More Blessed to Give
…and Receive in the Process.

What really happens to the charitable gifts you give through relief ministries? I took a trek around the world to find out.

by Kay Marshall Strom
             
I love Christmas shopping. Especially since I came across a charitable gift catalog, and while casually thumbing through it, found that $25 would open the door for a girl in China to attend school. I could donate this gift in the name of my teacher-sister. Perfect! For $60, I could buy rice seedlings for a farmer in Cambodia to feed his family and generate income. What better gift for my environmentally minded agriculturalist son? And just $25 for a baby goat to almost single-handedly lift a family from Senegal out of poverty—who wouldn’t treasure such a Christmas present?

I had so much fun matching a donation to each person on my gift list. But later, as I began to see more and more statistics concerning misused funds by non-profits, I began to wonder: Did my hard-earned cash actually make it to that little schoolgirl? Did the farmer get his full allotment of seedlings? And what about the family and its budding goat business? Did my gifts really impact the people for whom they were intended? If I had such questions, I was certain others were also asking. So, for all of us, I determined to find out “the rest of the story.”  I would follow the donations all the way to the people who received them.

Because the catalog that first hooked me was Partners International’s Harvest of Hope, I asked them for permission to follow up on their projects—no strings attached. They agreed. So, toting tape recorder and camera, I set off—for North Africa, Senegal, and Sudan; India, Cambodia, Indonesia, and China. And, oh, the things I saw!

Baby Pig for a Family in Cambodia, $25

Actually, by the time Min Panyaa and her three daughters got their pig from Partners, it had grown into a sow ready to have piglets of its own. (If only the donor in Texas who wrote that $25 check could have seen their joyful faces!) Min Panyaa’s daughters insisted on eating less rice so they could afford extra feed for the pig—“so it would have many babies,” the oldest told me. Which is just what their sow did. Eight babies, in fact. Because they needed money so badly, Min Panyaa sold the piglets while they were still tiny. But the next litter—twelve piglets!—she allowed to grow big enough to sell at top price. I asked what she was doing with the money. “Sending my girls to school,” she said proudly. “And now they are teaching me to read the Bible!” 

Clean Water for a Family in North Africa, $50

“You must not come in from working with the animals and prepare dinner before washing your hands,” the World Vision-trained health workers told Jala’s family. “Dirty hands make children sick.” Jala’s parents nodded. They had already watched four of their little ones die. Then one of the workers took out a pink toothbrush and tube of toothpaste and showed Jala how to brush her teeth. “If you keep them clean,” he explained, “they won’t have to be pulled out.” Jala’s father ran his tongue over his few remaining teeth. “We could never do such things before,” he marveled to me. “There wasn’t enough water.” Thanks to a caring donor in Minnesota, Jala’s family now has plenty of water—piped right into their house. “Maybe now my children will live,” Jala’s mom said with a shy smile.

Women’s Small Business Start-Up in India, $100

“I know nothing but working in the fields. Now the crops are gone, so I will starve with my children.” Jagrity was hopeless. Weary. Dejected. But Bible Faith Mission provided her and her children with food and shelter. What’s more, a donor in Oregon gave her the gift of training to do beautiful decorative stitchery. Jagrity also learned to read and write so she could begin a business selling her handiwork. Today, she supports her family. She also leads a Bible study for other women. “No one ever told me my life had worth,” she says. “I want others to know they are valuable. I want them to have hope.”

Sponsorship and Education for a Child, $25 a month

Six-year-old Deng walks to school along winding mountain trails, carrying enough beans, rice, and water to last her two weeks. When it’s gone, she treks six hours back to her family’s bamboo house high on the mountainside to refill her pails. After a day with her parents, she starts the long journey back to school.

So small a child, walking such treacherous paths? “It’s better now,” her teacher told me. “Deng’s sponsor got shoes for her.”

No one in her isolated village in southern China can read or write—yet. But now Deng, along with 200 other children from scattered mountain villages, makes her way down to Jia He School. All because someone sponsors her for $25 a month.

Sponsorship means education. It means a way out of the hopeless poverty that grips her community. And it means one more little girl will hear about Jesus’ love for her.

Oh, yes—soon Deng won’t have to carry all that water, because some other donors are funding a reservoir for the school. Hanging on its side is a sign with large Chinese characters that say, “Christ is the spring of the water of life.”

All because someone cares.

I also met Yeshe, a native missionary in Nepal . . . Alima, a Sudanese widow and mother of three who runs a training center for women . . . and the survivors of an Indonesian village leveled by the December 2004 tsunami, now living in houses built by World Relief.

And I met Mouloud and Saida. Despite their poverty, they’d painted their house for my visit and made me a dinner that cost a week’s pay. They did it out of great appreciation and respect for the sponsorship their disabled daughter Yasmeen received. But I did nothing, I told them. Mouloud insisted, “You tell the right people—say that they gave us our daughter. Say that by loving our little girl, they showed God to us.”

And that’s why I love Christmas shopping. Because it costs so little to change a life, to give others hope and a future in Jesus’ name—the One whose birthday we celebrate.

In Harvest of Hope, you’ll travel around the world with Kay Strom as she visits people whose lives have been changed by a simple gift—and find out how you can get involved. To purchase this inspiring book, visit our online bookstore.