Back To School With Compassion International
It is quickly approaching back to school time in our home. Buying school clothes, stationery supplies and nervous comments about the upcoming hard work of assignments. Three of our five kids are preparing for the school changes that are coming. But they would prefer to continue the summer free as a bird playing and watching movies and sleeping in. School is a somewhat stressful assignment which helps our kids to understand our world. To develop their abilities, to get mentored by people who care and to make friends.
Untapped Creative Power
I’ve been mindful recently about human creativity and its impact on the world. I am convinced that almost every human being has untapped creative ability. Unfortunately the majority of us are not actively creative. These millions of people represent a tremendous reservoir of untapped creative power. A small minority of people still create the majority of the content, entertainment and products that we consume.
Human creativity is unique to each person, it is a natural gifting. It is how we are wired deep within and is not necessarily something that we can form in ourselves. It can however be oppressed or hindered and attempting to access that part of us is can be a lifetime struggle.
As I have shared in the past, human creativity can easily be covered by emotional wounds, by mental clutter and by not thinking for oneself. The right education can go a long way in removing these creativity-killing forces in people’s lives.
A decent education can provide the tools needed to succeed in life, it can provide the knowledge to understand the world we live in and an education can unleash the creative spark that God has placed in all of us. An education can provide self-confidence, clarity of focus, loving mentors and life-long friends which open up many opportunities.
Not all children have access to a formal education.
- Worldwide, nearly 80 percent of primary-school-age children attend school. In least developed countries, this figure is around 66 percent.
- The largest out-of-school population is in sub-Saharan Africa. There around 45.5 million children of primary school age are out of school.
- Of the 67 million primary-school-age children who do not attend school, 53 percent are girls.
- Worldwide, only 49 percent of children of secondary school age actually attend secondary school.
- Of the 49 percent of secondary age students who do not attend school, 52 percent are girls.
- The world’s functional illiterates include more than 130 million children who do not attend school. And 73 million of these illiterates are girls.
Sources: www.crin.org, www.unicef.org, www.childinfo.org
Hundreds of millions of children are without the basic assignment of going to school. Of learning to read and write and to add numbers. Imagine if everyone had access to quality education, freedom from slave labor, freedom from a life of debilitating debt and oppression. What if all people could explore their abilities and gifting’s.
Give to the Poor
The good news is that we are not powerless! Those of us who have been blessed financially can help poor children. Through generosity and compassion we can bless children directly with an education and nutrition needed for school. We can give children the blessing of a school assignment.
One great way to do this is to connect with Compassion International. This organization connects generous people who have the means to share some of their wealth with the children of the world who need help getting to school and a decent meal every day.
Sponsor a child today and give them the assignment of school that they so desperately need. You may be educating and feeding the inventor of the cure for cancer. Or the preacher who God uses mightily for his purposes.