So many children

I guess that the problem of neglected, abandoned, unloved or mistreated children and young people is a worldwide issue. In the west there are more sophisticated responses to it that in many countries in the developing world. Interventions by care workers, social workers, charities and churches provide many resources designed to help these young people put the pieces of their variously broken lives together so that they can fulfill their potential and have a good quality of life. Jesus would have recognised them as being among "the least of these". Young people out on the margins of their communities. 

Every once in a while I come across stories of children who are going through a very tough time and, like children the world over, respond to it by making bad choices. Out here in Kosele there are many broken families and complicated family relationships caused by the death of one or both parents from HIV and related illnesses. If you add the practice of polygamy to the picture it isn't difficult to understand why many young people find themselves in almost impossible situations.

Since we first started our work in Kenya the Kenyan government has made great progress in providing places for children in primary school. Despite this many children find themselves out of school for one reason or another. These include not having enough money to buy required items of uniform, having to work to support the 'family' and bunking off school because of inadequate parental supervision. The work that they find is very hard and poorly paid. Exploiting child labour is a practice that dates back for centuries. In our area, which is predominantly rural, children can find employment slashing (cutting down) grass, digging, weeding and loading bricks onto lorries at the local 'brick works'. The Children's Officer (a government official) has the job of stamping out these bad practices but is woefully underfunded and really on a hiding to nothing. You can't blame the youngsters for undertaking this kind of work in preference to going to school.

Living conditions for many people in the community are like something out of the middle ages. With employment practices that could be taken straight from the pages of Dickens and family circumstances that make Thomas Hardy's worst cases look positively idyllic it's not really surprising children's lives can be so disturbed. We do what we can to support the young people that we care for and educate. With a wealth of experience between us we have been able to get to the bottom of a number of quite complicated and distressing problems that our youngsters have experienced. It is, never the less, always heartbreaking each time we hear about a new problem. The only thing we can do is to show them the kind of love that Paul describes in the bible:

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance".

Sounds a bit preachy but when you really look at the words it's incredibly powerful and very challenging.