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The Issues

One out of every five people on earth is a child at risk: at risk of malnutrition, forced labour, disease, drug addiction, abandonment. There are also risks for those working with and for struggling children. The staff and projects that provide care, the churches that offer assistance and resources, and the leaders who affect social agendas can also be vulnerable if they are not given the right support.

Below are the five key groups that Viva works to support and strengthen, and their respective areas of risk...

  • Children: The death or desertion of a parent, or other breakdown of the family unit, is one of the biggest contributors to child vulnerability, as the child is often left with no family or community support. Forced into poverty they are then exposed to the dangers of drug and alcohol dependency, street gangs and violence, malnutrition, disease, trafficking, abuse, and exploitation.
  • Workers: The responsibility of successfully nurturing and protecting vulnerable children is a heavy one, and often project workers focus so much attention on caring for children that they sacrifice their own needs. Caregivers are usually over-worked and under-paid and are at huge risk of exhaustion, illness, and breakdown, often preventing them from caring effectively for children.
  • Projects: Organisations and programmes are often started in response to an immediate need, and so they do not always have the resources, expertise, or infrastructure to properly develop. Many initiatives are also relatively isolated in their work, and without the right contacts and partnerships it can be hard to progress beyond simply reacting to the need and move forward with a proactive response to the issues.
  • Churches: Although there are churches working faithfully with vulnerable children in their local areas, the Christian community is always at risk of failing to take seriously the call to put faith into action. Churches are in danger of simply becoming absorbed with internal matters, when instead they must engage fully with the world and fulfil their God-given potential as powerful centres of community and influential agents of change.
  • Decision-makers: Our society pays great lip service to issues of justice but we so often fail to match our actions to our words, making it difficult for leaders to really prioritise the needs of the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed. Government members, local council representatives, church leaders, and business CEO’s have an enormous responsibility as they seek to make choices that will help and not harm children at risk.

 

The Great Omission

Viva Story: Uganda

Two sisters in Kampala run a boarding school in a slum area for the local children. Left responsible for the project after their mother’s death, the girls were struggling with the work as they had neither the vision nor the expertise to manage the school. Also their youngest brother is severely mentally disabled, and caring for him made it significantly harder to run the project effectively. The sisters were beginning to feel helpless and overwhelmed, and were considering closing the school.

However, when they became members of the CRANE network they discovered a project that worked specifically with special needs children, a rarity in Uganda. Through the network the girls were able to enrol their brother in that project, and now he is looked after and educated there for several hours every day, enabling his sisters to work with more freedom. 

They have also undergone the Quality Improvement System training offered by Viva through the network, and are now feeling empowered and envisioned in their work, able to continue serving the vulnerable children in their community.