International Ministry Targets Neediest Areas to Help Children
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
May 28, 2004
(AgapePress) - The president of a Christian ministry that exists as an advocate for children worldwide says although the world grows more dangerous, efforts to reach children for Christ will continue.Dr. Wesley K. Stafford is president of Compassion International, a Colorado-based child development ministry. Compassion pairs children in impoverished nations with sponsors who pledge $28 a month to help the child and his or her family. The money is used for the child's physical, emotional and spiritual well being, and pays for things like the child's educational supplies, supplemental nutrition, and health care.
Currently, the ministry is helping more than 550,000 children in more than 20 countries around the world, and Stafford says its outreach is continuing to expand. "As God blesses us, we'll be adding a country almost every year now for the next ten years or so," he says.
However, the current geopolitical climate creates many challenges. Compassion's president notes that, while the threat of terrorism has grown worldwide, the need for ministry to children has also increased. "We deliberately go in where the need is greatest," he says. "All we really have to have in place is the local church, the Christian community with a heart for the poor and a willingness to reach out to children."
Stafford makes a point of letting potential sponsors know that those who choose to sponsor a child get more than they bargained for. He speaks from experience, not only as the head of the ministry but also as a caring individual, who along with his family invests in the lives of needy children. "While we reach out to a child in Ethiopia, that child in turn reaches out to our children," he says. "One of the reasons I'm in Compassion's ministry is I'm trying to disciple my own children to be compassionate, caring people."
And Compassion's CEO says that is a lesson that cannot be picked up haphazardly at the mall, on television, or even from parental lectures. "You learn that by what you give your money to, what you pray about, what you talk about as a family -- what moves your heart," he says.
In keeping with his own missionary parents' commitment to the poor, Stafford became an advocate for children in poverty early on, working for a time among disadvantaged inner-city youth and later becoming a Haiti representative for six international relief and development agencies (including Compassion International). During that time he coordinated over 50 community development projects, and spent 15 years working with Compassion, both overseas and at headquarters, before becoming the ministry's president in September 1993.
