Making the Difference for Just One

A few months ago I tucked my Ella-girl into bed, prayed over her, and kissed her goodnight. She always clicks off her own lamp, so I walked out, cracked the door, and from the hallway shadows, I watched her a moment. A parent privilege.

She picked up a picture from the table beside her bed. She stared into the glass at the face our family has come to know. A face burned into our hearts.

I can’t know what my girl was thinking, but as her thumb rubbed the frame, my heart tightened. Her actions affirmed a decision we made a year ago.

The photo my daughter stared at? It’s a picture of a young girl named Martha. Martha is the child we are blessed to sponsor through Compassion International.

She’s from Tanzania and shares Ella’s birth date. Her daily jobs include traveling the dusty road to retrieve water for her family and taking care of her siblings while her parents farm as work is available.

Martha is from a world my daughter will never understand. Ella will never know the heavy lifting of Martha’s life. Ella has never wondered if she will have food to eat each day. But what my children can understand are the gifts they’ve been given and the responsibility they have.

Martha is just one of our world’s 600 million children living in extreme poverty as reported by Compassion.

This is not a blog to pat myself on the back. To get you to think I’m some kind of extra-good person. To make you feel guilty.

You may even wonder, as I sometimes do, what good will it do to help just one? I’ll admit there are days Martha does seem just one grain of sand along a seashore of suffering.

So why does my family sponsor a child? There are so many reasons. But mainly?

Why not?

Author, world-changer Kristen Welch says, “We change the world when we simply meet the needs of others.”

Our family sponsors because we want our children to know they can be world changers. To gain a global perspective. To know how blessed they are. To understand the face of poverty.

I’ve walked the mud-slicked slums of Africa, fragments of my heart slipping through my fingers. Stepping close to poverty, digging your hands into the grime of the broken will change you forever.

Why not one?

I’m desperate to pry my children from the white-knuckle grip of an entitled generation. Maybe you are too.

But you and your children don’t have sponsor a child around the world to make a difference.

There are hungry children in America too.

There will be children in your neighborhood schools that need backpacks and school supplies this August. Teens that need new warm jackets in the middle of winter. Making a difference can be as simple as checking with your child’s school about children in need.

Organizations exist in our local communities that you and your family can partner with—teaching your children what it means to give back from the overflow of the heart.

You don’t have to be wealthy to teach your children to give. (And American standards of wealth are vastly different from those across the globe. Visit Poke’s Global Rich List and plug in your annual salary. The results are humbling.)

I want my children to understand they’ve been given much so they can give more. When we teach the next generation how to look beyond themselves and out toward a world in need? We change our world.

So why not one?

Some places to begin and organizations to trust:

Child Sponsorships
Compassion International
Rafiki Foundation
World Vision

Local Organizations
Deliver the Difference
Busses and Backpacks
Second Harvest Food Bank
Loaves and Fishes
Orlando Rescue Misson
The Beta Center
The Mustard Seed of Central Florida

*unaffiliated links