Paul Myhill's Blog

Give a Child a Gift of Hope This Season!

Dear Friend of the Fatherless,

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we remember that He was born into poverty under 'shameful' circumstances and then immediately fled to Egypt to escape death. As such, Jesus intimately understands the plight of vulnerable and displaced children around the world today.

I've listed a few special Project Opportunities on my blog here at Abandoned-Orphaned.Com. They include providing homes for abandoned children in China and Ethiopia, rebuilding lives in Rwanda and Sudan, giving backpacks for orphans in Bangladesh and India, rehabilitating former child soldiers in Burma, preventing child trafficking in Thailand and Moldova, and fitting orphaned kids with new shoes in Kenya and Guatemala.

As you purchase Christmas gifts for friends and family, will you please remember the gifts that were presented to our Savior on that first Christmas? Will you please give Him a birthday present by providing a gift of hope to the children that He identifies with so well?

"Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me." (Matthew 18:5, NIV)

These special project opportunities can be viewed here or by simply scrolling through the prior blog posts below.

Thanks and have a Blessed Christmas!

Until They All Have Homes,

Paul
President – World Orphans

Gifts of Hope to Fight Trafficking in Moldova

MOLDOVA and TURKEY: Anti-Trafficking Campaign

With a corrupt government and old Soviet mindsets, Moldova has been dubbed the European capital for human trafficking. Traffickers target vulnerable children - often orphans who have "aged out" of government orphanages - with promises of a better life. Most end up in sexual exploitation and forced labor, while some even have their organs harvested. Many of these children end up trafficked to Turkey where they are kept in slavery. Thankfully, the Church is not staying silent. World Orphans partners in Moldova and Turkey are speaking up against human trafficking and have implemented a successful anti-trafficking campaign. You can join this important initiative by giving towards the annual need of $25,000.

Giving Options

Enter the following code on your check or online memo: MOL-550-AntiTrafficking

MOLDOVA: Vocational Training

Children in the transition homes of our church partners in Moldova can escape exploitation through vocational development programs. For these children, sewing machines and computers can mean a productive life of self sustainability instead of a desperate existence of sexual abuse. Our church partners need to purchase more sewing machines and computers for this important task. You can help them meet this simple need with only $7,500.

Giving Options

Enter the following code on your check or online memo: MOL-543-Vocational

MOLDOVA: Purchasing land for an additional transition home

A key church partner of World Orphans in Moldova has land next to its church building that is for sale. The church wants to purchase it for a second transition home and we would like to help. We need to raise $11,000 to help them make this purchase so that more orphans can be rescued from the clutches of traffickers.

Giving Options

Enter the following code on your check or online memo: MOL-550-Land

MOLDOVA: Summer camp for children from the government orphanages

Traffickers target children aging out of government orphanages. Our church partner has decided to reach out to these vulnerable children by running summer camps for them. The church uses these camps to build relationships and introduce children to Christ. Many of these children have never heard of Jesus in the staunchly atheistic orphanages. Yet, as a result of these camps, many of the kids accept Christ and know that hope - instead of a trap - exists for them once they leave the orphanages. It takes $16,918 to run the camps each year.

Giving Options

Enter the following code on your check or online memo: MOL-550-Camps

Beating the Traffickers in Moldova

PROJECT PROFILE:

Moldova is one of the largest hubs for human trafficking in Europe. Many traffickers target orphans (both boys and girls) that are "aging out" of government-run orphanages. Our partners in Moldova have shared stories where corrupt orphanage officials are even informing traffickers when desirable children are being released from their institutions. Under such a scenario, the traffickers wait curbside in vans as the naïve and vulnerable youth enter a world they are totally unfamiliar with. Other children are simply picked up off of the streets, missed by nobody.

Jesus Saviour Church, led by Pastor Vasile Surdu, is trying to get there first, reaching out to these children during a highly vulnerable time and taking them into transition homes when necessary. In conjunction with World Orphans partner, New Hope International, summer camps are held for street children. World Orphans short-term teams have participated in these camps to help the church build trust and relationships with kids who have often been abused and exploited.

For children who require family-style residential care because of highly risky situations, Jesus Saviour Church places them into their transition home situated on the church property. The home was funded by World Orphans and is one of many transition homes that World Orphans is establishing, through partner indigenous churches, for the vulnerable children of Moldova.

World Orphans still needs to provide Jesus Saviour Church with $1,485 per month for the care of the children and upkeep of the transition home.

Summer Outreach Camps to reach the street children in Moldova cost World Orphans approximately $15,000. We still need this funding for 2010 camps.

MOLDOVA COUNTRY PROFILE:

Number of Single Orphans* (one parent lost): 77,000

Number of Double Orphans* (both parents lost): 3,600

*not including abandoned, sold or trafficked children

Population: 4,320,748

Average Income: $460 per person

NETWORK PARTNER:

 

CONTRIBUTIONS:

To give to this project please view our giving options (link below) and write "MOL-543 Home" or "MOL-Camps" in the online memo field or on the memo line of your check:

Giving Options

Making a Difference on the Mekong

PROJECT PROFILE:

Cambodia is notorious for child prostitution and sex trafficking. Once a great kingdom, Cambodia was devastated by the bloody rule of the Khmer Rouge who killed an estimated 1.5 million of its citizens. Left behind were thousands of orphans. These children became easy prey for traffickers who sold them internationally or kept them imprisoned in the brothels of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, setting in motion a vicious cycle that has been perpetuated to this day. It is estimated that as many as one third of sex workers in Cambodia are children.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese live on the waterways of Cambodia. Many had fled to Cambodia after the fall of Saigon. Others have been there for generations. Impoverished and ostracized, this Vietnamese population is very vulnerable and their children are especially at risk. Poverty, combined with a thriving child sex industry in Cambodia, has resulted in over seventy percent of Cambodia's Vietnamese girls being sold into slavery.

These are the children that Pastor Thach and his wife serve. This dear couple runs the Rau Muong (water spinach) school perched above the Mekong River near Phnom Penh. The education (and therefore opportunity) received by the children there may be the only thing standing in the way of a life of sexual servitude. Pastor Thach and his wife also provide residential care for four former orphaned and abandoned children who had nowhere else to go except the brothels. World Orphans desires to provide Pastor Thach's church with just $176 per month to help care for these precious children as the initial step towards a greater involvement.

CAMBODIA COUNTRY PROFILE:

Number of Single Orphans* (one parent lost): 660,000

Number of Double Orphans* (both parents lost): 55,000

*not including abandoned, sold or trafficked children

Population: 14,494,293

Average Income: $300 per person

NETWORK PARTNER:

CONTRIBUTIONS:

To give to this project please view our giving options (link below) and write "Lunkon Themi" in the online memo field or on the memo line of your check:

Giving Options

 

 

Would You Press the Button? (part three)

We press that button in other ways also.

As we dwell within our entertainment-oriented, pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent domain, we ignore the plight of the world’s masses. As we give time and attention to the things that bring us materialistic or experiential satisfaction, we become apathetic to the mega-issues of our day.

We spend evenings absorbed by NBC, HBO and PPV, while people die in Darfur and the Congo. We fill our schedules with all manner of pleasurable activities and leisure occasions, while children are being raped for profit in Cambodia. We watch hundreds of hours of sporting events each year, while an emaciated worker is held in continual debt bondage to a brick kiln in India.

Where is our sense of outrage?

It has been numbed and replaced by the selfish pursuits of all that our culture has to offer.

Entertainment and material that "moth and rust will destroy" have been prioritized over giving time, attention and resources to our neighbors around the world.

Each time we tune into the next pointless TV show, instead of volunteering at a non-profit ministry, we are pushing the button.

Each time we splurge on trivialities and frivolities, instead of giving those funds to save a life in the developing world, we are pushing the button. We are choosing our pleasure over somebody else’s existence or well-being.

The 2006 American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, revealed that:

On an "average day" in 2006, persons in the US, age 15 and over, slept about 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities, worked for 3.8 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining 4.7 hours were spent doing a variety of other activities, including eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping. Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women.

Obviously, an "average day" factors in weekends and the reality that some activities are only done by a subset of the population. It is therefore designed to represent "adult society as a whole." Given that clarification, doesn’t it appear that our society can give more time and attention to the problems of the world, if only by replacing a few hours of TV per week?

We obviously devote a lot of our schedule to shopping. We live in a country that spends over $3 Billion on fine fragrances at department stores each year (not including Internet purchases and regular perfumes); a country that disperses over $250 million annually on just mascara alone; a country that will pay $15 billion this year for pet food, four times the amount spent on baby food. We dish out further billions on pet toys and accessories.

Time we invest in watching reruns and purchasing fancy fragrances could be used to save lives. Money we spend on pampering pets could be used to rescue the street child that nurses off of a stray dog in Bombay.

We’ve got it all wrong.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

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.

A Game of Thirds

After we rumbled down the dirt road and past the wooden houses on stilts at the shoreline, we came to an opening, a dock of sorts. There, we walked over deeply-cracked mud and boarded a longboat that would take us to the other side of the slow-moving Mekong.

Barges with homes built upon them were anchored close to the shore; just a few feet away from Cambodian soil, but a whole culture apart. Different language and customs. Common problems.

The motor’s rhythm was labored and irregular, but it was enough to propel us by this first cluster of refugees and illegal immigrants and across the dirty expanse to the opposite bank. There, we docked at a floating church that was running a school for children, many of them orphaned or abandoned.

Current estimates of the Vietnamese community in Cambodia range from 100,000 to over 2 million. Citizens of neither Cambodia nor Vietnam, many live on the lakes and rivers in flotillas, waterborne villages huddled together for protection and community.

We boarded the church where thirty or so children were diligently studying at rows of desks as part of a program funded by our hosts. The gentle rocking of the mobile vessel spoke of the villagers’ precarious position, caught in a land of prejudice, discrimination and persecution, but unwelcome back in the socialist land of their heritage lest they spark a counter-revolution.

To be Vietnamese in Cambodia, especially as one engaged in subsistence life on the lake or river, is to be a ‘yuon,’ a person regarded by most Cambodians as ‘lower than scum.’ Widely resented, these poor fishermen are frequent targets of political power plays and hate crimes. Various purges and sporadic attacks have brought death to them and their families, including the massacre of children in a floating video game parlor. Viewed as intruders, stealers of fish, and polluters of waterways, they are unwelcome guests in a culture where many seek to eradicate or expel them.

Lack of citizenship privileges, restricted access to basic education, social exclusion, illiteracy, limited trade skill opportunities, strong obligations to paying family debt, and extreme poverty all work together to attract the wolves. It’s no wonder that the children of these displaced Vietnamese communities are constantly preyed upon by traffickers.

The net result is a horrible game of thirds...

Over one-third of the 60,000 to 100,000 full and part-time prostitutes in Cambodia are under 18 and most are Vietnamese girls, many stolen or hoaxed into sexual slavery. The impoverished Vietnamese boat people are so desperate for income that one third of the families have willingly sold a child to sex traffickers in order to survive. Another one third has seriously considered doing so.

I scanned the children in rows before me and looked at every third child.

How many of them might be sold?

If not for this church-based education program, how many of them would already be in brothels by now?

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.