"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans and widows in their distress" -James 1:27
"Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed.
Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows." Isaiah 1:17
God makes it clear. When children are suffering, it is our responsibility to intervene. We all have a part to play in helping to stop injustice.
Some stats I found at www.care.com state:
Health Care and Nutrition
Education
Exploitation
- Measles, malaria and diarrhea are three of the biggest killers of children — yet all are preventable or treatable
- More than 30 million children in the world are not immunized against treatable or preventable diseases
- 95 percent of all the people who get polio are under the age of 5
- HIV/AIDS has created more than 14 million orphans — 92 percent of them live in Africa
- Six million children under five die every year as a result of hunger
Education
- 134 million children between the ages of 7 to 18 have never been to school.
- Girls are more likely to go without schooling than boys — in the Middle East and North Africa, girls are three times more likely than boys to be denied education
- For every year of education, wages increase by a worldwide average of 10 percent
- Educated mothers tend to send their children to school, helping to break the cycle of poverty
Exploitation
- In the last decade, more than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict
- More than 300,000 child soldiers are exploited in armed conflicts in over 30 countries around the world
- 2 million children are believed to be exploited through the commercial sex trade
- Approximately 246 million children work
- 171 million children work in hazardous conditions
