Grant a child your Compassion.

The youth group I work with is currently in the process of selecting a new child to sponsor through Compassion International, a child’s rights advocacy group who provide opportunities for education and safe play, better health care and nutrition, and faith-building. We’ve sponsored a child in the past, and we’re choosing a new child to give this fresh young group more personal ownership of the responsibility. We began the process the day before Valentine’s Day to help our teenagers consider love beyond romantic “eros” love and look more at brotherly “philia” love and undying “agape” love (leave it to the Greeks to have several words for love). The group has taken to this task with amazing seriousness and interest. We hope to choose a child by the end of this week and begin sponsoring them with a weekly donation collection during youth group activities.

Why mention this on a blog about writing and creativity? Because it’s time to get creative with how we help others. Because our group hopes to help a child without a voice be heard, to be able to write or tell their story untold. Because by writing about the need for help, it spreads awareness – the first step toward helping someone. Call me sappy or overly dramatic, but I will in turn call you to check out the Compassion website and not be touched by the poverty children all over the world could simply use a break. We hope to give a child a break, and that’s why I’m filing this post under “inspiration.” Get inspired, and do something.

If you decide to work with Compassion or another organization helping children, I encourage you to let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I’ll keep you posted once the youth group has chosen a child.

-nm

[tags]Compassion International, Compassion, child advocacy[/tags]

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