base of 8.4 years,
increased the probability of formal employment to 72.1 percent from a base of 55.15 percent,
and increased the probability of white collar employment to 37.1 percent from 19.1 percent.
They also found modest evidence that sponsored children lived in higher-quality homes as adults, were more likely to use mosquito nets (a simple tool to prevent mosquito borne illnesses), and were less likely to smoke or drink alcohol.34
Ironically, even though sponsorship has been around for so long, it isn’t necessarily understood, according to a 2017 study of 1,000 American charitable donors. The study was completed by Grey Matter Research Consulting of Phoenix and Opinions 4 Good, a philanthropic online market research firm based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It found that while 87 percent of American donors were aware of child sponsorship, only 24 percent felt very familiar with it.35
The Donor Mindset Study found that, overall, 74 percent of all donors believe child sponsorship is a legitimate, credible way of helping children in need, yet only 26 percent believe that strongly. Among people who were currently sponsoring a child, 98 percent believed that sponsorship is legitimate and credible, but only 68 percent felt that strongly. The other 30 percent had some doubts.36
“Most donors are aware of sponsorship and are generally positive toward it, but there is not a lot of real familiarity with how it works,” Sellers said. “It’s notable that most donors don’t hold any of their positive or negative perceptions about sponsorship strongly, but only somewhat. That shows a lot of donors aren’t entirely sure of their position on child sponsorship. … The interest is there but so are doubts or concerns. It would be wise for sponsorship organizations to explore deeply what these obstacles are and how they can effectively overcome them.”38
“I have seen these meetings take place dozens of times and I can tell you it is powerful every single time. There’s nothing like watching a sponsor hug his/her sponsored child for the first time.”
Despite such ambivalence, researchers found mechanisms that allow donors to be able to visit their child (offered by major sponsor organizations) serve as a “sort of warranty” for donors. Eighty-one percent of donors say the ability to visit their sponsored child makes sponsorship more legitimate and believable.39
Indeed, a national magazine story about the Donor Mindset Study quoted Compassion International spokesperson Tim Glenn about the difference this option makes: “I have seen these meetings take place dozens of times and I can tell you it is powerful every single time. There’s nothing like watching a sponsor hug his/her sponsored child for the first time. Sponsors can walk into the classrooms at the Compassion child development center and see the very desk where their child sits. They can meet the volunteers who cook hot meals for the child or chat with the teachers who give their time to tutor and mentor each child. It’s a life-changing experience for everyone involved.”40
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 880 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 163,000 needy families, and teaching to provide hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through broadcast ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of this GFA World Special Report: Child Sponsorship — Does it Lift the Young Out of Poverty?—Part 1, Part 3
Wydick, Bruce; Glewwe, Paul; and Rutledge, Laine. “Does international child sponsorship work? A six-country study of impacts on adult life outcomes.” Journal of Political Economy. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/670138. April 2013.
Wydick, Bruce; Glewwe, Paul; and Rutledge, Laine. “Does international child sponsorship work? A six-country study of impacts on adult life outcomes.” Journal of Political Economy. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/670138. April 2013.
Wydick, Bruce; Glewwe, Paul; and Rutledge, Laine. “Does international child sponsorship work? A six-country study of impacts on adult life outcomes.” Journal of Political Economy. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/670138. April 2013.
Wydick, Bruce; Rutledge, Laine; and Chu, Joanna. “Does child sponsorship work? Evidence from Uganda using a regression continuity design,” (pg. 1). University of California. http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/bardhan/wydick.pdf. May 2009.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Wydick, Bruce; Rutledge, Laine; and Chu, Joanna. “Does child sponsorship work? Evidence from Uganda using a regression continuity design,” (cover pg.). University of California. http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/bardhan/wydick.pdf. May 2009.
WILLS POINT, TX — For the world’s poorest children, one thing increases their chances of graduating from university by up to 80% — being sponsored by someone in the U.S. or other Western country.
A new report (http://www.gfa.org/press/sponsor) says research conducted in six developing countries around the world over a two-year period suggests the sponsor-a-child model adopted by many leading nonprofit organizations makes “significant impacts” on sponsored children’s education, health, well-being, and aspirations.
Researchers from the University of San Francisco (USF) and University of Minnesota found sponsored children in South Asia, Africa and Latin America stayed in school longer, were much more likely to complete high school, and were 50-80% more likely to graduate from university, says global mission agency GFA World (Gospel for Asia).
Child sponsorship “provides the opportunity to go to school, receive basic healthcare, and have clean water–meeting whatever needs the child’s community might have,” he said. “It turns utter despair to remarkable hope. Many sponsored children grow up to be teachers, nurses, and even doctors.”
Sponsored children — most of them supported by donors in the U.S., Canada and other Western countries — show “higher levels of self-esteem, aspirations and self-expectations, and lower levels of hopelessness,” says the report titled Child Sponsorship Helps Lift the Young Out of Cycle of Poverty (http://www.gfa.org/press/sponsor).
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) donors have helped support 142,000 children across South Asia, and the organization aims to sponsor 500,000 children worldwide by 2030.
GFA World (Gospel for Asia) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In a typical year, this includes thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 880 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 163,000 needy families, and teaching to provide hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through broadcast ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, has been the model for numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to help the poor and deprived worldwide, issued this final part of a Special Report on the world’s greatest ‘badge of shame’: Children in Crisis.
Each of their children were suffering and it was all preventable…if only they had clean water. But their nearest source was a contaminated pond and it wasn’t always possible to walk the 3-6 miles to reach safer water, so they drank what was poisoning them. One day though, everything changed.
Kids at Risk of Sexual Exploitation
For millions of children around the world, hunger, thirst and disease are just three of life’s cruel injustices. They are, however, not the vilest or the most horrific.
These three children are safe for now in a loving family in the state of Haryana, India, but millions of other kids around the globe ages 10-17 are at risk of sexual exploitation or enforced prostitution.
A report on child trafficking by UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, says:
“Sexual activity is often seen as a private matter, making communities reluctant to act and intervene in cases of sexual exploitation. These attitudes make children more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Myths, such as the belief that HIV/AIDS can be cured through sex with a virgin, technological advances such as the internet [that] has facilitated child pornography, and sex tourism targeting children, all add to their vulnerability.”[32]
UNICEF’s report highlights the following highly disturbing facts:
Mexico’s social service agency reports more than 16,000 children engage in prostitution, with most of them active in tourist destinations.
In Lithuania, 20-50 percent of prostitutes are believed to be children, some as young as 11. Kids from orphanages and children’s homes are especially at-risk, and 10-12 year-olds have been used to make pornographic movies.
National Geographic tells the harrowing story of “S” in Asia (name withheld) who left home at the age of 12 with a family acquaintance who promised to find her a job in the city. She was sold to a brothel where she was kept as a sex slave for two years before the police freed her and sent her to a shelter. Six months later, “S” met a woman who promised to take her back home to her family—but sold her to another brothel instead.[34]
The young and unprotected are easy targets for those who would carry out unspeakable atrocities against them.
The shameful catalog of sexual abuse against unprotected girls is a global disgrace.[35]
According to the Korea Future Initiative (KFI), North Korean girls who escape across the border to China are forced to stay “invisible” and often end up in brothels and the cybersex trade. “Girls as young as 9 are forced to perform graphic sex acts and are sexually assaulted in front of webcams, which are live-streamed to a paying global audience,” says KFI.[36]
In Haiti, many young girls enter into “survival prostitution” because they have no other way to feed themselves.
A church leader in Haiti explained to me: “Let’s say that a girl does not eat for a day. She’s hungry but she will survive. However, the next day, she has nothing to eat. Now, she has gone two days without food. A married man asks her, ‘Can I take you to a restaurant?’ She will not say ‘no.’ The next day, he offers to buy her clothes… a nice dress. Do you think she will say ‘no’? Before long, she is his mistress. She has become dependent on him for food and clothing. This happens all the time in Haiti.
“Many girls practice prostitution in our cities and even in our churches. Their parents encourage them because they are desperate for food, so they encourage their 15-year-old daughters to have sex to bring in money. It’s a desperation trade: ‘You help me, and I will have sex with you.’”
In Haiti, these child sex workers are known as “Degaje.“ In the local Creole language, the term refers to sex workers in survival mode. Their families are known as “Brase,” also a reference to being in a state of survival. Hence, Haitians talk about “Degaje” from “Brase” families.
In nations around the globe, poverty also leads to child marriages, with men frequently marrying girls under the age of 13. According to a report by Gospel for Asia (GFA World), there are as many as 650 million “child brides” in the world today, including adult women who married in childhood.[37]In 2020, a startling report by CBS News stated that one in every five children in the world is married.[38]
“Globally, millions of girls—a number so vast as to defy comprehension—are trapped in a web of exploitation,” said Yohannan. “Girls living in areas of political instability, conflict, or oppression are especially vulnerable to forced marriage and sex slavery.”
In 2014, the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram terrorists grabbed the news headlines, but globally the ongoing, rampant abuse of girls continues largely under the radar:
In Bangladesh, a survey of 375 sex workers revealed nearly half of them were child brides, married as young as 11, and trafficked into prostitution.
In China, sex-selective abortions resulted in a national shortage of women, fueling demand for child brides and sex workers.[39]
In the U.S., more than 200,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2015. Most were girls and more than 80 percent were married to an adult, CBS News reported.[40]
In Southeast Asia, 13-year-old Min Min searches for precious stones at a quarry. In 2020, at least 160 people were killed by a mudslide at a jade mine in the region where he lives. “We risk our lives for these stones,” Min Min said. “A man died last night … I saw it with my own eyes.”[42]
Facing neglect and physical abuse, these children are known as “rest avek,” translated “stay with,” and are treated essentially as slaves, expected to rise early each day to do the most menial chores.
Real-life Cinderellas
These real-life Cinderellas don’t have the opportunity to attend school, so they have virtually no chance of escaping their situation.
Bhil boy works in the brick making factory alongside other adults and children.
“Haitians dream of escape,” one Haitian man in the capital Port-au-Prince told me. “If you look at Haitian paintings, many of them depict the ocean. The ocean represents escape… liberty. For Haitians, the outside world is paradise; Haiti is hell.”
But for Haiti’s “rest avek” children and millions more trapped in exploitive labor around the world, there is no escape.
In Asia, nine-year-old Lakshmi worked in a factory as a cigarette roller. But it’s her 10-year-old sister she’s most worried about.
“Every morning at 7 a.m. she goes to the bonded labor man, and every night at 9 p.m. she comes home,” Lakshmi said. “He treats her badly. He hits her if he thinks she’s working slowly, or, if she talks to the other children, he yells at her. He comes looking for her if she’s sick and can’t go to work.”
“I don’t care about school or playing. I don’t care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home. For 600 rupees [about $8] I can bring her home—that is our only chance to get her back. We don’t have 600 rupees … we will never have 600 rupees.”[43]
A better life seems like a far-fetched dream to children like Lakshmi and her sister in Asia. At the root of their despair is grinding poverty.
Working with community leaders, solutions like basic health care, food, clean water and educational and community service opportunities help break the cycle of generational poverty.
Two young impoverished children in Karnataka, India convey the wonderful beauty found in every child, no matter their station in life.
Our world bears a great “badge of shame” for its appalling neglect of and cruel injustice toward children in every nation, on every continent. But there’s an opportunity for redemption—and each of us can do our part.
In Kampala’s Kisenyi slum, one lonely street boy about 10 years old caught my attention as he sat in the dirt, wearing only torn rags. His leg was badly injured, split open, and flies had gathered on the gaping wound. He was inhaling fuel from a plastic bottle to dull the pain. As I crouched beside him, he told me he’d been run over by a car. The driver hadn’t bothered to stop. Maybe God put me on this earth for this very moment? It was, perhaps, the first time someone had actually cared about this boy, the first time he’d experienced God’s love through another human being. It was an honor to clean and bandage his wound. At that moment, God broke my heart for the suffering children of this world. But He did more than that—He showed me that every child reveals His beauty, even when they’re dressed in filthy rags and lying in the gutter.
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of Gospel for Asia’s Special Report: Children in Crisis — World’s Greatest ‘Badge of Shame’ —Part 1, Part 2
Learn more about the GFA World Bridge of Hope program and how you can make an incredible difference in the lives of children, bringing hope to their lives and their families, transforming communities.
Learn how to provide a chance for children without sponsors. When you give to help unsponsored children, you help supplement the lack of resources when children in Asia don’t have the sponsors they need to stay in a Bridge of Hope center.
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, which inspired numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to assist the poor and deprived worldwide, issued this 2nd part of a Special Report on the world’s greatest ‘badge of shame’: Children in Crisis.
Without much to call their own, these two boys hold tightly to each other. The streets are a dangerous place for anyone to live, but even more so for vulnerable, and often exploited children.
Child Sacrifice: Boy’s Head ‘Sold by Father For $2,000’
Other street boys, Kandwanaho told me, fall victim to Uganda’s sinister underworld of child sacrifice. With its roots in witchcraft, child sacrifice is still practiced among both the poor and the rich. Wealthy businessmen abduct a young street boy with few physical blemishes, have him beheaded and then bury the boy’s head under the foundation of a new building “to bring them luck” with their new money-making venture, Kandwanaho said.
A report by ABC Newstells the story of a young mother who found the headless body of her 17-month-old son in a shallow grave in a banana plantation in her rural village near the Congo border. “I pulled my son’s body out of the soil,” she said. “I realized he had no head.” The child’s killer turned out to be his own father, who was given $2,000 by a rich businessman in return for the boy’s head.[16]
Atrocities against street children are not confined to any single country. In Brazil, news reports tell of organized “death squads” that deliberately seek out and murder street children viewed as nothing more than garbage littering the streets.[17]
Kandwanaho showed me where his friends sometimes sleep inside giant, used tractor tires, piled up in a yard. One night, they were swept up in a police “clean-up” operation and transported to a children’s detention center outside Kampala. Every year, hundreds of street kids end up in “remand” centers, juvenile prisons, where they can be detained for months or even years without a court hearing. Their crime? Often, it’s just living or begging on the streets and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sixty Feet serves in the midst of pain and hurt to help bring smiles back to the children most of their society has written off or forgotten. Photo by Sixty Feet
Nonprofit organizations such as Sixty Feet seek to help children in the prison facilities. Their vision is to “provide a Gospel-centered continuum of care for critically vulnerable children that includes minimizing contact with the law, providing for critical needs, and supporting long-term restoration.”[18]
In Uganda, many street kids are from the northern Karamojong tribe.[19] They’ve fled the underdeveloped, famine-prone region to come to the capital, where they live in crowded slums, such as the Katwe slum featured in the Disney movie Queen of Katwe, and beg at the intersections. These beautiful children, especially the girls, are extremely vulnerable to sexual predators.
Every month, scores of Karamojong children and families arrive in Kampala, putting more pressure on the slums and increasing the number of kids competing for handouts.
Kids as young as 3 wander along the streets, their hands outstretched, narrowly avoiding the perilous open drainage ditches. If they collect a few thousand Ugandan shillings, maybe 50 cents or a dollar, it goes straight to their parent or someone posing as a parent. Mostly, though, they’re ignored by passers-by and motorists, many of whom believe they’re simply feeding the problem and incentivizing begging if they give a handout.
This exodus of children from poorer, rural areas to the cities in search of food and work is not unique to Uganda. It’s a global phenomenon in poor, underdeveloped countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Small fingers reach through the jeep’s open window. These children shift through the busy traffic in Maharashtra risking life and limb in hopes a few rupees will be slipped their way.
Children at Risk of Starvation
Haitian children walk by ‘mud cakes’ drying in the sun. The cakes, made of dirt, salt and oil, make a cheap food to stave off hunger. At 2 cents each, they’re the only affordable food option for thousands of Cite Soleil kids at risk and other impoverished residents. Photo by Crossroads Foundation, Flickr
When crops fail due to drought or other calamity, or work opportunities dry up, children and their parents often face a stark choice: move… or starve.
In Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, I’ve watched children eat “mud cakes,” sun-dried cakes made from dirt mixed with salt, water and a little margarine.[21] Mud cakes are a symbol of the despair children face in this Caribbean island nation—a sense of hopelessness that continues into adulthood.
“Ask a Haitian, ‘what do you think you’ll be doing in five years?’ and he will laugh,” a Haitian doctor told me. “Our people do not think about tomorrow; we do not plan for the future. We live from day to day. We are a people in survival mode.”
The Texas-based agency has distributed food to tens of thousands of families on the edge of starvation in Asia and Africa, filling a critical gap for parents facing the near-impossible task of feeding their children amid total loss of income and with no safety net to fall back on. “The situation in our village is terrible,” one parent told Gospel for Asia (GFA World). “We don’t have any work and we’re unable to provide food.”
Child hunger is also growing in rich nations, such as the U.S., where more than 11 million children live in “food insecure” homes and don’t have enough to eat, according to the U.S. Government.[22] A staggering 18 million children in the U.S. could go hungry in 2021 because of the pandemic’s economic impact, according to the No Kid Hungry campaign.[23] In the U.K., 1.8 million school-age children—one in every five kids—is at risk of hunger.[24]
Thirsty? How About a Cup of Feces-contaminated Water?
Sinduhli, Nepal, March 2021: As the water levels underground start shrinking, people collect water from small puddles in the forest for drinking. This small boy was asked by his parents, who were working in the fields, to fetch water for drinking from a puddle in the hills. But the water collected from these open puddles can be full of germs and bacteria, as other animals and birds use them too, often causing fatal illnesses.
Hunger is dreadful, but for millions of children, the most immediate threat to their health and survival is the lack of safe drinking water. A staggering 2 billion people, mostly in Africa and Asia, get their drinking water from feces-contaminated ponds and watering holes, leading to often-fatal diseases such as cholera and dysentery. Children under the age of 5 are the most at-risk.[25] The World Health Organization (WHO) says nearly one in every three people in the world doesn’t have access to safe drinking water,[26] and the U.N. predicts that by the year 2050 up to 5.7 billion people worldwide could be affected by water shortages.[27] Drinking contaminated water can lead to many deadly diseases, such as typhoid, hepatitis A, and diarrhea. Globally, diarrhea kills almost 2,200 children every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).[28]
Organizations like World Vision and Gospel for Asia (GFA World) have made clean drinking water a top priority.
GFA World drills about 4,000 new community wells called “Jesus Wells” every year, providing safe drinking water for entire villages. Over the past two decades, the organization has drilled more than 30,000 wells and distributed more than 58,000 BioSand water filters that remove 98 percent of water impurities.[29]
The organization’s Jesus Wells supply safe drinking water to approximately 37.5 million people across Asia—roughly equivalent to the entire population of California.
Dr. K.P. Yohannan, GFA Founder
“We offer clean, life-giving water to all people,” says Gospel for Asia (GFA World) founder, K.P. Yohannan (Metropolitan Yohan). “The Lord has used our efforts to bring clean water to the suffering. They receive healthy, life-sustaining support. This gift of free water is one more way we are able to demonstrate the love of Jesus for those in need.”
Jesus Wells are deep wells, drilled in remote villages in Asia where girls often have to trek miles on foot every day to the nearest watering hole or pond to fetch water, putting themselves at risk of sexual assault and even tiger attacks.
“Our family members were suffering from diarrhea and other [waterborne] diseases,” says Arnab, father of three girls and a boy, describing the difference a Jesus Well has made in his village. “Our children who were sick are healthy now.”
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of Gospel for Asia’s Special Report: Children in Crisis — World’s Greatest ‘Badge of Shame’ —Part 1, Part 3
Learn more about the GFA World Bridge of Hope program and how you can make an incredible difference in the lives of children, bringing hope to their lives and their families, transforming communities.
Learn how to provide a chance for children without sponsors. When you give to help unsponsored children, you help supplement the lack of resources when children in Asia don’t have the sponsors they need to stay in a Bridge of Hope center.
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, whose heart to love and help the poor has inspired numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to serve the deprived and downcast worldwide, issued this first part of a Special Report on the world’s greatest ‘badge of shame’: Children in Crisis.
Migrant children and their desperate parents enter the U.S. illegally on June 15, 2019 by crossing the Rio Grande in rubber boats near Los Ebanos, Texas. Photo by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Flickr
Another young mother from Central America thought she was on the cusp of giving her 9-year-old daughter a better life in the United States. They’d traveled a long, perilous journey and had just one more hurdle to cross: the Rio Grande River separating Mexico from Texas. Tragically, it was a step too far. The little girl apparently drowned before reaching the other side, NBC News reported.[2]
Desperate to escape extreme poverty and surging gang violence in their native countries, thousands of migrant children from Latin America continue to flock to the U.S. southern border, with or without their parents. The journey is fraught with dangers that include becoming prey for human traffickers and ruthless drug cartels en route.[3] Every day in Spring 2021, U.S. border officials were detaining more than 600 unaccompanied migrant children trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, with many children risking their lives to do so.[4] According to a CNN report in April 2021, there were more than 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of U.S. officials at that time.[5]
The plight and peril of migrant children seeking refuge in the U.S. is a stark reminder that “children in crisis” are not restricted to far-away countries.
Children are in crisis right on our doorstep, in our own neighborhoods, wherever we live in the world. And the problem is growing worse. Until we take steps to protect and prioritize children, their neglect will be a shameful legacy for the nations of our world.
SANTA TERESA, N.M. – U.S. Border Patrol Agents responded to a potentially life-threatening situation involving two female tender-aged toddlers mistreated and abandoned by human smugglers just west of Mt. Cristo Rey. Camera technology observed a smuggler dropping two young kids from the top of the 14-foot-high border barrier, and then immediately fleeing the area after abandoning the helpless little girls on the north side of the international boundary line around March 30, 2021. Video by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs – Visual Communications Division, dvidshub.net
The sight is too much to bear for many Western visitors: A frantic teenage mother, with a newborn strapped to her back, looking for a handout to feed herself and keep her tiny baby alive.
But this real-life scene often isn’t what it appears to be. The baby is not hers. She has actually rented the newborn from its mother or guardian so that her pleas for help solicit greater sympathy from passersby.
Renting out “babies-to-beg” is a common practice in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, where hundreds of children and teenagers from outlying areas—some with parents, many without—descend on the city in the hopes of scraping together money for food. Every day the ritual is the same: hustle, beg, scavenge or steal to survive.
If she’s fortunate, this desperate teenage girl, who is extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation and prostitution, will solicit enough sympathy to purchase a Rolex. Not the luxury wristwatch Rolex you and I might think of, but an egg-filled chapatti, similar to a burrito, that’s served on nearly every street corner.
That so many of the world’s children in crisis live without compassionate considerations or safeguards from harm is tantamount to being one the world’s greatest “badges of shame.”
They’re among the estimated 1.2 billion children worldwide who are considered “at risk,” vulnerable to a host of calamities, abuse, hunger and diseases—a toxic combination driven largely by poverty and supercharged by the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
The 2021 Save the Children Global Childhood Report highlights the toughest places on Earth to be a child, and examines the many factors that rob children of their childhoods and reveals where greater investments are needed to save children from poverty, discrimination and neglect. Photo by Save the Children
Perhaps surprisingly to some of our readers, the United States is ranked 43rd on the list, behind Russia, Lebanon and Belarus. According to Save the Children’s report, “The United States badly trails many other advanced countries in helping children reach their full potential.” Nonetheless, it ranks among the top 47 countries in the world where relatively few children miss out on their childhoods. The report states, “Countries with similar scores include Bahrain, China, Montenegro, Qatar, Russia, and Slovakia.”[10]
Save the Children says millions of children are being “robbed of the childhoods they deserve.” The agency states that every child has a right to childhood free from fear, safe from violence, protected from abuse and exploitation.
The concept of childhood is defined in the (U.N.) Convention on the Rights of the Child. It represents a shared vision of childhood: healthy children in school and at play, growing strong and confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended community of caring adults, gradually taking on the responsibilities of adulthood.[11]
But, the report acknowledges, “This ideal contrasts starkly with the childhood many experience.”[12]
These children, just like almost every child in their Haryana slum, set out early each morning in search of garbage in their area. They go around looking for empty plastic bottles, cans, metal, and the like which they then can sell to make a little money to help their families.
Fatherless Kids in Crisis: The ‘Epidemic’ of the Street Children
Around the world, one of the most critical issues affecting children is the surge in the number of kids living on the streets, with no one to protect them or care for them.
Child abandonment is a worldwide crisis. Globally, the “epidemic” of absent fathers, especially, is a major cause of child neglect, often leaving children without a male role model, protector and provider.[13]
Combined with the tribal practice of having multiple wives or concubines, it’s not unusual in some African countries for one man to produce upwards of 30 children.[14] Many of these children grow up never having any relationship with their father, or even knowing who their father is.
An abandoned child sits alone and neglected next to open sewage in the slums of Kamapala, Uganda in July 2007. Photo by SuSanA Secretariat, Flickr
A report published in 2020 by the African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect revealed that child neglect and sexual violence were the biggest issues facing kids growing up in Uganda, one of the lowest-ranking countries.[15] In 2015, a study of street children in the capital city of Kampala revealed that most kids, the large majority being boys, began their life on the streets between the ages of 5 and 10. Seven out of every 10 street kids had come to Kampala by public taxi or bus. They came for a myriad of reasons. Some came to find work and advance their prospects; others were orphans or victims of abuse or neglect who’d fled horrible home environments; and then there were the rebels and runaways. Almost two-thirds of the kids had lived on the streets for at least a year, and many of them had been on the streets for four years or more. More than half of the children reported they’d been physically abused on the streets, and one in every four said they’d suffered sexual abuse.
Many street boys have nothing more than torn rags or sackcloth to wear as clothes and no shoes on their feet, leaving them vulnerable to puncture wounds that quickly become infected, causing their feet to swell grotesquely. Many of them carry a constant companion tucked inside their ragged clothing—a plastic bottle containing fuel, dipped in a filthy piece of cloth. Every few minutes, they inhale the fumes from the bottle, their eyes floating upwards as the cheap “drug” takes effect. It’s the only way they know to dull their senses and take away the pain and suffering in their lives.
Young Kandwanaho (not pictured) fights for survival by working excruciatingly long hours searching for cardboard to sell. Sometimes he has nothing to show for it at the end of the day and, if so, goes hungry. But even on the days when he makes enough to eat, Kandwanaho still has to join the thousands of other children searching the streets of Kampala for somewhere safe to wait out the night.
I once met a boy named Kandwanaho who told me how he searches the alleys of Kampala from daybreak until dusk, collecting discarded cardboard boxes. He visits the alleyways behind the local market stalls and shops, picking up boxes that once held soap, sodas or other goods. Sometimes, he’ll “strike gold” and find a giant TV box. When he’s gathered several boxes, he takes them to the sprawling downtown marketplace, known as Owino Market, and sells the cardboard to the shoe salesmen. They cut the cardboard into sole-size pieces and slide the card into the footwear to help the shoes keep their shape. If Kandwanaho works a 12-hour shift, he makes just over one dollar.
There are times he roams the streets alone all day—dodging taxis, stubbing his bare toes on the cracked roads, inhaling exhaust fumes, hoarse from thirst—and does not find a single box to recycle. On those days, he has nothing to eat unless he dives into the garbage piles to search for a scrap of anything edible among the competing stray dogs and cockroaches.
For Kandwanaho, and many like him, the most troubling time is nightfall as the city’s hectic rhythm subsides. It’s as if everyone is returning home, except for the kids who live on the streets. They have nobody, and nowhere to call home. The dimming light is their cue to find a place in a drainage ditch or empty shack for the night. It’s their hour to poke around the trash piles for any bits of food ditched at the end of the day. As the light fades, their reality mirrors the approaching darkness.
In Uganda, because street boys are viewed by many business owners as thieves and troublemakers, they’re chased off, beaten up and, in extreme cases, even murdered. The reality that human life is cheap and expendable on Kampala’s volatile streets is clearly evident.
As the lowest of the low, street kids are most often the “whipping boys” when anything goes wrong. Kandwanaho told me that a group of his friends were once caught stealing copper pipes they intended to sell. They were kicked in the head, beaten unconscious, soaked in gasoline and set alight, Kandwanaho recalled tearfully. At their burial in a paupers’ graveyard, he and other street boys were the only mourners present.
GFA World (www.gfa.org) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of Gospel for Asia’s Special Report: Children in Crisis — World’s Greatest ‘Badge of Shame’ —Part 2, Part 3
Learn more about the GFA World Bridge of Hope program and how you can make an incredible difference in the lives of children, bringing hope to their lives and their families, transforming communities.
Learn how to provide a chance for children without sponsors. When you give to help unsponsored children, you help supplement the lack of resources when children in Asia don’t have the sponsors they need to stay in a Bridge of Hope center.
Along with other community members, we were pleased to welcome Todd White and his family. Todd White is the School Board Trustee for Wards 5 and 10, Stoney Creek, and he spoke at the event. Also, he had the honour of pushing the button to officially turn on the Christmas trees. It was very exciting to see the dark night light up when they were turned on!
“Many girls practice prostitution in our cities and even in our churches. Their parents encourage them because they are desperate for food, so they encourage their 15-year-old daughters to have sex to bring in money. It’s a desperation trade: ‘You help me, and I will have sex with you.’”
But this real-life scene often isn’t what it appears to be. The baby is not hers. She has actually rented the newborn from its mother or guardian so that her pleas for help solicit greater sympathy from passersby.
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