[ ‘SHARE’ Mar-Apr 2017 ] JOIN HANDS JOIN HEARTS
Traditionally, our impression towards children ministry might involve sponsoring a child or orphan in their daily expenses or education, but did you know that we could now combine children ministry with community resettlement and agricultural development?
[ “SHARE” Jan-Feb 2017 ] JOIN HANDS JOIN HEARTS
Children are the hope of our society, and most parents would stop at nothing to provide the best for their growth. However, life is different for the children born in the slums who struggle to obtain necessities daily, consequently giving them more obstacles to a bright future.
Continue reading Rekindling the Hope of Poor Suburb Children
[ ‘SHARE’ Nov-Dec 2016 ] FOCUS ~CHILDREN MINISTRY
Author: Lincoln Chong
It’s kind of a dark humor to listen to your friends reminding you of the impoverished children in Africa upon the slightest hint of you wasting any food on the table. That however does depict how we typically imagine their current state to be, as the media often shows us pictures of the small African children with bloated stomachs due to malnutrition, who have generally no muscles to speak of. What the media failed to tell us was the aggregate of factors and backgrounds that caused these disheartening scenes. Zimbabwe in Africa, for example, has been notorious of its high rate of HIV/AIDS affection and an astronomically high rate of inflation. HIV/AIDS tore apart a lot of families and a lot of children lost their parents at a very young age, leaving them void of basic protection.
[ ‘SHARE’ Sep-Oct 2016 ] JOIN HANDS JOIN HEARTS
Written by: Tsun Wan Yan
Development is often a two-sided sword that wields both benefits and issues. “Migrant worker” is no longer a novel term after being featured so much by the media of Hong Kong and China in the stories of developments. Kunming is one of the main destinations in where farmers wish to improve their living conditions and search for new opportunities, often bringing their children along with them. However, harsh truths await them behind the dreams. Without proper household registration, the migrant children could not access education, medical, and social security benefits. Busy parents lack the time to stay with their children, and the majority of the families could not afford private schools. Under such circumstances, migrant children are likely to inherit the poverty status of their families.
Continue reading Join Hands with Children with a Pure Heart – Bringing Hope to Migrant Children
The negative effect of poverty often spans across generations. Farmers who migrated to the cities for better opportunities usually find themselves experiencing the same hardships, only in different forms, while putting their children in a specific set of challenges.
Kunming is the destination of a large migrant worker population. Children who migrated with their parents are often very young and suffer from the transition from rural areas to cities. They are often being segregated over their status, and are excluded from the local education, medical, and residential benefits due to the ownership of foreign household registrations. Schools are less likely to admit them, and even if the family could afford the high tuition, the children might not adapt to the different education model so easily. Busy parents lack the time to stay with their children, which aggravates the situation. There are numerous cases where children are being hurt in traffic accidents, drowning, and robbery each year.
In Bangladesh, arranged marriage is seen as a blessing to the family of young girls, who are often below the legal age of marriage.
Rainy is an Indian girl living in the slums of Bangladesh. Her family is of the lowest caste and could only sustain themselves by doing corpse clearers and janitorial works. They were forbidden from interacting with their community and the women in the family were not allowed outside. Rainy’s parents believed that arranging a marriage for her is a blessing to the family, and was conceivably grateful when they found a man in a rich family proposing to Rainy when she was 15, who recalled, “I was only a kid at the age of 15, I didn’t want to get married yet.” Despite her obvious reluctance and concerns, Rainy’s parents proceeded to arrange for the wedding ceremony. Fortunately, SATHI’s staff visited them in the process and explained to them the drawbacks and unlawfulness of underage marriage, which consequently led them to give in and cancelled the marriage.
Rainy is one of the few lucky girls in Bangladesh who escaped the fate of arranged marriage at a young age, who subsequently finished her high school despite the demeaning tradition.
Continue reading A Life with Hope, Untangled from Underage Marriage
