Celebrating Mothers (& Families)

Happy Mother's Day to all of you wonderful moms out there! I'm so very grateful for my own incredible mom as well as for dear friends and a dear sister who are working hard at this critically important job. I also have friends who have lost their moms and I think of you on a day like today as well. I hope that you are comforted by good memories of those special ladies.

Moms are so important. Families are so important. That's why Children in Families exists, to support families here in Cambodia in meaningful ways so children can grow up in a loving home rather than in an orphanage or worse. Many people do not realize that many children in orphanages here in Cambodia, as well as in many other developing nations, are not truly orphans. Why in the world would a family put their own child in an orphanage? Well there can be a number of reasons and some may surprise you. In one of our CIF staff meetings recently I heard of one reason. There is a mother who desperately needs to work to support her family, but child care for her children would eat up almost her entire salary, leaving too little to meet the family's needs. We might be shocked at the idea of leaving young children unattended, in the care of an unsafe person, or dumping them into an orphanage, but sometimes families just don't know what to do. It may surprise you to know that well-intended donors from the West actually may be contributing to Cambodian parents' choices to "abandon" their children. Many people from the West support orphanages because they feel like they are helping kids, but families are then inclined to believe that their kids might be better off in an orphanage than staying at home because that's where all the resources are - food, medical care, education, etc. By supporting orphanages well-meaning people are sometimes actually, in a sense, creating orphans. We can and should help children in Cambodia and around the world in Jesus' name, but we need to explore how to help in the best way possible. How can we support families and improve their lives in order to improve the lives of their children? I am glad that a number of people are starting to recognize the need to address this question. Please pray for, support, and encourage organizations which are addressing the real needs of families and working on sustainable solutions for people in need around the globe.

Click here to read a really good post about this issue from another blogger. I don't know this lady but I've gone through a number of her posts and she really "gets it" with regard to this problem.

Click here to read an article about the investigation of Cambodian orphanages due to concerns expressed by UNICEF, including the fact that nearly 3 out of 4 children in Cambodian orphanages have at least one living parent.