The Best Thing You Can Do for the World’s Children

Christianity Today has published one of the most startling landmark articles in many years. If you read nothing else about helping children this year, this rather lengthy article should be on the top of the list.

Let me summarize this long study. Dr. Bruce Wydick is an Economics professor at the University of San Francisco. In this article, he tells the story of several graduate students who have completed a five-year study looking into the effectiveness of child sponsorship programs in the Developing World. You can read the entire study here.

As I read this, several details stood out strongly:

• These graduate students sought to study a number of agencies who provide money through sponsors. Only one organization agreed to be studied: Compassion International. That tells me several things. First, they are probably the only organization of this kind that keep their own records and were therefore comfortable with being studied. Second, the other organizations showed antipathy toward the idea of being studied, which means they are more afraid of their funding drying up (if the studies are not favorable) than they are in making sure they are being effective.
• The study concluded that children who receive sponsorship are up to 80% more likely to go to college and graduate than unsponsored children.
• Children who are sponsored are shown to have significantly better viewpoints on what they want to do for a living when they grow up. They also show higher levels of contentment in life and less pessimism about the future.
• Sponsored children have lower rates of suicide, depression and violence done against them.
• Sponsored children with unsponsored siblings are more than three times more likely to grow up to be the family’s primary bread-winner.

This study has been scrutinized by over a dozen universities since it was produced and each of them has ratified the methodology used. This means that at least as far as Compassion International in concerned, one of the best ways you can change the Developing World is to sponsor a child on a monthly basis. Nothing that we have yet seen even comes close.

Protecting Kids from Lies – Part 3

My father struggled all his life to believe he could finish anything. As a boy, he took on the idea that he was destined to be a great starter and a lousy finisher. My grandmother saw this and determined she would do a better job the next time.

Next time? She had already raised four kids, so when was this “next time” going to happen? When my Mom and Dad moved my brother and I with them into our grandparents’ basement, Grandma saw her opportunity. She was going to do it right with us.

Dave and I heard two constant themes from Grandma. She always told us we could do anything we put our minds to. Not only did we hear it like a daily mantra, she would celebrate everything we did accomplish as if it deserved a major award. If I was drying the dishes,

Protecting Children From Lies – Part 2

Emotions often hold power over our beliefs; especially pain, anger and grief. This explains why children don’t voice their most deeply held lies – they do not want to reveal what they’re feeling.

Let me give an example. Margaret was eight years old when she experienced something a child should never go through. I won’t reveal the details of the molestation, but it was heinous and involved a man known to the family. He was a good friend of her father’s. She felt unclean, unloved and abandoned throughout the period of that ordeal. Her mother was not stupid;

Protecting a Child From Lies – Part 1

Jen began training with us with the goal of being a people-helper. During the training, she confronted a half dozen beliefs that were hurting and defeating her life. As she let go of each belief, she felt more freedom to live as an adult. I use the words ‘live as an adult’ because these beliefs were all childish. One belief in particular had affected almost every relationship in her life. It all started so simply. When Jen was three and a half, her mother made her a beautiful white Easter dress with a large pink bow around the waist. She had never worn anything so lovely or expensive (her family was dirt-poor, and this was a major step up in clothing value). At that time, she was the only child in her family, so she had no one to show her pretty dress to. She went outside that Sunday morning looking to display her finery. The only thing walking around was the neighbor’s dog. She followed him into his yard, all the while telling the dog how much she loved her new dress.

The dog was unimpressed, as Jen remembers. He kept walking away from her and went into the next neighbor’s yard. Jen quickly climbed the small picket fence so she could follow the dog. When she got on top of the fence-line