Human Trafficking (Week Seven)

Slavery is illegal in every country and outlawed by several international treaties, including the Palermo Protocol from year 2000 , which has been fundamental in recognizing and defining the rapidly growing world-wide criminal industry of human trafficking. The exploitation and violation of human beings in the form of slavery has changed its name and its face, but nonetheless still exists, comprising a 32 milliard/billion USD illegal industry, second only to drug dealing, equal to the illegal arms trade, and, grievously, the fastest growing of criminal industries. Currently, there are an estimated 27 million modern-day slaves across the world, men, women and children, who are trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation, exploitative/forced labour, organ theft, forced begging or to be child soldiers.

The numbers are staggering and the forms of exploitation heart-wrenching, so much so that the reality of it all becomes very hard to grasp. While a trafficker can earn back in one week the money he or she has paid for a person trafficked into prostitution, victims of forced labour can be trapped in bonded debt for generations. Children forced into begging may often have inflicted injuries to attract more empathy, and babies are one of the most highly at-risk categories for organ theft. There are an estimated 200,000 – 300,000 known child soldiers in 20 countries today, brainwashed to kill as a way of living.   

Our teacher, Rochelle Potter, or Ro for short, has grown up as a missionary kid in Japan (and is consequently bilingual J). After completing her degree in Biblical Theology and Communications, she has dedicated most of her working life to fighting human trafficking. She shared with us some of her extensive in-depth knowledge on the topic, covering aspects such as push and pull factors, which make people more susceptible to falling pray to traffickers, push factors being things that push you to want to leave a region (such as low employment, lack of educational opportunities, political corruption, armed conflict, famine or drought) and pull factors being things that attract you to a new region (for example relative freedom or job opportunities). Ro also explained how we as consumers create a market traffickers are answering to, and as a result of a lowest price philosophy and a global economy that decreases accountability, we buy and eat products harvested by slaves.  

Ro emphasized that there are tons of things we can do to fight trafficking. “We’re going to die as a movement if we don’t find ways to take action; we need to translate awareness into action,” she underlined, which brought me back to a comment from Janna from the first week of teaching in reference to at-risk children: “How much more aware can we be. I get tired of people making an issue out of an issue. I want us to stop talking about this and start joining the people who are already doing this”.

So instead of going in more detail into the statistics, facts, definitions and subcultures related to human trafficking, I would like to encourage you to do some research on the topic, and then think and pray about how you can translate your increasing awareness into action. It’s also important to realize that in addition to rescue and restoration, prevention is a significant factor in fighting the trafficking of humans. Investing in the lives of children, especially at-risk children, and supporting families address some of the root causes for trafficking. Buying wisely, preferably fair-trade and local products, is also something all of us can do to decrease the demand for products that involve slave labour, as well as pushing companies to be accountable.

You may not be called to dedicate your life to anti-trafficking like Ro has done, but that doesn’t mean you can do nothing at all. Ro left us with an exercise she asked us to think about. I’d like to share it with you as it might help you come up with ways to increase awareness and take action on the topic. She suggested we come up with different ways to take action if we have

                                                          one minute

                                                          one hour

                                                          one day

                                                          one week

                                                          one month

                                                          one year

                                                          or one lifetime to give.

In one minute, for example, you can buy fair-trade chocolate instead of chocolate made from cocoa beans harvested by trafficked children in West Africa or you can ask if your favourite coffee shop offers or would consider offering fair-trade coffee. In one day you could write an article on the subject and in one year or a lifetime you could make a significant impact on the life of an at-risk child. Just to put a few ideas out there J  

Project Planning and Development (Week Six)

I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do.

Jesus Christ (John 17:4, NIV)

Lance Rawlins, who currently works for the Women and Children’s Advocacy Centre, taught us on Project Planning and Development. He has a degree in Business Management, which he has been able to utilize in advising and training people working in grass-roots development projects. After looking at concepts such as a relational definition of poverty and an asset-based approach to community development (as opposed to a needs-based approach) we got the chance to get started on planning our own community development project. Instead of trying to plan every aspect of how to move forward with the preschool (Shepherd’s Heart) in Malawi, for the purpose of this week I narrowed it down, as Lance suggested, and focused only on the aspect of motivating and empowering the caregivers/volunteers through training.  

The premise for a relational definition of poverty is that God is relational. He’s triune and deeply values relationships. He longs to be in a relationship with us and has created us to live in a relationship with each other and with creation. In his teaching Lance defined the foundational relationships in our lives as our relationship with God, with ourselves, with each other and with creation. We were created for intimacy with God and community with each other. As for our relationship with ourselves, our identity can be built on the understanding that each of us has been created uniquely in God’s image, with inherent worth and dignity. These qualities are not something we can lose or do anything to gain, or even give to someone, for that matter, since they’re innate in every human being, including those who may be looked down on or pitied by society. In relation to creation, we’re created for stewardship over it, not to exploit the resources we have, but to take care of creation and steward our resources well.

In materialistic terms we may be wealthier than the people we are working with, for instance in the developing world, but in terms of relationships, intimacy with God, an understanding of inherent worth and dignity in every human being, including ourselves, a sense of community, and stewardship over creation, we may be a whole lot poorer than the people we’re working with. Thinking in relational terms shifts the definition of poverty to all of us. It makes us see that we are all rich and we are all poor, and forces us to have a more holistic view on people and communities. It urges us to break away from a mentality Lance described as the god complex, a mindset that may not be blatantly obvious, but nevertheless finds its expression in more subtle ways, allowing us to think along the lines of “I’m rich. I can teach you” or “I’m Christian, so I have all the answers”.   

Asset-based community development logically follows from a relational definition of poverty. While a needs-based approach focuses on a community’s deficiencies that need to be fixed, usually by having outsiders come in to address them, an asset-based approach is built on the capacities and skills of the people actually living in the local community. The asset-based approach engages the local community in investing themselves and their resources into building the community, whereas the needs approach, denying basic community wisdom, removes the community from itself and leads the residents to believe they cannot bring about change themselves and that their well-being depends on the people coming in.

When we want to be part of a change for the better in a community, we ought to “start with living and by taking the small steps” Lance explained. He encouraged us to start looking at communities in relational terms, to view people and communities more holistically and first and foremost, to start within ourselves, by asking how we should change our own thinking and what we can do differently.      

Justice and the Character and Nature of God (Week Five)

Scott Freeman, who has pioneered and led the first Children at Risk Schools in Costa Rica together with his wife Leslie, taught us on the topic of Justice and the Character and Nature of God. He started the week by having us draw how we see God. People were incredibly creative in their drawings, depicting Him in a variety of different ways, including music, footprints in the sand, an open door and an intricate tree. In my picture I drew God as big and powerful, radiating light, but also gentle and loving, with His arms around me, bending down to kiss the top of my head.  After we’d each shared about our picture, Scott concluded that what we believe about God defines our lives. His statement made perfect sense. As followers of Christ we obviously believe there is a God, so logically what we believe about Him shapes our lives. It characterizes who we are. Scott went on to say: “This is what you know in your heads, and maybe some of you may know in your hearts, but for the rest of your lives you will try to reconcile your heart with your head”.

I’m not sure, but I think Scott was speaking in reference to the age-old question of the discrepancy between the state of the world and the just and compassionate God of the Scriptures (certainly a very relevant question for anyone working with at-risk children). Janna, our first speaker, encouraged us to ask questions, and not just in class, but in general, to be willing to wrestle with God about the difficult ones. It’s how we learn, by first admitting we don’t know. Even though this side of eternity we may have more questions than answers, we can choose to keep asking, to chew on the difficult ones, and to draw our hope from knowing who God is and what He is like.

We had our classes together with the discipleship training school and Scott had us do a couple of activities outside the classroom. On Tuesday morning we went to the Salvation Army in central San Jose, where part of the group stayed to sort out hundreds of donated shoes into pairs, except apparently for the most part the original pair was nowhere to be found, so the task was to find a left and a right shoe similar enough to be put together. I guess a pair of mismatching shoes is better than no shoes at all, but just think if that’s what you had to wear for example for a job interview, or as someone pointed out, you were a little child and those were the only pair you could wear for school.  Surely you’d hope the people around you had the grace to see past your shoes.

While some of the students worked on the mountain of shoes, the rest of us went to buy bread to give to the homeless. Finding people living in the streets was not hard. Many of them actually found us. Since I don’t speak Spanish, I wasn’t quite sure how to reach out to them, so I decided to at least sit down on the pavement so as not to be towering above the people we were supposed to be reaching out to. At one point, Robbie, who is one of our staff, motioned me to come over and asked if I’d like her to interpret for me, which I thought was very considerate of her. So I sat down with her and Hannah and the ladies they were having a conversation with, and both Hannah and Robbie interpreted for us.  

I know it would be so much more ideal to build long-term relationships and to at least be able to offer alternatives to living on the street. But then, I also know anything I do in Costa Rica can only be short-term, and I don’t think I should allow that to stop me from doing anything at all, especially if a window of opportunity opens up right before my eyes.  So I followed the example of my Lord and Saviour, who looked at the overlooked, touched (literally!) the “untouchable” (Mark 1:41) and fellowshipped with the despised. During His walk on earth He did not aim to climb higher but to reach lower, and I believe that is where we still find Him, with the poor and the overlooked (Isaiah 57:15).

The following day, Wednesday, we had an hour of quiet time in a huge park, Parque del este. Afterwards, we met up again to share what we felt some of the different aspects of nature had conveyed to us about God’s character.  Thinking back on the morning, I was reminded of a promotional video clip for a book called One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp (I’ve bought a copy, but haven’t read it yet). If you’d like to take a look at the clip, here’s a youtube link.   

I hope you have a good week! Blessed to be able to share my journey with you!

Behaviour and Behaviour Management (Week Four)

The fourth topic in the CRS, Behaviour and Behaviour Management, was taught by Michelle Grimes, who, having worked as a primary school teacher for fourteen years in an urban inner-city setting in the States, had a wealth of experience to share with us on the subject. We started by simply defining the concept of discipline and considering the differences between discipline and punishment. The difference in definition I found most significant was viewing discipline as child-centered, with the focus on the child’s best interest in helping him/her develop, learn and grow, whereas mere punishment would be adult-centered, focused on the adult retaining control regardless of the best interest of the child.

In addition to getting to know Michelle as a teacher, I also got to know her a little outside the classroom setting. One afternoon we started chatting over lunch and continued our discussion well into the afternoon. Michelle shared about her experience in not only working but also living in a community initially not her own, and I was intrigued to hear about her real-life experience in what Colleen had been talking to us about just a week or so earlier, coming into a community from the outside and engaging in it, living your life alongside the people on a day to day basis. I’ve been considering doing the CRS outreach in two different locations, first in Malawi, as I’ve promised, and then the second half in a different location in Africa, but after talking with Michelle, my heart really resonated with committing to do my outreach in one location only, our sweet little preschool in Malawi.  

Applying the Spheres (Week Three)

Last week from Monday to Wednesday Colleen Milstein taught us over Skype about the eight (or seven, depending on how you divide them) areas of influence in society, reflecting a God who cares about the entire person, every aspect of our lives and every area of society. The different domains are easy to remember, as you can use the first letters of the alphabet to label them: art, business (or economy), communication (or media), discovery (for science and technology), education, family, government and holiness (for church).

Not surprisingly, the ones that stood out for me personally were family and education, but I was also fascinated to hear Colleen speak extensively on the different roles of government and the church and touch on the topic of immigration (which I’m hoping to find time to write a little bit about in the near future). The categories are based on the worldview behind the faculties in the University of the Nations as well as on Landa Cope’s book The Old Testament Template, which I read about four years ago after doing my discipleship training school. The core idea in the book is that the church is caught up in split thinking, segregating the sacred and the secular, and in doing so, excluding God from anything outside the institution of the church.  

Colleen went on to explain that to a large extent, churches are divided in preaching either a Salvation Gospel or a Social Gospel, whereas the Bible talks of neither. While salvation is a part of the Gospel, as is social justice, the two are not mutually exclusive, and what the Bible actually focuses on is the fullness of the Kingdom Gospel. The background to Landa Cope’s book is her own personal struggle in realizing that some of the world’s most evangelised  nations are also some of the world’s poorest and most socially deprived ones. Most African countries, for instance, are evangelized, yet a huge number of people continue to live in poverty without even the most basic of their needs met, such as access to adequate education or health care.  “The devastation you see,” she writes, “is the fruit of preaching salvation alone, without the rest of the Biblical message,” in other words, evangelizing without discipling. Saddened by the fact that a large Christian population does not necessarily benefit a community, and that most Christians don’t even really seem to care or feel responsible, Cope was pushed to search the Scriptures to find principles we can apply to bless a community in every area of society.

“You start in a community with the window of opportunity God opens for you,” Colleen told us. Going into a community should not be about seeking self-fulfillment; it should be about asking what the community needs and what I can do to best serve in it – how I can model and communicate God’s love to the people. Instead of trying to find the right ministry or the most cutting-edge issue to work with, Colleen encouraged us to engage in a community and live out our faith among the people on a day to day basis. Interestingly enough, she said that geography is not the point. Rather, obedience to what the Bible says about reaching out to the poor was the point she was wanting to get across to us.

In May and June I spent seven weeks in Malawi, where I lived with a local family in a very local area of town, interacting with the local people, going to church with them, working side by side with them, getting around on foot and by minibus just like them and eating the same food as they do. All of this was due simply to very practical reasons, limited finances and safety. I can’t take any credit for having been intentional about it, but in retrospect, I’m hugely grateful and kind of amazed to have had the opportunity to live in a local community and build relationships with local people (as well as with all the people I met who had immigrated to Malawi, of course J). I thoroughly enjoyed it.  

Inner Healing (Week Two)

I feel that God started preparing me for this week’s topic already in the course of last week. Things stared coming up I thought I had already dealt with, I thought were a part of my past but not my present. I thought I’d had more than enough time to heal and ought to have done by now, but started realizing that not everywhere and all the time, but in certain contexts, in some situations, I still resort, almost cling to, things God surely didn’t intend to be a part of my identity. So I need to ask myself why. 

The second teacher in the Children at Risk School, Christy Scott, taught us about inner healing, applying the topic to our own lives as well as to working with at-risk children. She said that we often build what she referred to as high places in our minds (alluding to the Bible), making certain experiences or areas of our life bigger than God. It can be that we know Him in every other area of our lives but one, thinking He is all-powerful and able to heal and restore in every other area except for this, especially if we grow up hearing lies about who we really are.

The first step in dismantling the high places or uprooting the lies spoken over our lives, is asking God to define what they are and when we first believed them. “You can cut down a branch,” Christy illustrated, “but the tree is still there – you need to go to the root”. As Christians we also want to ask God what the truth is that He wants to speak into our lives in place of the lies. When we dig up what was there, God doesn’t leave us empty, He fills us with truth about who we are. Just like when you plant a tree, you need to take care of it, and even when you do, it takes time for it to grow, Christy encouraged us to wait for the fullness of what God has spoken into our lives, to write it down and to speak it over ourselves.   

God has spoken and continues to speak Life to me, but there are still patches of dry land that remain, devastated, overwhelmed, by sorrow. Gradually, I learn to let go of the things too heavy for me to carry, even the ones that have become a part of me. And I pray and I trust that He will carry the burdens too heavy for me and reshape my identity where it is defined by things it was never intended to be defined by.  

My King comes to me humble, low. I can’t get past how deeply that moves me. Hosea 11:4 says: I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them. And Zechariah 9:9:  See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Healing, I believe, is a process. Investing in broken lives requires commitment, dedication, time.  Coming to terms with our own brokenness, not dwelling on it, but rather moving towards restoration, hopefully makes us that much more willing to face brokenness in other people and have hope and faith that even though my understanding is very limited God’s love is unfailing, and what looks like a desert now, those cracked and dry patches of land, will one day be a garden where His streams of abundance flow, because, as Christy so poignantly put it, “the truth outlives a lie”. Consoling.

Why We are Here: A Framework for Action (Week One)

The first speaker of the Children at Risk School was Janna Moats, founder of the Women and Children’s Advocacy Centre (http://wcacentre.org), a mother and grandmother, and formerly also a teacher, school administrator and espresso café owner.  Janna gave us a framework for the rest of our school and for working with at-risk children by interweaving together the three things that impact us as Christians working with or on behalf of children: God (the Word – God’s nature and character), the world (its need but also the tools it offers) and us (including our individual gifts, skills, experiences, relationships etc). I really enjoyed how personal she made the topics for us, challenging us to question common beliefs on family and what’s best for the poor and the needy, and encouraging us to reflect on what Bible verses mean to us personally in the time and place we are at right now and in what our goals, hopes and dreams are.

The first few days of classes went by in what seemed like a blink of an eye. On Monday and Tuesday I just couldn’t believe how quickly teaching was over, but towards the end of the week the tiredness from travelling, seemingly endless sitting on airplanes and wandering around airports trying to find a place to sleep, finally caught up with me. I was thoroughly exhausted, but even so, only after one week of teaching, I already feel encouraged and better equipped to organise some kind of training to support and hopefully inspire the volunteers at the church preschool in Malawi. They are amazing ladies, very committed to what they do, but with little training and scarce resources, I worry they might soon become weary. After listening to Janna teach and talking with my Children at Risk School leader, Rachel, I also know now that I want to share with the volunteers about the value of the child and God’s intentions for every child.

One of the topics Janna touched on is something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently.  It was very encouraging to hear her highlight the importance of humility. “You will always mess up,” she said, “if you don’t talk with the families and children first”. On other occasions she urged us to “know the history, the pain, a community has walked through” and “recognise that no one develops in isolation… we must look at children in contexts to fully understand child development”. During my second stay in Malawi, what became increasingly apparent to me could be described as the colonialist mindset, the belief that it is the Westerner who has something to give/teach and the local who can only receive/learn/follow. It made me feel really sad and utterly powerless at times, and I’m afraid it’s the Westerners who have not only created this legacy but to a large extent continue to reinforce it, so it was very refreshing to hear Janna speak about the value of humility, the importance of staying teachable and asking questions, and creating an environment of interdependence, as opposed to functioning independently or creating dependence. Janna also pointed out that “every new generation is an opportunity to know God in a new way” and “we should expect to learn new things about God from the children we care for”. Truly inspirational – don’t you think? :)