Day 19

Water is the most precious commodity on earth. Without it, there can be no life at all. Easy access to clean, safe water should be a guaranteed right. Unfortunately, this is not always so. In many countries, people are forced to travel up to 10 kilometres a day to fetch water for their family. They carry it back home over rough ground and often through dangerous territories where bandits lie in wait to rob them of their water, and anything else of value they have, including the clothes on their backs.

World In Need is working to provide access to water nearer to people’s homes, thus helping to reduce the dangers faced by the water carriers, who are almost exclusively girls. In Sierra Leone, we provided water at the Makeni school, which is not only for the use of students at the school, but for the families who live nearby. This enables girls to have the time to go to school. The water is available free of charge, helping with family finances, and helping to reduce the effects of poverty. 

Day 17

In many parts of the world, access to clean water is not a guaranteed right. To provide water for a family’s needs, women and girls have to travel long distances daily, sometimes as far as 10 kilometres to a well, where they will then pay as much as half the family’s daily income to buy 20 litres of water. They then have to carry this back home, usually on their heads. This puts pressure on their spines and especially their neck, storing up painful and debilitating problems for later life such as arthritis, spondulosis and other degenerative and crippling diseases. It shortens their lives and reduces their effectiveness as working people, both within the home and in the employment market.

While they are carrying water to and fro, they cannot be attending school. Since fetching water is seen as women’s work, this means that girls are frequently denied schooling in societies where their gender already disadvantages them.

World In Need is working to ensure that people are able to access clean water as close as possible to their homes, thus cutting the need for heavy and health-risking lifting, and enabling girls to go to school.

Day 16.

When someone sponsors a child through World In Need, they usually do so in the hope that they can help that child achieve their full potential. Sponsored children go to school and get an education, which equips them for better qualified and better paid jobs as adults. Some have gone on to universities, others have gained apprenticeships. They have become skilled and valuable members of their community, bringing benefits to a society far beyond their own families.

And some will just shine.

One of the children supported by World In Need in Azerbaijan was Nigar (last name?). Nigar lived in Baku with her family, all of them in one room, sharing a toilet with several other family members. Nigar’s sponsorship enabled her to go to a school where it was discovered she had the most amazing talent as a pianist. Thanks to the generosity World In Need supporters, at age 16, she was able to come to England where she competed in the International Young Musician of the Year Competition. She was the youngest competitor there, and was highly commended by the judges, who recommended she be granted scholarship to one of the most prestigious music colleges in the world. 

Yet, without sponsorship, she may never have been given the chance to develop, or even discover the talent within her.

You just never know how much difference your sponsorship will make to someone’s life.

Day 15

In the three years since the Syrian civil war began, tens of thousands have died, many of them children. The UN has stopped updating the death count because it is too dangerous to collect accurate figures but, really, the numbers don’t matter. Each death is a personal tragedy, the loss of a human being and a reason for loved ones to grieve. 

Civilians fare badly in this war of attrition. Many are trapped in the war zones because fighters on one or both sides refuse to let them leave. They are vulnerable to injury from bombs, bullets, shrapnel, and have even endured gas and chemical attack. They have little or no access to food, and some have resorted to eating grass in desperation.

But even when people manage to leave the conflict zone, their troubles are far from over. 4 million people are internally displaced in Syria. They are, in effect, refugees within their own country.  Over two million others have fled to neighbouring countries such as Jordan, the Lebanon and Turkey. Taken together, these two figures mean that more than a third of the Syrian population has now been forced from their homes. 

These people left everything behind – household possessions, clothes, children’s toys. Last winter, one of the coldest on record, they had to cope without blankets and coats. They need money to buy supplies, but are not allowed to take jobs to earn that money.  

World In Need has raised money to buy much needed supplies for refugees in Jordan. Please pray for Syrian refugees and for our work in Jordan.

Day 14

Thailand has a vast drug problem and this is especially co in the southern part of the country. Many efforts are made to tackle this, helping people break their addictions and get on the road to recovery. However, getting someone off drugs is only the first step. Next, they must stay drug free, and that’s the hard part.

Many drug users don’t have the skills to find jobs and support themselves. Without work and the self-esteem that comes from providing for themselves, it is all too easy to slip back into drug use.

World In Need is developing a drug rehab centre on five acres of land in Southern Thailand. The recovering men and women at the centre work on the land, producing two or even three harvests a year, which are then sold in local markets and the money raised used to support the centre and its work. The people learn skills and find work, and the centre largely sustains itself.

Please pray for Thailand. 

Day 13

Sponsorship means a lot to children in southern Uganda. One of our workers, Albert, tells us that the children often call their sponsors Mum and Dad. They value not just the financial help and the chance to go to school, but also the knowledge that somebody cares and loves them. For some of the children, this is not something they have experienced before.

Albert himself was able to finish his education thanks to a World In Need sponsor. After spending a year as a volunteer worker in England, he has now returned to Uganda and is working to assist our southern Uganda representative, John Kukuriza.  

Albert wrote a letter of thanks to all sponsors recently, in which he said, “all sponsors who pray, communicate and support children – you are heroes and surely God honours such work.”

Sponsorship changes lives, again and again and again. It provides opportunities that would otherwise be denied and ensures that people are not held back simply because they were born in poverty.

If you’d like to know more please go to our website: 

www.worlineed.co.uk

Day 11

Child slavery is an evil of epic proportions and should not exist in the twenty first century. That it does, taints us all.

There are usually three sides to the triangle of suffering that is child slavery.

Side two is the child. Taken from their homes, very young children are forced to work long hours doing menial tasks, and are often forced to do work too heavy or strenuous for their little bodies. While they are working, they are unable to go to school and learn the skills they will need to build a life as adults. They become uneducated unskilled adults themselves and the cycle begins again.

World in Need works to ensure all children get the childhood they deserve, including access to education. Through child sponsorship, we enable them to be children, and we give them the grounding they need to become adults who can care for themselves and be of value to their entire communities.