Category: Current Issues

Compassion in India

Last week I received an email from Compassion – “Please pray urgently for Compassion and the children of India”.

You may have heard of the situation going on in India – since April 2016, due to government regulations, the flow of funding from Compassion into India, has completely stopped. That’s now over 9 months where no funds have reached the 147,000 children that Compassion support in India. At this point in early 2017, funds are now drying up, and what’s worse, come 15 March 2017, if the situation has not changed, Compassion will be forced to officially stop operations in India.

The reality is that is there is no change Compassion will formally end all program operations in India on Wednesday 15 March.

– Tim Hanna, Compassion Australia CEO.

Compassion have been working in India for almost 50 years and I believe it has the largest number of child sponsors of any country.

The health and well being of 147,000 kids. Not to mention the almost 7500 NGO workers from 580 development centres who are impacted. Plus the spiritual impact of the future generations of kids in India… this is a serious situation which calls for a massive response in prayer – we know God has all this in His mighty hands and will work His purposes whatever the outcome, but I encourage you to pray nonetheless.

So check out the info below to learn more about the situation… then pray.

India Update – Compassion Australia

Due to a lack of funding resulting from the Indian Government’s restrictions, we will likely be forced to shut down our sponsorship program in India in March 2017. It deeply grieves us to think about what it would mean to end all of the relationships between Compassion children in India and their sponsors.

Article from Christianity Today

“Our staff in the India field offices have stretched every last penny beyond what we thought possible to extend the programs for our children, while we in parallel explored alternative delivery methods to provide funds, yet a solution has not been discovered within the needed timeframe,” stated Compassion’s email to donors.

An interesting tweet I found…

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Displaced

Almost 2 years ago I wrote a post about what was then called ‘The Largest Humanitarian Crisis of Our Generation‘. At the time I wasn’t sure if this title was entirely accurate, but given that it’s still going on, and has only become worse, the situation in Syria has probably lived up to this title.

Refugees have always been, and will always be a part of our broken world – millions upon of millions of people displaced from their homes in generations gone by.

This last week the Western world was shaken, and somewhat stirred into action by the shocking images of Aylan Kurdi, the 3 year old Syrian boy found washed up on the shores of Turkey after attempting to flee the crisis in Syria. This has lit up the Internet with numerous articles, blog posts and commentary on this situation (and here I go with another!).

Injustice screams the loudest when the most innocent are exploited.

It often takes this ‘loud screaming’ for us to take notice. It takes this sort of graphic imagery to open our eyes to see what these refugees are going through. Continue reading “Displaced” →

Look up [Perspective]

Things are pretty hectic with kids, a business to run and just the general run of life. It’s very easy to be completely caught up in my own life – head down, focusing on all my own issues and worries. But every now and then I get stirred, I get moved, or even a little shaken by something.  I’m sure it’s God’s way of giving me perspective – keeping my view up and out, rather than my default which is deeply entrenched in my own life.

Last week I got a text message from my wife Beck right in the middle of a super busy day at work:

…check out the blog post “a holy experience” – into Iraq #2. Life Less Greedy post. In tears after reading it. It needs to be told. X.

At that point I really had no time to read the article, but a part of me couldn’t ignore this prompting, nor the response that Beck had to the article. It came at a bad time in terms of my busy little world, but after reading just a few lines, my world suddenly seemed somewhat insignificant… that ‘important’ job I needed to get out to the client really didn’t seem that matter that much.

It was nice gain some healthy perspective. Continue reading “Look up [Perspective]” →

The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation

“Syria in Crisis” – sadly, this phrase is very common at the moment. So much so that it just seems to be a part of the fabric of global society now, and just another one of those big problems in a country far away that is too big to fix… so now it doesn’t even get much coverage on prime time TV news, doesn’t make the front page of papers, is shoved in some ‘global news’ category deep within the news websites. And so we, in our busy lives, as we just mange to scrape the surface of current affairs and glean what is interesting and relevant to us from the mass of information going around, forget about what UNICEF have called “The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation”…

UNICEF Syria
This bold red strip is currently at the top of the UNICEF website


Now that’s a big call. But I think if anyone would know, UNICEF would… so I think we all need to dig a little deeper and take notice, or more appropriately… take action.

WFP have helpfully given a short overview for us to better understand the situation:

“Conflict in Syria has forced millions of people to flee their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis in which food is a top priority. WFP aims to bring food assistance to up to 6.5 million Syrians between now and the end of the year. These include 4 million people inside Syria – on both sides of the front lines – and 2.5 million refugees in neighbouring countries.”
Source: http://www.wfp.org/crisis/syria

Continue reading “The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation” →

Lately: The Economics of Giving

On the final run down to Christmas 2012, and possibly the last post for the year (given my record lately!), I thought I’d share a good commentary on gift giving I read lately… Enjoy.

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“With just one week till Christmas … we are reminding ourselves of the gift that we have been given at the first Christmas.
Continue reading “Lately: The Economics of Giving” →

100,000 lives changed

Big congratulations for all the hard work by Compassion Australia who are changing the lives of 100,000 children, babies and mothers…

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You could be the next ‘1 more’… If you don’t already sponsor a Compassion child I highly recommend you consider it… There’s still hundreds more kids, babies and mums who need support. You can make a massive difference in the life of someone for less than you probably spend on coffee each week.

Lately: Olympic disparities // Sevenly // Test your hunger IQ

It’s been fairly quite on the LLG front for the last few months… A new baby can do that! To get back into the swing of things, here’s the first of a new series of posts called “Lately…” – I come across so many awesome things and want to share them all, but never have the time… So “Lately…” is basically short snippets of cool things I’ve found or that have challenged me. So here’s what I’ve found “Lately…”

#1 // Sevenly – One Week. One Cause.

Continue reading “Lately: Olympic disparities // Sevenly // Test your hunger IQ” →

What’s It Like to Live Below the Line?

Some good friends from church, the Jacobs family, were one group among thousands of other Aussies who recently took part in Live Below the Line. I thought it might be a good opportunity to ask them about the experience and get some insights into what it is like to live below the Australian equivalent of the “poverty line”.

“Live Below the Line will challenge you to live on $2 a day, for 5 days. It opens a window onto the day-to-day experience of extreme poverty…”

Here’s a few questions I asked The Jacobs about their experience…

Continue reading “What’s It Like to Live Below the Line?” →