Every Child Deserves a Family – Part 1
April 30, 2010
The overarching message of a conference I attended several months ago was well summed up by this quote used by the organization Give a Child a Family, based in South Africa:
“Every child deserves to have an adult who is crazy about them.”
Realistically this is saying that a child needs and deserves to have a primary care taker to truly develop and grow healthily. Personally, I have believed this since Karyn and I participated in Youth With A Mission’s Children at Risk School in 2006 where we were enlightened to the fact that this is God’s original intent for every child. Since 2006 our challenge has been to determine how we can and will implement this understanding within the work of The Forsaken Children and its partner project Children’s Home Ethiopia.
The challenge comes when you consider the vast amounts of children in our world who are for some reason or another not in a family. Some of the reasons include: poverty, abandonment, illness, war, and child parents. Whatever the reason for the epidemic of family-less children, many of us need to evaluate or reevaluate our response to this problem, especially in Africa.
Some of the popular responses that are being attempted are orphanages, foster care, and intercountry adoption. There are pros and cons to each of these responses. Many of the pros are easy to discern, which makes each of these approaches popular. The overarching pro to each response is that family-less children are being cared for and in some form or another, given families. Let me just say a little more about each of these responses and in doing so, I hope to provoke you to think critically about your response.
- Orphanages – The problem with institutions such as orphanages is that the children involved don’t really learn how to be a part of a family. Their caregivers are usually paid staff who punch a time clock. Children in most institutions typically lack the primary care giver that is integral to a child’s healthy development. I will say that there are situations, especially in many of Africa’s developing countries, where orphanages are a necessary response, especially until a better alternative can be created.
- Foster Care – I think we have all heard of instances in foster care where children have been mistreated, moved around, or simply ran away. Although these things do occur in foster care, with proper assessments and monitoring (in other words, a lot of work), foster care may be one of the promising strategies for putting children into families. Foster care can also include extended family care and community family care (especially in the African context).
- Intercountry Adoption – The adoptive family is sometimes an answer for children without families. Increasingly, intercountry adoptions are becoming popular and many children are blessed to receive forever families through this process. However, problems do occur when, “international adoption agencies work not to find homes for needy children but to find children for Western homes.” (The Lie We Love, E.J. Graff) When this occurs, the adoptions become less about the children’s best interests and corruption enters the system. Unfortunately, this corruption, no matter how large scale or small scale, could eventually destroy this viable response for the children who would benefit from intercountry adoption.
So there you have it. The family is under attack worldwide. We as believers have a responsibility to fight back on behalf of this God-ordained unit and on behalf of the children who are suffering due to their own families’ breakdown. Obviously, there are many different opinions out there about how to care for family-less children in Africa and where you live as well. I challenge you to consider what you believe. It is unacceptable that children are continuing to live outside of families. How will you respond?
In Part Two I will explain The Forsaken Children’s response.
Enough is Enough
April 22, 2010
The first Amharic word that I learned upon coming to Ethiopia was “bekah”, which in English means “enough”. Until I learned this word, and learned to say it emphatically, I spent many nights with a sore belly. The culture here is to feed visitors to death. “Eat, eat, eat” and “more, more, more” are the words constantly repeated to us at every meal. Learning how to say “enough” has been a hard lesson for me. Many nights spent with a sore belly has finally driven the lesson home.
JUST WHAT IS ENOUGH? In the US we are accustomed to never having to say enough. Our appetites have outgrown our blessings and we are accustomed to quickly gobbling up the biggest piece of the pie. For us the answer to the question has always been, “it is never enough, and it is never fast enough.”
In America there are a handful of men, iconic figures really, who we credit with the first inkling of our progress. These represent for us the ideals of where we came from and how we got to where we are. Each of these men carried a tool. Each of these tools they carried slung over the shoulder. So it was that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett entered the frontier muskets in hand. Paul Bunyan followed with his ax, which made room for Farmer John to make effective use of his hoe. Then John Henry came with his hammer to lay the tracks which brought civilization to that great unknown “the west”.
As we improved upon the tools of progress little thought was given to how or how much they should be used. Our tools have become much more difficult to carry and also more difficult to restrain. There is a fine balance between using a tool and being used by it. Given the chance, Boone would’ve made good use of a shotgun in the Kentucky woods and Crockett may have changed the story of the Alamo with a decent rifle. Paul Bunyan’s ax is no match for a chain saw, even when wielded by a giant. Upon seeing his first plow Farmer John stowed the hoe in the darkest corner of the barn. The only one who seemed to think twice was John Henry. He laid down his life attempting to answer the questions, “is progress at any cost really progress at all?” and, “is the boom really worth the bust that inevitably follows?” For most of our history this question has been answered with an emphatic “yes”.
The Appalachians were felled for newsprint and charcoal. Teddy Roosevelt was able to stay the sawyers hand for a while, but he couldn’t stop the railroad. A spark from the train did what the sawyers could not. In 1910 The Big Blowup cleared three million acres. In 1914 what Leopold rightly called a “living wind”, the passenger pigeon, was snuffed out by a shotgun blast for pigeon pie and a rifle almost finished off his prairie neighbor, the bison, just for sport. A bald eagle is a poor representation of freedom compared with a flock of pigeons in the open sky or a herd of bison on the open land. As the 1920’s roared, we turned the prairie soil with the plow and were rewarded with a few good crops of wheat. The bust came in 1929 and in 1930 Farmer John traded his bowl of cream of wheat for a bowl of dust.
Are these things the inevitable price of progress? Do the ends justify the means? Wouldn’t steady, sustained growth get us just as far, just as fast?span>
Our wealth and technology buffer us now from the effects of our abuse. Our forests are regrowing, patches of the prairie have been preserved because we have the ability to take what we want from the other three-quarters of the world that we call “developing”. In this “developing” world the impacts of environmental damage are real and readily seen. Denuded hillsides, fields hanging on the edge of huge gullies, unseasonable cycles of drought and flood, and polluted rivers are now a part of life here. These just deepen the problems of poverty and sickness that plague this land. 
Here in Ethiopia the words “development” and “progress” are at the tip of everyone’s tongue. The rest of the world is eager to have what we have and that is especially true here. Unfortunately, it will never happen. It takes the resources of three-quarters of this world to fill our insatiable appetites. In a world with limited resources there simply is no catching up with us. For the rest of the world to get a piece of the pie we must learn restraint. We must learn to say “enough”.
THE POT:
There was a master artisan living in the countryside, a potter who was known throughout the land. This artisan had a beautiful wife that he loved very much. His wife constantly complained about her work. She complained that the work was too hard and that the utensils she had to use always broke.
One day the artisan set out to make his masterpiece. He poured his all into this work. He created an object that was both incredibly useful and exquisitely beautiful. Upon completing his work he presented his masterpiece to his wife as a gift with the instructions that if she cared for it properly it would ease her burden.
The wife was very excited about her new gift. It lifted her burden greatly at first, but she didn’t heed the artisans instructions and submitted it to rough treatment. She over-loaded it and left it in the fire too long. Soon she started to complain about her work again. Frustrated, the artisan asked her about the pot. She sharply replied that it was useless except to carry out the table scraps.
The artisan was very hurt and went to find what was wrong with his masterpiece. He found it in a corner of the kitchen, barely recognizable and full of garbage. The intricate decoration on the outside was marred by soot, the handle was broken, the rim chipped, and several cracks kept it from holding water. His finest creation had been reduced to little more than a common garbage pail.
We have been given a wonderful gift that was once incredibly useful and beautiful. The fact that it is still useful and beautiful, in spite of our abuse, is a true testament to its creator. However, its beauty and usefulness are fading fast with our rough treatment.
The Forsaken Children and it’s projects are built around the idea of steady, sustainable growth. The newest of these projects, the Kota Ganate Agriculture Project, is a true example of this. A nation’s natural resources are essential to maintaining its health and prosperity. Ethiopia has few resources left. To encourage an attitude of “take what you can” with no thought of the cost would only lead to more collapse. Instead, we believe that steady growth can be made while protecting precious resources. This is responsible, ethical, biblical behavior. Usually, it is as simple as knowing when to say “enough”.
We invite you to check out blessedearth.org to find out more about our biblical mandate to responsibly care for and protect this pot that we’ve been given to use. They offer information and resources through their website that we hope you can learn from and enjoy.
