Abandoned-Orphaned

The Chain (part two)

Jullio was brought to his current home by a woman claiming to be his mother. She signed a document asserting that she was abandoning him to their care due to extreme poverty and an inability to care for an impaired child. The home soon figured out that the woman was not who she claimed to be and that Julio was, in effect, dumped into their care as a result of a trafficking deal gone bad.

Born for cash, Julio now inhabits this world as a child struggling for identity and answers. This apparently triggers anger to well up in him, causing difficulty for the home and for the other children who are now part of his family. Those children receive less attention and care as the family devotes additional time and energy to address Julio’s special needs.

It is indeed a chain – a wicked one where every link tugs and pulls at others. Despite much love and counseling Julio may never feel whole. And the home’s other children, rightly or wrongly, may never feel that they got the attention they deserved because of his presence.

Lives are not things to be tinkered with. And they’re certainly not to be initiated for trade. Perhaps Julio’s mother rationalized her actions by believing that he would be raised in a wealthy American home. Maybe she figured that he would cast an unseen legacy, as a child that would find knowledge and prosperity that greatly surpasses her own.

She got it wrong...to a degree.

If not for the church, Julio might have been sold as a slave laborer or, far worse, as a sex toy for a rich Guatemalan pedophile. He could have just as easily been left on the pavement, like other children we have encountered throughout Central America. As a street child with a disability, Julio would have left a far worse legacy that his mother could have ever imagined. Her baby boy, the fruit of her womb, would have suffered abuse upon abuse...while the money in her pocket had long since vanished.

The Chain (part one)

Although we were told he has violent tendencies, Julio presented himself as a jovial and pleasant young boy. He stroked and tugged at my arm while continuously begging to have his picture taken. His broad smile was comprised of a mouthful of crooked teeth framed by parenthetical dimples. Just eight years old, he lives with fourteen other children at a church home we funded a few years ago near Guatemala City.

Julio was bred for a business transaction. His mother received money to get pregnant on the condition that she would turn over the newborn to a crime ring that specialized in sourcing children for international adoption. Sometimes these women collaborated with their boyfriends or husbands. Sometimes they were prostitutes that used unprotected sex to score a bigger payday. And sometimes they were conveniently impregnated by members of the crime syndicates. In all cases, poverty drove their decision to turn womb from incubator to factory.

As agreed, Julio’s mother relinquished her infant to an intermediary that would temporarily raise him before his sale to a home for ‘orphaned and abandoned’ children. There he would stay until a lucrative adoption could be arranged.

Julio’s intermediary owners soon began to suspect that he might have some sort of disability. Once confirmed, they were unable to pass him down the supply chain. The final organization wouldn’t take him. He was damaged goods with a no-return policy.

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

Would You Press the Button? (part two)

I see the button as an allegory, a metaphor of sorts.

The fact of the matter is that we press that button every day.

As we go about our daily lives of comfort and excess, without consideration of how our choices and actions might impact others, we adversely affect ‘strangers’ the world over.

When we buy a new bathroom rug because the last one is apparently out of style, we keep an eight year-old boy, Rajan, chained to a loom in Nepal.

When we pick up a latte from our favorite barista, we fuel a conglomerate that forces Juan, a poor Costa Rican coffee grower, to sell at prices far below what would allow him to afford that same cup of coffee for himself.

When we buy the latest fancy T-Shirt with gold embossing at XYZ Casuals, we rob Ajay from ever leaving the cotton plantation that holds him and his sisters in perpetual bondage in South India.

When we go on an exotic spa vacation to Southeast Asia, we entrap Isra, a fifteen year-old Thai girl from the impoverished hill tribes, in a world of daily violation and exploitation.

When we visit that adult Website that our teachers warned us about, we enable pornographers to imprison a scared teenage girl, Imana, in a Burundian hotel room for three days, robbing her of her innocence and privacy.

When we choose to adopt a child from a country with a less-than-reputable child-placement program, we cause Esmeralda to reluctantly give up her new baby girl in Latin America.

When we select that rare hardwood for our kitchen cabinets because it nicely matches the existing wallpaper and is much grander than the neighbor’s remodel, we help to eradicate the ecosystem that sustains Daniel and his family in Brazil.

When we choose to get an organ transplant in Eastern Europe because the wait is too long in the United States, we cause the abduction of Serge, a street child in Moldova, and the subsequent harvesting of his kidneys.

Whether it’s the big and profound (organ transplants, Internet pornography, and international adoptions), or the seemingly trite and trivial (cups of coffee, T-shirts, kitchen cabinets, vacations, and bathroom rugs), we constantly enslave, maim and kill our neighbors around the planet.

What’s unsettling is that the facts are out there and are readily available. They can be researched with relative ease. But we simply don’t have the time and inclination to do so.

We’re just much too busy...and comfortable.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

A Sense of Urgency

Our fourth stop to view church-based school programs being conducted amongst the ethnic Vietnamese living on the waterways in Cambodia, took us across the Mekong from the capital city of Phnom Penh. Here, set in the current against a small chiseled cliff on the opposite bank, sits a small community of boats and barges within eyeshot of the metropolis that preys upon its children.

As I was sharing and praying with the young students, two of our group spoke with the teachers. When asked how often children in the community are sold to traffickers, the response was an affirmation of steady frequency. The teachers then pointed out the two oldest girls in the classroom, aged 12 or 13, and stated that, "If they don’t get jobs and provide income for their families soon, they will probably be sold."

These same girls smiling for my camera lens in a school setting could very soon be forced to pose for pornographic photos as men repeatedly take advantage of them, up to twenty times per day.

Our minds went into action. The need for sound research and approach collided with an immediate sense of urgency. This is typically the case with such scenarios. One has to figure out the right culturally-relevant strategy and implementation steps through the local indigenous churches, but also acknowledge that, as each day passes, more and more children are placed in imminent danger. (Please view my related, ‘Green Lights’ post regarding this delicate balance.)

And so this is my promise:

We’re quickly going to assess trade-skill development programs that also provide immediate income opportunities for these older children as an alternative to being sold into prostitution. These programs will include capital equipment needs and micro-finance initiatives to then place fully-trained girls into positions of self-sustainability. As we evaluate the market opportunities for the goods these girls can produce, we will also open up western markets to them through inventive Internet-based tools.

After all, World Orphans not only seeks to respond to orphaning and abandonment, but prevent them.

........................................................................................

If you are interested in contributing to this pilot program that will be executed using trusted, experienced partners, please send donations to World Orphans and write "Child Sex-Trade Prevention" in the memo line of your check.

World Orphans
1840 Woodmoor Dr., Suite 100
Monument, CO 80132
1-888-ORPHANS
719-487-1700

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant.

When Phary Met Sally (part three)

What different courses these stories could have taken if only priorities were right, if only simple obedience and obligations were honored.

It just so happens that defeating the materialism of the Church of the west, is part of the solution to the resourcing needs of the Church of the east. And increasing our awareness and involvement in the east, is part of defeating our materialism in the west. It’s a wonderful synergy.

In short, the stories change through a redistribution of financial and relationship capital.

Let’s revisit Phary and Sally...

Six months ago Sally’s mom decided that enough was enough. She wasn’t content to let the world raise her child anymore. While traveling to a company conference in Southeast Asia, she came upon the vast numbers of children on the streets and realized that her own child, Sally, was effectively growing up parentless also. She also recognized that, compared to those children in the gutters, Sally was spoiled beyond measure.

Sally’s mom came home and pledged that things would be different. She sat down and had a heart-to-heart with her husband. They prayed together and strongly felt God telling them to rearrange their lives - to build into their child, to build into the world. Sally’s mom asked for a different job in the company, one that required less travel, even though it meant the path to ‘the top’ would be hindered. And Sally’s Dad set boundaries also, not coming home late and not being overly preoccupied with work while at home.

Sally’s mom conducted some research and learned that there were many churches in Southeast Asia trying to save the region’s street orphans. The family started supporting a small poor church in Cambodia that was rescuing orphaned and abandoned kids from the rag-picking fields. The church needed infrastructure and ongoing funding to build and maintain family homes for the children on its grounds.

Sally’s parents involved her in the process. She helped to choose the Cambodian church and did a school paper on the orphans of Cambodia. She sacrificed her own allowance for three months to help buy shoes for the children. She started writing letters to the kids.

Seven days ago, Phary lost her father. She went to the church next to the rag-picking field near her former home. After doing some research to confirm that Phary had indeed lost both her parents, the church took her in and welcomed her into one of three homes that were built on its property. She was matched with a family in one of the homes. The family welcomed her, started to consol her, embraced her as their own. This particular home was funded in its entirety by a Christian family living in North Dallas. Phary had become one of children sponsored by Sally’s family.

A few months ago, Sally’s mom surprised the whole family by saying that she’d cashed in a chunk of her frequent flier miles and booked tickets for the whole family to visit the Cambodian church and home they were supporting.

Their plane arrived yesterday.

As Sally entered the church grounds, a young girl came up to her and grabbed her hand.

"My name is Phary. What’s yours?"

She showed Sally her room. She introduced Sally to her new family.

Little did Sally’s parents know, but as they invested into an at risk child in the developing world, they were actually investing into their own child in the USA, their own at risk child.

When Phary Met Sally (part two)

Sally

Sally is a fourteen year-old girl living in North Dallas. Her mother is at the top of her career, praised and honored amongst her colleagues, pulling in a great salary and all the perks that go with it. She travels much, leaving Sally’s care to nannies and after-school programs.

Sally’s father is distant, working long hours himself and rarely at home before nightfall. Even when he’s at home, he’s too consumed by the demands of the next work day to really pay much attention to Sally. He is ‘successful’ though, earning a good income himself and able to provide the family with many additional luxuries.

Sally’s parents are believers. Both accepted Christ years ago as part of a campus ministry at their university. They still both have a heart for God, but the daily grind and weight of accomplishment have simply gotten in the way. They try to compensate Sally with all the rewards the culture has to offer, lavishing her with new gadgets, dresses, jewelry, parties and other frills. She has her own credit card and she knows how to use it.

Sally finds her own way through life and is socialized and influenced by her private-school friends, movies, magazines and the Internet.

Affluence and materialism have replaced affection and attention. Secularism and post-modernism have replaced Godly teaching and example.

Sally is...

...a child at risk.

To be continued...

Part one, "Phary," available here.

When Phary Met Sally (part one)

Children At Risk

The human and social services profession refers to vulnerable children as ‘children at risk’ or ‘at risk children.’ These labels pretty much say it all. These include orphaned and abandoned children, children on the streets. These are children whose circumstances are so dire, so hopeless, that they are imminently at risk of many failures, abuses and exploitations. Ultimately, they are at risk of losing everything - their ‘innocence’ and their very souls.

Orphaning, abandonment and risk come in many forms, though...

Phary

Phary is a fourteen year-old girl in Cambodia. Her name means ‘beautiful flower’ and she certainly inherited her mother’s striking looks. However, her mother was sadly lost many years ago to a drug overdose. And her father was killed just last week in a street fight with a rival gang leader. Since then, her slum abode has been occupied by another family. Her belongings were confiscated. She has nothing.

For the past seven days, Phary has been wandering the streets, begging for food. She has been sleeping in a ditch next to a poor church, huddling under the discarded scraps from the rag-pickers.

The church would take her in, but they are already overwhelmed with dozens of children that sleep on the dirt floor of its sanctuary, not to mention the daily knocks at the door by additional children seeking shelter and safety. They simply don’t have the room, nor the rice, to be able to take in even one more child.

It’s a Friday night. As Phary desperately looks for sustenance, a man approaches her and gruffly utters, "Let me look at you."

After appraising her health and frame, he says, "Come with me and I will give you food and a job."

Phary is taken to the other side of the city and is led down a dark alley, where they enter through a bar door flanked by scantily-clad ‘hostesses.’

Phary is...

...a child at risk.

To be continued...

World Orphans Rescue! - Portfolios (part two)

Here are just a few current opportunities within the World Orphans project portfolios:

(Image: Rescued child in India)

SECTOR: Infanticide Rescue
REGION: South Asia (India)
PARTNERS: Impact International, New Directions International
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $450,000

DESCRIPTION: World Orphans has funded a fulltime representative to help identify and establish 15 church-based homes in an area of India known for large-scale female infanticide. Some of these children have already been rescued. Others are presented to our partners by midwives who are aware of a family’s intent to kill their baby if it is a girl. These children are literally saved from the grave.

(Image: Children of Iraq)

SECTOR: Children of Conflict
REGION: NAMEstan (Iraq)
PARTNERS: Major denomination not disclosed due to security reasons
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $1 million
MATCHING GRANT: All funds received by November 15th, up to $300,000, will be matched 100%

DESCRIPTION: "World Orphans Iraq" has now been officially approved as a charity in Iraq. Our office there is currently being opened and we have been given full permission to establish the first church-based orphan homes in the country. Many abandoned and orphaned children now seek stability and security. This is your opportunity to make a personal difference in this war-torn country.

(Image: Young fatherless girl in Moldova)

SECTOR: Abuse and Exploitation
REGION: Eurussia (Moldova)
PARTNERS: New Hope International
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $500,000

DESCRIPTION: Moldova is the #1 trafficking hub for persons in all of Europe and the world’s top exporter of forced child prostitution. Our partner is rescuing orphaned and abandoned children from the streets, as well as from institutions that would sell children into sexual slavery or for the harvesting of their vital organs. Our children’s homes are being established with churches that are situated in key regions of such terrible abuse and exploitation.

(Image: Children that have escaped the war in Northern Uganda)

SECTOR: Children of Conflict (Genocide)
REGION: NAMEstan (Sudan) and Sub-Sahara (Rwanda, Burundi)
PARTNERS: Operation Mobilization, ALARM, and a major multi-national organization not disclosed due to security reasons
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $500,000
MATCHING GRANT: All funds received by Nov. 30th, up to $50,000, will be matched 100%

DESCRIPTION: Widespread ethic massacre has left thousands of first and second-generation orphans. Children that were orphaned years ago are now having children that they can’t support. Abandonment is rampant. More recently, churches have been destroyed. Pastors and their congregations have been butchered. These churches are being re-established and homes for orphans are being built to care for the children that were left behind.

World Orphans
1840 Woodmoor Dr. Suite 100
Monument, CO 80132
1-888-ORPHANS

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant

Wrong Side of Their Chests

In Moldova, there is an expression concerning greedy, corrupt men that exploit people for personal gain. It is said that they "have their hearts on the wrong side of their chests."

Most people in the world are right-handed. Moldovans will say that this dominant hand is the hand that grabs, takes, and strikes. To have your heart on the right side of the body, instead of on the left, would be synonymous with a repugnant heart motivated by self-advantage and avarice.

Moldova itself has also had a radical change in symmetry. Its heart has been ripped out and reinserted out of place.

Previously one of the wealthiest regions in the former Soviet Union, it now holds the distinction of being the most impoverished country in Europe. More than 80% of its inhabitants live on less than a dollar per day. Official unemployment sits close to 100%.

Cheap wine used to be the country’s greatest export. That has now been replaced by cheap prostitutes and human organs. Moldova is the #1 trafficking hub for persons in all of Europe and the world’s top exporter of forced child prostitution. According to the Tiraspol Times, "Moldova holds a dubious world record: The country is today the leading haven for pedophiles and for traffickers who earn fortunes enslaving underage kids in a brutal international sex trade."

Many of those trafficked kids are parentless children plucked from the streets and institutional orphanages.

(WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR HER? A young girl in a Moldovan state orphanage)

The Tiraspol Times also points out that:

"In Moldova, much of the flesh trade is done with government involvement."

A recent U.S. State Department report confirms that:

"Low and high-level government officials are involved in trafficking crimes. Moldovan authorities simply turn a blind eye and refuse to arrest or prosecute anyone."

PBS Frontline reported earlier this year that:

"With full knowledge and often even complicity of Moldovan government officials, young girls are torn from their lives and sold into slavery. The prosecution rate is abysmal. We know that there is a level of corruption; we know that there is bribery. But without the political will to address this, traffickers will continue to operate with impunity."

Leaders are supposed to serve and protect their citizens, especially those that are the most vulnerable – the children, the orphans.

In Moldova, however, too many of these so-called leaders simply have their hearts on the wrong side of their chests.