Books and Movies List Update

New books added to Red Card Kids:

Street Kids

• Lessons from a Street Kid by Craig Kielburger. Ages 6-9.

Take A Stand

• Free the Children: A Young Man Fights Against Child Labor and Proves that Children Can Change the World by Craig Kielburger. High school, young adult.
• It Takes A Child by Craig Kielburger. Ages 6-9.

New movies added to Red Card Kids.

Child Laborers

• Fields of Mudan, 2007. R. Mudan, a frightened young Asian girl, is forced into sex slavery by a brutal child brothel owner. She and another brothel girl courageously choose to live their lives as innocent, ordinary little girls despite their conditions and the bleak future that awaits them. Run time: 23 minutes. Mature audiences.

Take A Stand

• It Takes A Child, 1998, PG. True story of how the Free the Children movement began with a young boy who advocates against child labor. 56 min. Grades 5-12.

Freedom Sunday

February 26 is Freedom Sunday. It’s designed to build awareness about human slavery and trafficking in local churches. Here are some Biblical-based lessons and projects for children on these issues.

• Loose Change to Loosen Chains is a student-led campaign for elementary to college students to combat modern-day slavery while learning about the reality of injustice today. Order materials from the International Justice Mission. IJM uses money donated through this program to rescue victims of slavery and other forms of oppression.

• Break the Chains: The Power of Choice – Free download lesson on human trafficking for older elementary kids. Look in the Bible Study section. This is part of the Break the Chains Initiative from the Evangelical Covenant Church.

• Childhood Lost – Free download lesson on child labor for elementary children from Stand4Kids. Look in the Bible Study section under New Children’s Curriculum.

World Food Day

October 16 is World Food Day. In our world today, 925 million people are undernourished (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO). This is 13.6% of the world population! Because their bodies are still developing, children are effected most by hunger. Every five seconds, a boy or girl dies from a hunger-related disease. Hunger has many facets and layers. Here are three.

Starvation: Starvation caused by famine, like the one currently threatening families in the Horn of Africa, is the most extreme form of hunger. Starvation often leads to death, especially in children.

Food insecurity: Not all hunger is caused by famine. For millions, lack of access to sufficient amounts of nutritious food is an ongoing, daily reality. Families eat the bare minimum to stay alive. Children go to bed each night, not knowing where their next meal will come from.

Hidden Hunger: In addition, two billion people exist on a limited diet. Because children eat the same thing every day rather than a variety of foods, they don’t get the vitamins and minerals needed for healthy growth and development. The resulting malnutrition has serious consequences. For example, children with Vitamin A deficiency have severe problems with eyesight and some become blind.

Here’s a map put out by the FAO. It shows that state of undernourishment in countries around the world. Did you know that there’s more than enough food to provide adequate nutrition to everyone on the planet? Here’s a simple simulation you can do with families in your church, school, or homeschooling group. It shows that hunger is more about an imbalance in food distribution than a shortage of food.

Book List Updates

Just updated the children at risk suggested books on our Red Card Kids website. Recent books include:

Street Children

The Least of These: Lessons Learned from Kids On the Street by Ron Ruthruff (New Hope Publishers, 2010).

Working with the Street Children: An Approach Explored by Andrew Williams (Russell House Publishing, 2011).

Orphans

Love Has a Face: Mascara, a Machete and One Woman’s Miraculous Journey with Jesus in Sudan by Michele Perry (Chosen, 2009).

Children of War

My Father, the Maker of Trees: How I Survived the Rwandan Genocide by Eric Irivuzumgabe and Tracey D. Lawrence (Baker Books, 2010).

Books and Movies List Update

Just updated the children at risk suggested movies and books on our Red Card Kids website. Recent books include: 1. Do Something! A Handbook for Young Advocates, 2. Not In My Town Exposing and Ending Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, and 3. Orphanology: Awakening to Gospel-Centered Adoption and Orphan Care. The movie Life, Above All is scheduled for release in the United States on July 15.

Helping Kids Process and Respond to Disasters

Earthquakes in Haiti, tsunamis in Japan, floods in New Zealand … how can we talk to our children about disasters and their impact? World Vision’s communications and media staff offer eight suggestions. To these ideas, I would add the following:

9. Encourage children to take their fears and concerns to a loving heavenly father. Share Bible verses with your children that speak of God’s invitation to come to Him whenever we feel afraid. Here are a few to get you started:  Deuteronomy 31:8; Psalm 27:1; Psalm 56:3-4; Isaiah 41:10, 13; Lamentations 3:57, and Matthew 10:29-31.

10. Assist children to memorize Psalm 56:3 – “When I am afraid, I will trust in You.”

11. Pray for children affected by the disaster, including their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Help children personalize their prayers. For example, pray for boys and girls who are the same age they are. Pray for families who have the same number of children as their family. Here’s a prayer for suffering children from Tony Kummer’s Ministry-to-Children website.

Ever-watching Father:
we pray for the suffering children whom we do not see.

We know that your eyes see their tears,
that your heart knows their sorrow,
that your hands can reach them now.

We remember that Jesus was once a child,
that poverty stole his bread,
that tyrants sought his life,
that his mother tasted tears.

We ask you to send friends for the lonely,
food for the hungry,
medicine for the sick,
saviors for the enslaved,
rescue for the perishing.

Give us the wisdom to do our part,
share our possessions,
leave our comforts,
lend them our voice,
send them our food,
love them with more than prayers.

We call on you in the name of your child Jesus.
Amen.

World Water Day

Tuesday, March 22 is World Water Day. This international observance draws attention to the water, sanitation, and hygiene crisis worldwide. What does this mean for us as followers of Jesus? The Bible has a lot to say about those of us who are blessed assisting those who are not so blessed. Check out Proverbs 3:27 and James 2:14-17. If you have running water in your house, have a flush toilet, and don’t have a family member with a water-borne disease, feel blessed. Here are some ways to learn more about this issue and take steps to bless others. The Water Family interactive web game helps children discover how much water their family uses and gives suggestions for conservation. Click here and here to learn more about water-related issues. Pray for children who live with these issues on a daily basis. We created the following activity to help families track their water use over one day and get involved in a water project.

Water Mark Activity

1. Put an empty Styrofoam cup in each room in your home. Put a marker or pen in each cup. Every time family members use water, have them place a tally mark on the outside of the nearest cup. Make sure to include these areas: take bath/shower, wash hair, wash hands, brush teeth, flush toilet, wash dishes, cook, make coffee/tea, drink tap water, do laundry, clean, iron clothes with steam, care for pets, wash car, and water grass/plants.

2. At the end of the day, count the tally marks on the cups. Add the estimated number of times family members used water at school, work, and activities outside the home. Divide the total by the number of people in your family to find out the average number of times each person uses water in one day.

3. Take the total number of times your family uses water in one day and multiply by two. Donate that number of dollars to an organization involved in water projects, sanitation, and hygiene education.

Suggested Organizations
Blood: Water Mission

Lifewater International

Living Water International

Red Hand Day

According to the UN Convention of Children Rights, recruiting and using children under 18 as soldiers has been illegal since February 12, 2002. Nine years later, many countries have yet to ratify the treaty. Others do not enforce it. On February 12, children and youth around the world will stand against the recruitment and use of child soldiers by being part of the Red Hand Campaign. Human Rights Watch offers a free, downloadable resource pack that has examples of what many groups have done to commemorate Red Hand Day. For more information about child soldiers, click here and scroll down to the section on Children of War.

How To Participate In Red Hand Day:
1. Use red paint to make a hand print on a sheet of paper, and add a personal message about your desire to end the use of child soldiers. Organize others at your school or in your community to do the same.

2. Deliver your red hands to your local government representatives and ask them to work on behalf of child soldiers or send your red hands to the United Nations missions in New York of the countries that have not yet ratified the optional protocol that sets age 18 as the minimum age for serving in armed conflicts. Include a message urging them to do so as soon as possible. For a sample message and list of addresses, click here.

3. Upload photos or videos of your event here.

4. Pray for children who are living through the horrors of war. (See Day 29)

Fair Trade and Child Labor

Fair trade could help millions of children just like these two:

I’m 7 years old and I work on a coffee plantation in Kenya. I have to reach up high to pick the ripe, red beans off of the coffee plants. To keep away bugs, the farmer sprayed the coffee plants with poisonous pesticides. About four million Kenyan children just like me are forced to work in hard, dangerous jobs.

I’m 10 years old and I live in Texas. I work on a farm to help my family earn money. One of my jobs is picking onions. I don’t go to school very much during planting or fall harvest. About 500,000 kids in the United States work on farms for little pay. Many of us miss months of school each year.

Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy safe working conditions. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited. Because workers are paid a fair, above-market price for their goods, they earn a living that enables them to take care of their family. This diminishes the need for their children to work. Fair trade eliminates the middleman so more of each dollar spent on products goes back into the pockets of the farmers and workers who actually produced the goods. Some of this money is reinvested in community development projects like schools. Education helps prevent the cycle of poverty that is closely connected with child labor. To find Fair Trade Certified™ products in the stores you frequent, click here.

World Pneumonia Day

Friday is World Pneumonia Day. Pneumonia is a respiratory infection that kills more children under the age of five than any other disease – more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined. The lungs of a child with pneumonia fill with fluid until they can no longer function properly.  Warning signs are a cough, fever, and labored breathing. Left untreated, pneumonia can be deadly. The medical world knows how to prevent children from catching pneumonia and how to treat those suffering with this illness. Children’s lives can be saved with the widespread use of vaccines and improved access to antibiotics. Unfortunately, many boys and girls in developing countries lack access to life-saving vaccines and only 20% of children with pneumonia receive the antibiotics needed to recover.

Ways to get involved:
•    Wear blue jeans or blue clothing on World Pneumonia Day. (Children often turn blue when they have pneumonia.) Show that you care about the children who will die from pneumonia this year.

•    Send a PneumoniaGram to your public officials, asking them to make the fight against pneumonia a priority. The Global Coalition will compile and deliver these to world leaders with a unified message that the fight against pneumonia is one we must win.

•    Learn all that you can about pneumonia through the Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia. Spread the word through your networks.

•    Give to help vaccinate children, provide needed antibiotics, or train health workers to treat children after they get pneumonia.

Kids Caring 4 Kids Founder Receives Award

I met Kendall’s dad at the Christian Alliance for Orphans Conference last spring. Our exhibit booth was near his Kids Caring 4 Kids booth. We joked about how similar the mission and name of their organization was to ours, Stand4Kids. We also presented together in a workshop on developing a heart for orphans in children.  Kendall’s dad (and self-proclaimed #1 assistant) shared how his daughter’s love for children affected by AIDS sprung from her personal experience with a rare liver disease. Kendall started Kids Caring 4 Kids when she was 11. Her nonprofit raise awareness about vulnerable children in Africa. What excites me about Kendall’s organization is that she invites children to become part of the solution to some really big issues and has created a structure that makes it easier for kids to take a stand for their peers.

Recently, Kendall was nominated for Glamour Magazine’s 2010 Readers’ Choice Award and SHE WON! Congratulations, Kendall. Here’s the article from Glamour’s website.

Earlier this year you nominated your real-life heroes, and then voted—in droves. Your winner? Courageous 17-year-old Kendall Ciesemier. Ciesemier suffers from a rare liver disease and at age 11 was facing her second liver transplant. But she asked friends not to send gifts: “How many teddy bears do you really need?” Instead, having learned about AIDS orphans in Africa, she requested that well-wishers donate to World Vision, an international charity. “I couldn’t imagine living like that: grieving the death of your parents and having to [support] your younger siblings,” she says. That appeal raised $15,000, prompting her to start her own nonprofit, Kids Caring 4 Kids, which helps fund a girls’ dormitory in Kenya and meals for AIDS patients and orphans in Zambia. So far Ciesemier, who’s now healthy, has raised more than $840,000—with a goal of $1 million before she heads to college next fall. Impressive! Support her work at kc4k.org.

Shoebox Recipient

I met Janice last summer. Janice and her family were students in a Red Card class I was team teaching. Janice had lived in an orphanage called Children Shelter of Cebu (CSC) in the Philippines. After living there for four years, she was adopted by an American family right before she turned 16. This is her story of the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes that made their way to CSC.

“One Saturday, right about lunch, huge boxes came to our orphanage, but we didn’t know what was in them. Then our house parents told us that after we ate lunch we had to take a nap and after napping, the gifts would be given to us. When we heard the word “gifts” we were all so excited that we forgot the keyword “nap.” So, instead of taking a nap, I was staring down at the gifts from the railing upstairs most of the time. I could not believe it … gifts?! After the nap hours, we were told to come down. Everybody was racing down the stairs, excited to receive their presents. I mean, who would want to wait that long?

When I was given mine, I was so surprise and grateful! I mean candy canes?!! It was the very first time I’d seen a candy cane and I had no idea its flavor is mint. I love minty flavors and candy canes were just the right candy for me. I got more things I really wanted. It was the very first big gift I have received. The box was overflowing with cool stuff, and it was very overwhelming. I couldn’t stop smiling, I was just so happy and surprised.”

Check out, Operation Christmas Child, the current Take a Stand Opportunity.

Soap Saves Lives

OK, fess up. How many bars of hotel soap and little shampoo bottles reside in your bathroom cabinet? Maybe you’ll pack them next time you travel, but often, they collect dust. Could they be put to better use? What about the partially used toiletries you leave in the hotel room? Every day in North America, hotels discard millions of pounds of soap and little plastic bottles of shampoo. These products usually end up in landfills.

Meanwhile, millions of children around the world don’t have any soap at all – not one bar! According to clinical studies, the combination of bar soap and proper hygiene education can reduce the effects of acute respiratory illness (pneumonia) and diarrheal disease by up to 65%. Combined, these diseases are the leading causes of death amongst children under the age of 5, killing 3.5 million children annually (World Health Organization).

Wasting soap – no soap. What’s the solution? What if the partially used bars of soap that you leave behind in your hotel shower could be recycled and potentially save lives? Well, it’s happening. A non-profit group called Clean the World recycles old hotel soaps into new soap and shampoo for developing countries and homeless shelters in the United States.

How does it work? First, Clean the World collects and sorts discarded soap, shampoo, conditioner and lotion product donations from participating hospitality partners. Hundreds of hotels and bed and breakfasts collect used soap for Clean the World. Manufacturers donate additional hygiene products. Next, in its Orlando, Florida lab, Clean the World cooks the soap in a process to remove impurities before reshaping it into 2-ounce bars. Then Clean the World, in conjunction with partner organizations, distributes recycled soap products, along with appropriate educational materials, to impoverished countries worldwide as well as homeless shelters in the United States.

For example, Clean the World partners with World Vision in their ongoing WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) program. With operations in more than 100 countries, World Vision has the on-the-ground capability to distribute the recycled soap and provide essential hygiene education where it is most needed.

Ways you can help?

• Check those bathroom cabinets. Maybe you have soap to donate.

• Do you know someone who runs a hotel, motel, bed and breakfast who could donate soap? Someone who works for a company that manufactures soap or shampoo? Let them know about Clean the World.

• Considering hosting a Million Bars of Soap for Hope drive in your community.

Get more details here.

Soccer Balls and Children at Risk

Leading up to the World Cup, a photographer named Jessica Hilltout, made a seven-month road trip throughout Africa She took pictures of children playing soccer on a variety of “fields” and collected homemade balls and stories from locals along the way. Here’s a poem from Jessica’s travels:

These words got me thinking. If I deleted the poem’s title and last line, the remaining phrases would describe the lives of millions children, not only in Africa, but around the world. It’s true that children don’t require much to be happy and that they seem to bounce back from adversity much easier than adults. It’s also true that harsh circumstances often make children stronger. This is where the similarity between soccer balls and children end. Soccer balls are created for the express purpose of being kicked around. Children are not. God created children in his own image and has harsh words for anyone who would abuse them or hinder them from becoming all that He intends.

For ideas on how you can take a stand for children at risk and provide God’s hope, check out Red Card Kids.

Bringing Hope Through Jesus

When we mobilize children (or even adults) to pray and take a stand for children who are poor, sick, abandoned, exploited, or forced to fend for themselves, it is easy for our students to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the issues. Statistics first produce a “deer in the headlights” response. This is often followed by a kind of paralysis –a reaction stemming from pure human reasoning–”I can’t begin to make a dent in the problem so I won’t do anything.”

Any lessons we teach should include the element of hope. Yes, the problems are too big for us to solve, but God is not asking us to solve them on our own. God is inviting us to partner with him to change the way things are. How does this partnership work? God provides power and authority, we act in faith. When I first saw this video, it reminded me that God asks us to bring hurting children to him, the author of transformation. He will do the rest. Watch it and pass it on. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Book Review: One Million Arrows

One Million Arrows, a new book by Julie Ferwerda, invites parents and mentors to think of children as arrows. The biblical concept of arrows comes straight from Psalm 127:4-5a: “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them …”

Created by God to penetrate their own culture and the world for Christ, children can leave a mark for eternity. This book includes ideas for raising children to change the world from parents who already have this God-sized vision for their sons and daughters. According to the author, “Being an arrow is a lot like signing up for Fear Factor. You know there’s going to be a lot of suspense, some fun and interesting challenges, some really hard mental and physical obstacles, and of course, plenty of fear as you’re stretched way out of your comfort zone.” Reaching beyond the family unit, One Million Arrows encourages the body of Christ to consider the latent potential of children at risk around the world. The author relates the vision that God gave M.A. “Papa” Thomas for serving the millions of overlooked children of India. “Gather one million broken branches – the native-born, orphaned, and abandoned children – sharpen them with education, faith, and a heart for the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), and launch them like arrows back into the regions of India that have never heard about Jesus. In fact, why limit it to India?”

Hmmm. This book starting me thinking …

• What are some ways I can hone arrows, even if I don’t homeschool my kids?
• How can God use my willingness to sponsor a child in poverty or partner with a Christian ministry that serves street children and orphans lead to a new generation of arrows who are strategically positioned to impact cultures and subcultures that I can’t?
• What other books and websites address this subject?

Check out this book. What do you think? Join the conversation.