The Invisible Children

I just recently started researching UNICEF. Do you know about them?

The United Nations Children’s Fund

Here is an excerpt from their website:

We believe that nurturing and caring for children are the cornerstones of human progress. UNICEF was created with this purpose in mind – to work with others to overcome the obstacles that poverty, violence, disease and discrimination place in a child’s path. We believe that we can, together, advance the cause of humanity.

We advocate for measures to give children the best start in life, because proper care at the youngest age forms the strongest foundation for a person’s future.

For someone who has a heart for children, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of UNICEF’s website. They are huge. One thing that I downloaded from them that I am hoping to read is a 150 page report that they produce every year called “The State of the World’s Children”. I need to print it out but it is not an easy thing to print out 150 page reports. That’s some serious paper. Anyway, the theme for the 2006 report is “Excluded and Invisible” and here is the opening paragraph of the report…

Millions of children make their way through life impoverished, abandoned, uneducated, malnourished, discriminated against, neglected and vulnerable. For them, life is a daily struggle to survive. Whether they live in urban centres or rural outposts, they risk missing out on their childhood – excluded from essential services such as hospitals and schools, lacking the protection of family and community, often at risk of exploitation and abuse. For these children, childhood as a time to grow, learn, play and feel safe is, in effect, meaningless.

[Curt’s heart breaks]

[He composes himself and continues Blog post]

When I began about a year or so ago trying to identify what really frustrates me about this world, children who have no chance, who are abused and who have no one to stand up for them kept coming to my mind. I really started praying about how God might use me to join Him in what He is currently doing all over this world to help these kids. And please don’t think that by me potentially moving I believe that those kids only exist outside the U.S.

Kids in need are everywhere and they always will be. Even on Ralph McGill Blvd where I live. I just feel that the kids who need ME the most might be somewhere else.

It was also an interesting thing when I checked the “Happy Childhood” box in my Life History Inventory workbook and thought about all of kids in this world who can’t check that box. Maybe they can’t even check the “I HAD a childhood” box. Happy or not.

I mean…I might have had difficulty connecting with my parents but at least I HAVE parents. And those parents even took me to Cracker Barrel on Turkey Day.

Millions of children in this world don’t even have parents to NOT connect to.
And they certainly don’t have a Cracker Barrel.

Anyway, the UNICEF report is extremely rich with info and mostly deals with social issues that I can’t quite wrap my head around yet but it is very interesting to see Bolivia’s status as being South America’s poorest country validated in the stats.

All I am saying is that I am getting to a place in my life where I want to spend everyday of my life actively working on a problem that really frustrates me. I want the least amount of regret possible when I get the old “Game Over” screen. I want to be able to look up at my ceiling at night and know that I am exactly where God wants and needs me to be, doing exactly what He created me to do.

Don’t get me wrong T…I love your condo.

I think I just need a new ceiling.