I remember Mum spending hours at a Singer treadle sewing machine making clothes for children in homes and orphanages in Sri Lanka. I remember watching the kids walking proudly in alligator file to church in their brand new matching outfits and huge ‘look at me’ smiles.
I remember Dad spending days organising feeding programs and medical distributions for the homeless and the poor. I remember spending hours in an old VW van packed to bursting with bags of rice and corrugated iron as we tried desperately to access a cyclone devastated the community.
I remember going to a very exclusive school and learning to live with the tension between the people I lived among, who had little or nothing, and the kids I went to school with who wanted for nothing. (20 years later I watched as my daughter learnt the same skill.)
Today I remind myself that I signed up with The Salvos and with World Vision because I believe that “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked”, (Luke 12:48). My privilege and opportunity - pure accidents of my birth - require that I make those that have little or nothing the priority of my life and passion.
I love the World Vision value statements. I have no problem aligning my life and work to these. The fact that they align well with my spiritual DNA and life script is a ‘happy coincidence’. I willingly sign up to be biased for the poor, I willingly commit to working to understand and work alongside the poor to transform lives and communities with the goal of achieving ‘life in all its fullness’ - for everyone. I will willingly engage with the affluent supporter for the sake of the marginalised and vulnerable—but it must always be for that purpose!
In the priority to align with a supporter centric model I find that I need to remind myself that I exist to “serve the neediest people of the earth; to relieve their suffering and to promote the transformation of their condition of life” (from World Vision Values Statement). I understand and am committed to the fact that to serve the neediest we need to engage with supporters and we need to appreciate the supporter’s perspective. But to offer that meaningful experience where the supporter feels connected and where there is potential to transform their life I have to start not with where they are at or with what they want, but from the perspective of suffering and need and with an understanding of the “neediest people of the earth”.
May we often be accused of having a bias for the poorest and neediest!
