Update from Roy and Sarah on Community Transformation Workshops

It is with great privilege and honour that I write this report to you. God really did great things during the time we had the workshops with the parents, teachers and guardians! 

Among this group we had one pastor, one goverment local leader and one village chairman. The response and contributions from this group were amazing!

We discussed the following subjects;

1) Who is a child? Here the group was asked to explain who a child is in their opinion and then we looked at the international law description of who a child is under the United Nations definition.

2) God's view of children. Here again we discussed and shared God's view for children and God's plan for childhood using scriptures. We were able to help them to truly understand what God's heart for a child is, any child whether deaf, disabled, vunerable, orphan or a street child, and His plans and how each one of them is to be valued, loved, protected and looked at as a special gift from God, an inheritance, created in God's image and worthy of God's blessings! 

3) Losses of childhood. Here we discussed the seven foundational needs of a child which are:
- Love 
- Attention 
- Boundaries 
- Values 
- Identity 
- Creativity 
- Security 

We discussed how if one of these is missing a child can lose their childhood, and the outcome of this. 

It was during this discussion that parents suggested that the reason why most children lose their childhood is because of poverty. Poverty makes parents send children to work on the streets for example, sending them to sell or beg from people on the streets to support themselves and other family members. Children in the villages are sent to be child laborers on other people's farms and those who refuse to follow the parents or guardians instructions are likely to starve, be beaten or sent away from home.

We came to the conclusion that most of these children who are exposed to such can easily be exploited into dangerous situations such as prostitution, gangs, drugs and alcohol, and also early marriages. 

Then we also looked at how the above mentioned can affect a child and childhood development. We looked at different types of traits in children which are:
- A resilient child 
- A whole child 
- A child on the streets 

4) We looked at the national statistics which shows that close to 20% of Zambian children live under the poverty level and most of them are on the streets. This was supported by the fact that three of our parents who attended had children living on the streets due to poverty and abuse. A lot of testimonies were shared of how discrimination against the disabled, deaf and blind, poverty, HIV and AIDS are the ‎greatest contributors to children ending up on the streets and in increasing the levels of poverty, violence, deadly diseases and crime. 

In conclusion the group were so thankful for the knowledge attained and prayed that God can provide for another opportunity with more time to help other parents also learn how to prevent children from being vulnerable to the extent of ending up on the streets where the problem is not solved but actually made worse. In this respect everyone prayed for an even longer workshop on this study and also inviting more people to reach even more parents, leaders and guardians to share ideas on how to help prevent children from ending up on the streets but rather helping raise children according to God's view and plan for each child so that the child can grow into responsible citizens and contributors to national development, above all knowing that they are loved, valued and are worthy of God's blessings whether deaf, blind or disabled. 

Thank you so much for praying and making this possible as the response was more than I could have ever imagined and the willingness of the people that attended to spread and share the knowledge was indeed overwhelming. God worked through all and each one of us present!  

God bless you! 

Sarah