Mark Scandrette

On Friday Hailey and I returned from San Salvador. We had an amazing time visiting projects sites of Compassion International and meeting children and doing home visits. We were very impressed with the work of their in-country staff and volunteers. In a rapidly accelerating global economy many people are being left behind– a disproportunate amount of our brothers and sisters in developing countries like El Salvador.

Our family sponsors Jeheira, a beautiful 6 year-old girl who is living in Santa Ana, El Salvador (pictured with Hailey, right). She lives just a few hundred yards from a shiny Toyota dealership– but a world a way in terms of standards of living. Jeheira’s family makes their home just above a filthy creek bed and her corrigated tin house is built into the wall of an ajoining neighborhood. Seven people share a one room hut with slanted dirt floors. The home smells fowl but is neat and contains the families few possessions. Jeheira’s father was murdered on a public bus by gang members when she was one year old. Through various odd jobs her family makes approximately $2 a day. Food costs and currency rates are the same as the United States– so her family has approximately 25 cents per person per day to spend on food. What shocked me the most was where they get their water– from the filthy creek we crossed to get to Jeheira’s house– full of paint cans, garbage and sewage. We were told that if we drank the water the family uses, it would probably kill us– but because their bodies are used to the levels of toxins and bacteria, Jeheira’s family is able to drink this water without getting sick (though I wonder what is does to their long term health).

The work of Compassion International projects in these neighborhoods provides children like Jeheira with access to education, nutrition and health care, socio-emotional support and spiritual nurturing that help her to have hope and an imagination for a better way of life.

On the way back from Jeheira’s house we walked past many teenage boys standing around aimlessly on the street. Many of these boys will be led into gangs by the lack of opportunity and positive male role models. Often these gangs prey on teenage girls– kidnapping and raping them as a gang rite of passage. I was told that in El Salvador 80% of girls are sexually abused by age 12. Its sad for me to think about the challenges Jeheira faces in her life– but I’m glad that our family can write to her, pray for her and give towards her education, well-being and sense of confidence and dignity.

I’m still processing what we saw on this trip. So many juxtapostions. People living in severe poverty who are so generous and happy. Guns and smiles on children’s faces everywhere. Our future is the children of this world– the good dreams of God belong to them– and they are worthy of our attention and conscious about how we live in this complex global economy– where the rich prosper and the poor suffer.