Poverty
Walking with the Poor: a review
One of the consistently most-recommended resources for understanding ministry to those in extreme poverty is Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development, by Bryant L. Myers, Vice President of International Program Strategy at World Vision International. Published in 1999 through Maryknoll (Roman Catholic Development) and Orbis Books, the 279-page book is divided [...]
Transforming Nations
For the poor, poverty is NOT an option. In the midst of great need and poverty, I can only echo David’s prayer in Psalm 118:25: “Save now, I pray, O Lord… Send now prosperity.”
If poverty is a curse from sin, then national prosperity and progress should very much be a concern for Christian missionaries and [...]
A Haven of Peace
Morning dawns before light reaches into the constricted streets. The loud speaker coughs out the 4am Muslim ‘Call to Prayer’ from the local mosque. It echoes down the narrow cobblestones where men are already shuffling off to blue collar jobs. The less fortunate sleep in shadowy doorways, oblivious to noise through the mechanics of sniffed [...]
A Home of Hope
During the years 1995 to 1998, T Raja was working as driver for the Mission that I directed from Bangalore. He was almost illiterate. But a quick learner. Steadily he learnt to read, to take photos and to make albums and promotional charts, to care for electrical equipment, to arrange meetings, to assist the medical [...]
Living fields again
Sarrut rises early to the sound of the first roosters crowing. The clear skies in the east promise that it will be another hot, muggy day. The ground on the trail through the sugar cane field is hard and cracked. There will be no rain today. This is the Cambodian dry season. Sarrut lifts the [...]
Street Kids of Surin
A little over a year ago, a Thai lady pastor visited a Cambodian border market at Chong Chom, Surin. As she was window-shopping a young lad snatched her handbag and ran. Being street-wise of the alleys and hiding places, he was lost to sight in no time at all. Frustrated, angry and feeling helpless she [...]
A bridge of hope
Out of the 12.5 million people living in Cambodia, over 10 million live in rural areas. They are subsistence farmers and fishermen eking a living off the land. Living out there in the remote areas, they have to struggle against numerous natural hazards that threaten their survival.
There are floods that sweep away the paddy plants [...]
A professional beggar
My friend spends his days walking through the city neighborhoods singing verses from the Koran. At gates he knows are kind, he stops and asks for a few pennies or a piece of bread. Aziz is a professional beggar. He comes from a proud ethnic group that used to be nomadic. They called themselves Muslim [...]
Walking with the night
Uganda is a country plagued with incredible poverty and entrenched spiritism and nearly gutted by a 19-year civil war. Over 13 million children have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDS. Thousands of children have been dragged into slavery by the rebels in the north. The level of child abuse and negligence has increased [...]
Megaslums
A slum household is a “group of individuals living under the same roof that lack one or more of: access to safe water, access to sanitation, secure tenure, durability of housing, and sufficient living area.” Worldwide, more than 900 million lived in slums in 2001 (or 31% of all global urbanites), and this figure is [...]
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