Great to chat with Paul from Compassion UK at The Gathering 2024.
Find out more about Compassion: compassionuk.org
Get In Touch
Support the Show.
Pure247Radio.org is The Pure Choice, and Everyone's cup of tea even if yours is coffee!
Facebook
facebook.com/Pure247Radio
Instagram
instagram.com/Pure247Radio
X (Twitter)
twitter.com/Pure247Radio
YouTube
youtube.com/@Pure247Radio
Andy B here on The Get Your Home Show, the pure 24/7 ready is still at the gathering for men in a field near Swindon. It's an amazing event, we haven't been to before, it's fabulous, there are so many wonderful people and we've managed to introduce just a small tiny handful of them to you, including my next guest Paul. Hello Paul. Good afternoon Andy B, how are you doing? I'm all right, my voice is holding out so that's good, I've not hit the Coca-Cola yet which is my kind of break glass and emergency, keep the voice going, it's fine. So you are here representing Compassion UK, now I think people might know of Compassion and know what Compassion means as a word, but what is it that Compassion UK is really involved in? Well, we're a Christian child development charity and we're involved in working in communities around the world that experience object poverty and our focus is working with children and so we're working in 29 countries at the moment, we've got 8,600 frontline church partners that run child development centres and currently we're engaging with 2.3 million children and their families to see them released from poverty in Jesus' name. Which is the bit I love, it's the Jesus part. I was listening to a month from Andy Hawthorne, I caught this loads of times, he was doing a prayer breakfast for MPs a few years back now and he was saying look you know as a nation Jesus we're sort of squishing them out and then we wonder why things aren't quite working right because when you take Jesus out everything starts shaking and the reason it's shaking is because we need more of Jesus in what we're doing and I love that you're not just doing stuff for people, it's amazing things for people in the name of Jesus which just for me it just makes it so much better. Yeah, absolutely right, I mean we've got three distinctives as an organisation, our first one is that we're quite centred and then we're church driven because even in these communities that are extremely difficult and challenging, we know that the church isn't going to run away, they're going to stand up and get involved and serve the people in their community and the reason we're child focused is we believe absolutely if children can engage in education in particular at a young age and get opportunities to be educated, receive nutritional meals, get access to health care, there's literally 5 million children die every year under the age of five from preventable causes and we know that we can make a difference to that, that doesn't have to happen, it's a complete injustice and so we believe that working with the local church it's a fantastic way to meet their needs physically, spiritually and see them develop in an illicit way so when they're adults they can be amazing contributors, not just to their own community but to their regions and the countries and even other countries that they may live in, so when we're committed to seeing children get the access to everything that they need as children to have the opportunity and the hope of fulfilling some of the dreams that they have in their hearts as well, I think I've had a conversation a few times through today but we can we can look at a problem or a set of problems or a community with their problems and we think well I can't, I can't tackle all that, I can't deal with all that but actually there is something that each one of us can do and that's what I love about how a compassionate approach is it because you're not saying well there's nothing we can do, you're not saying there's something we can do, you're saying here's what we're going to do, working with people there who know these people which is really important but actually we can do something so let's do it, yeah absolutely you know at the moment there's 256 million children that live in extreme poverty which means that they're part of families that are surviving on less than two pounds a day so they're literally are the poorest of the poor and that figure can seem overwhelmed and you can think wow that is huge, how can we make a difference but we believe that we can make a difference in poverty by beginning with a child and the thing that we do through our child sponsorship where an individual or a couple or a family can sponsor a child which gives them access to education, health care, nutritional food, recreational activities and a number of other things it's focusing on just one child and giving in what they need and so by doing that we give everyone an opportunity to engage in some way and when we do sponsorship you know there's a photograph of a child when you sponsor a child and then you get an opportunity to write to the child and they can write back so it kind of just personalises involvement in the global machine context a little bit you know and really personalises it in a very practical but purposeful way which you know a lot of our supporters you know appreciate that but it's not just about giving finance but they're able to write to them, pray for them, encourage them, we know that you know when people speak well of us and give us words of affirmation that makes a difference to our lives and when children are in a position where they have very little hope or no hope you know just encouraging them can make an absolutely massive difference to how they feel about themselves, how they see themselves and really give them a good step forward into a more positive and hopeful future. We can give money to a charity and that's great if you're doing that fantastic don't stop, we can we can throw money at people we can buy some of them at Donald's you know who's in the street but actually that personal connection that's the difference between here's some cash off you go that's great by the way don't stop doing that but here's a personal connection with somebody who may be you know literally the opposite side of the world but now you're actually connected which takes it so much further than just about money which of course is an important part of this but it's about a real living human being. Yeah absolutely and when we sponsor a child which you know it costs £2 a month and we guarantee as an organisation that over 80% of that money which is given goes directly to the child's benefit but the sponsorship really it's enabling the local church leaders and the volunteers to serve those children really well you know the local people they understand their community the context and the challenges more than anyone else and so really we're enabling them and resourcing them to do the work to the best of their ability and rather than ourselves going in there thinking we've got the answers they know what the answers are but they need resourcing and we're fortunate here in the UK to be you know many of us are in a position where we can you know afford £32 a month and even if there is someone's in a position where they can't there's still opportunities on our website to be able to give a smaller donation which contributes towards the many things that we're doing throughout you know the countries that we're working in. Did you know pure 24/7 radio has a shop well we do you can buy merchandise whilst supporting the work that we do here simply head over to www.pure247radio.org/shop that's www.pure247radio.org/shop and we'll see you next time.
