For a long time, when hurting, at-risk kids and parents came to me for help, I wanted to know—the judge in me wanted to know—Did she jump or was she pushed? Things like that matter to the judge. How else can he assign blame? But over time, broken and battered myself, compassion posed a new question. Compassion asks: Does it matter? She’s broken. What now?
Here is my hope for all of us—you, me, our children, our children’s children: Acknowledging that things are seldom as they should be, I hope we’ll be able to look at things as they are and ask, What Now?
Below, you'll find the digital movie I made with Compassion and Youth Specialties (and the talented Brian Boyle) as the year began.
In 1983, when I first engaged the conversation about ending poverty, the working number of deaths due to preventable causes was about 42,000 per day — these are fatalities statisticians lump together as excess deaths, meaning they don't have to happen. Causes of excess deaths include war, water-borne illnesses, preventable and treatable infections — things like that. In 2007, despite all hell breaking loose in a lot of places on planet earth, the number of excess deaths was about 27,000 a day. 27,000 needless deaths every day is stunning and inexcusable. It's also a third fewer than in 1983. As Scott Todd, the very bright man who directs Compassion's Special Operations (including HIV/AIDS and Malaria Interventions) told me: "If we can shrink it from 40,000 to 27,000, there's no reason to believe we can't shrink it from 27,000 to zero."
This video describes in four and a half minutes how malaria deaths — about a million of them a year and way more children than adults — can be stopped cold for less money than the U.S. spends every week in Iraq.
This is as close to a no-brainer as I've ever seen... Malaria bites. Buy a net. Save a life. Bite Back
