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By Jim Coggins
CANADIANS support more than 400,000 needy children around the world
through World Vision, but the internationally renowned relief and
development agency is now asking what it should be doing about the 1.2
million Canadian children estimated to be living in poverty.
One result is a new World Vision program called Partners
to End Child Poverty (PECP). World Vision is not planning to start
on-the-ground ministries of its own but to identify churches and
para-church agencies that are doing cutting-edge ministry and then help
them do even better.
In particular, World Vision is offering to use its Learning through
Evaluation with Accountability and Planning (LEAP) framework to help
ministries assess local needs and design projects which will respond to
those needs. The LEAP tools were designed to evaluate the work of World
Vision's indigenous partners overseas.
The PECP program also includes in-depth interviews and research into all
aspects of a ministry, from governance structures and finances to ministry
strengths and resources. This internal assessment will help ministries
identify new opportunities they can pursue to help transform their
communities, with funding assistance from World Vision.
The partnership with each ministry spans three years. Sixty ministries,
including nine in the Greater Vancouver area, have already begun the
process. World Vision provides the organizational assessment and training
free of charge, in exchange for the opportunity to learn new "best
practices" which partners can share with one another as well as with other
ministries.
World Vision's National Manager of Canadian Programs, Clayton Rowe, said,
"We are trying to come up with a common language for development work
across Canada," said Clayton Rowe, national manager of Canadian programs
for World Vision, "so we can share lessons and tools [and] create a good
network to eliminate child poverty in Canada."
Context
World Vision has been working in Canada since 1979, in three areas -- with
refugees, with aboriginal peoples, and through NeighbourLink, which
connects church volunteers with needs in their community.
World Vision's main focus will continue to be overseas, but the agency's
donors and board of directors have increasingly become concerned that
there are also children in Canada who have not yet "experienced life in
all its fullness as Jesus intended" (John 10:10).
In British Columbia, World Vision is partnering with groups such as Urban Promise, which provides
leadership development for youth; Youth
For Christ's Stepping Stones ministry, which helps young mothers learn
life skills and parenting skills; and JustWork, which develops social
enterprises that provide jobs and job training for people whom traditional
employers likely wouldn't hire.
World Vision calls such ministries "transformational development." They
are one of the three foci of World Vision work around the world: "relief"
provides immediate aid in the form of food, clothing and shelter;
"development" helps people expand their capacities through education and
job creation; and "advocacy" attempts to change government and society by
addressing the underlying causes of poverty.
There are excellent programs transforming lives in remarkable ways, said
Gary Klassen, region program manager for World Vision in Vancouver, and
the best way to respond to child poverty is to do it at the neighbourhood
level and let the results trickle up. "We can't fathom 1.2 million
children, but we can see the woman struggling to make ends meet next door
and spend an hour a week tutoring her kids."
October 20/2007
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