(Photo: AP Images / Khalid Mohamed, Pool)An Iraqi orphan child waits to receive a present in the Yarmouk neighborhood in western Baghdad, Iraq, on Friday, Oct. 5, 2007. Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, gave presents to about one hundred children who lost parents to sectarian violence in Iraq.
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Prominent Christian pro-family groups kicked off the second annual Cry of the Orphan campaign Monday in a consolidated effort to raise awareness of the 143 million orphans currently in the world.
FamilyLife, Focus on the Family, and Shaohannah’s Hope – founded by award-winning CCM artist Steven Curtis Chapman – are part of the unified campaign that aims to heighten awareness and motivate Christians to care for orphans.
“The number of children worldwide without families to love and care for them is overwhelming,” said FamilyLife president Dennis Rainey in a statement. “It will take the collaborative effort of churches, ministries and individuals to reach the millions of orphans crying out for help.”
The United Nations reports that there are about 143 million orphans around the world – more than the populations of Canada and Mexico combined. Every 14 seconds an AIDS death leaves a child orphaned and 800,000 children pass through America foster care system each year.
In response to the crisis, the Cry of the Orphan campaign last year launched the initiative to raise awareness and encourage Christians and churches to get actively involved in caring for the world’s orphans.
Popular radio hosts Dennis Rainey of FamilyLife Today, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Howard Dayton of Money Matters will devote their daily broadcasts this week and utilize their organizations’ resources to inform millions of listeners how they can respond to the orphan crisis.
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Cry of the Orphan has also led to the creation of the Christian Alliance for Orphans – a formal coalition of more than 75 churches, ministries and orphan-related organizations working together to make an impact on the orphan crisis.
“I believe God is willing and planning to do even greater and mightier things through us corporately than He has done through all of us individually,” said Kerry Marks-Hasenbalg, Christian Alliance for Orphans partner and former executive director of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.
Cry of the Orphan is encouraging all Christians to help an orphan by providing the following list of suggestions:
1. Be their advocate: Keep a picture of a waiting child on-hand; show it to friends and family, and ask if they, or someone they know, would give the child a home.
2. Provide financial support: Donate necessity items to an orphanage, financially support reputable orphan care organizations on an ongoing basis or give financially to a family in the process of adoption.
3. Support adoptive/foster families: Throw a baby shower, offer to baby-sit or organize a few days’ worth of meals when a new child is placed in a friend’s home.
4. Become a foster parent: Provide a safe, loving home for children in your community who must be removed from their current home.
5. Adopt a child: Give a child the forever-home they’ve been waiting for.
6. Pray for them: Next time find yourself waiting—in traffic, in line at the grocery store, in the drive-thru—pray for the 143 million children waiting for a family.
On the Web: www.cryoftheorphan.org
