What do Bolivia, India, Rwanda, Lebanon, Myanmar, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and the Philippines all have in common? Those are the places where CBM is working alongside local partners to help make education possible for some of the most vulnerable children. What a worthwhile effort! Instead of facing a future of low-paying jobs that never provide enough or, even worse, begging on the street, these children have possibilities open to them which lead to meaningful jobs, better health, stronger families, and the end of the cycle of poverty.
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| Some of the children in Rwanda who are part of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children project (OVC) - together with their mentors |
Would you like to be part of something like this? The good news is that you can, from July 18th to 25th. All you need to do is join CBM’s Active in Mission. The focus of the campaign this year is to raise support for the many children who participate in the various programs which are led by CBM’s global partners.
You can become “active in mission” in two different ways. First, you can choose to sign up to do some type of activity: walk, run, skip, bike, box, jump rope, skate, kayak, climb, dance – whatever you’d like to do. You can even get friends or family to do it with you. Then ask others to support you for this important cause. If just hearing this idea is enough to get your heart rate climbing, go to the Active in Mission site and sign up (https://www.activeinmission.ca/).
The second way you can be a part is that you can support the two of us as we seek to be Active in Mission. For us, this is an exciting opportunity. The partner that we work with here in Rwanda, the Association of Baptist Churches of Rwanda (AEBR), have been working for many years with children who are among the most vulnerable: children who are orphans, children in poverty, children from families affected by HIV/AIDS, etc. We have seen with our own eyes the boys and girls whose lives are being transformed through the efforts of God’s people in Canada and Rwanda.
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| OVC Children in Rwanda getting ready to listen to Laura Lee |
In thinking about the way we have been blessed through education, we began counting the years we have spent studying in school. Laura Lee has spent 16 years of her life in the classroom and Darrell has spent 24 years as a student. Together, that makes 40 years! So we have decided that we are going to walk 40 kilometers during the Active in Mission week – one kilometer for every year we’ve spent in school ourselves. It takes $25 to send a child to school for one month, so we have set a goal of trying to raise enough money to provide one month of schooling to 24 children - $600. If you would be interested in contributing, you can choose to give $16 (to match Laura Lee’s years in school) or $24 (the number of years that Darrell studied) or $40 (the total of our school years which works out to $1 for each kilometer we walk). Or, of course, you can give whatever gift you are feeling led to contribute. All you need to do is go to our Active in Mission page (https://www.activeinmission.ca/darrell-laura-lee-bustin) and click the button to “Donate”. Then, come July 19th, we will be lacing up our sneakers to go walking. It’s time for all of us to get Active in Mission! Let’s see how many children we can send to school!
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| A joyful event!! Children in the OVC program receive school materials at the start of the term |