Recently, I’ve had the opportunity in my job to read a lot about development. After all, development is what Compassion is about. We don’t want to give a handout; we want to do the things that will truly help a child become a self-sustaining, responsible adult. And although you might not think that theories of international development have much to […]
What is Compassion International all about? Well, first and foremost, we’re about Jesus. We are Christ centered. We “release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.” We work through the local church and live out our faith by extending care to others. We demonstrate what we’re about in how we behave — what we do and how we do it. We’re child […]
The room was packed, occupied by some of the most inspiring Christian leaders I’ve met from across the continent of Africa. I began my afternoon presentation in Ethiopia with a movie trailer for a new documentary, Poverty, Inc., that seeks to reveal some of the pitfalls of the global aid system. At one point in the movie trailer, an entrepreneur […]
My friends thought I was losing my mind. After working my entire career in the non-profit world, I was making the plunge into the big, bad for-profit world. For 7.5 years, I worked for one of the leading organizations fighting violence against the poor (including human trafficking and slavery), International Justice Mission. For years, I got to tell the stories […]
Moms in our Child Survival Program in Ethiopia regularly get together to share stories of their lives, swap care taking ideas for their kids and catch up on the local town news over a cup of freshly roasted Ethiopian coffee. Watch how the process of creating Ethiopian coffee unfolds from roasting beans and grinding in a press, to brewing in […]
“The girls are being forced to do things they don’t want to do. They were planning to take girls to other countries. I never thought they were going to release me; I even thought my family wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t think I was going to return home.” These are the heartbreaking words of Daniela*, a sponsored teen girl who […]
While most of Seoul stayed away from public gatherings during the recent MERS outbreak, 1,100 church leaders representing 163 churches from across the peninsula of South Korea came together to prepare their hearts and minds for the day when they can directly serve the children of North Korea. Stepping into the large conference hall for the recent North Korea Ministry […]
There’s just something about the sun-scorched regions of Africa, isn’t there? I don’t know if it’s the beat of the African drums, the relaxed pace of life, the smiling faces that greet me or that I frequently find myself humoured by the fact that some things can only be explained with a shrug and a smile! Recently, my husband and […]
You’ve probably come to expect that we will work to bring safe water to the child or teen you sponsor – and along with that, education about how to avoid waterborne illnesses. But what if I told you your sponsorship also helps children in poverty learn about a safer and more dignified way to go to the bathroom? Providing a […]
The International Day of Families is an occasion to celebrate the importance of families to people, societies and cultures around the world. The parents in my workshop, just then, started shifting in their red, conference-room seats and looking mostly at their hands, or shoes. I was at a conference, speaking to a group of parents, and had just asked, “Raise […]
Helping meet the physical needs of the children in our program, and of their communities, sometimes means having to find healthy food sources. Often, farm to table is the best solution possible. This is where little Borisut comes in. He is a sponsored child in Thailand’s rural northern region. And we’d like you to hear his perspective on how farm-to-table […]
The keynote message had just finished wrapping up, and hundreds of women spilled into the venue hall. Aly Chase was in her usual place, standing alongside the Compassion booth, speaking to hundreds of curious women about child sponsorship. A young woman, with tears on her cheeks, picked up a packet and looked Aly square in the eyes. “I want to […]
We recently hosted our first ever impromptu Facebook Q&A session. There were a ton of great questions asked. Here are some of the most popular questions – and a few of our favorites – as well as our answers to them. A few edits have been made for clarity. From the point a sponsor selects a new child on the […]
UPDATE, April 8, 2016: Since the publication of this post, letter-writing guidelines have changed to speed up the delivery of letters and as a result you may not be able to send some items through Compassion’s correspondence system. Before you send your letter, please review our letter-writing guidelines. Everybody has one. Old or young, we all celebrate it. It doesn’t […]
The Rock & Worship Roadshow just wrapped up their 12th of 20+ shows in Louisville, KY this weekend. They’ve asked fans and followers to share their photos and videos with #RWRS15. Here are our favorites from the first half of the Roadshow tour. The View from SIU Feel sorry for those that couldn’t make it to #rwrs15 here is a […]
You can tell a lot about a person by the music he or she grew up listening to. As a young boy, I remember running many errands with my dad to our local recycling center. We drove in my late grandfather’s mid-80s red Chevy S-10. It had a manual transmission which my dad never stalled. While these trips were ideal traps for […]
A third of the way through Brian Ivie’s documentary, The Drop Box, we meet a girl who works with Pastor Lee Jong-rak’s ministry in South Korea — a ministry that provides refuge to orphans through an anonymous donation system that they call the baby box. Often, these orphans are disabled and would have otherwise been abandoned to the streets. Staring past […]
The idea of being able to end extreme poverty in the world often feels overwhelming. But with the latest news from the United Nations, coupled with independent research about our child sponsorship program, it no longer feels unattainable. In fact, it could even be accomplished within our lifetime. This good news is our motivation to fight harder than ever before […]
In March 2013, I visited Haiti. I was unprepared for the devastation. Crying myself to sleep the first night, I wondered where the hope was. Over the course of the next few days, I quickly found that hope can rise out of places where we least expect to find it. It was sweltering hot inside the church that day and it […]
