I can’t tell you how thankful I am that God nudged me to blog about racism last week, even though I felt completely unqualified (and still do and am). I’m so encouraged by the conversations that have been taking place and so inspired by my brothers and sisters in Christ of all colors.

I’ve been asking God what he wants from me when it comes to this discussion about race and the gospel and true reconciliation, and I sense him saying, “Listen.” As in, “how about you not do all the talking and writing yourself, but you take the time to listen? And gently convict others to listen too.” And wouldn’t you know it–Pastor Rich confirmed the whole “listen” thing with his message at church this morning.

Speaking of church, mine is awesome, and I’m really looking forward to some face-to-face conversations soon with my church people about how we can take real, serious steps toward breaking down walls and building each other up.

Still speaking of church, I met a new friend there today. Her name is Yalonda, and you might know her as the gifted author of the poem I shared on Friday. I got to hug her neck and meet her precious little boy. He is stunning and amazing and can hop up and down on one foot like nobody’s business. I can’t wait to get to know them both better.

Yalonda’s is a voice that I already feel like a better person for having listened to these past few days. And not just her poignant poem. A gentleman I don’t know commented on Friday’s post, and before I had the chance to respond to him, Yalonda already had. And her gracious, thoughtful, intelligent, insightful reply just about bowled me over. I wanted to hand her a microphone and pull her up on a stage and say, “Could you repeat all of that please?”

I feel like if each of us could just put our own preconceived notions aside for a minute and really, truly listen, we could learn so much.

And while I don’t have a microphone or a stage, I do have a blog. And I’m handing it over to Yalonda right now. It’s perfect timing, because this weekend was tough, and I’m low on brilliant words. I’m emotionally drained and licking battle wounds. Not from the blogging stuff (although that definitely takes it out of me), but from family stuff, namely Gabe’s recent struggle with anxiety. If you’re new here, I blogged about it in February, and Gabe shared an update on Saturday.

There’s more, but it’s too raw right now. And I’ve cried enough today.

So, here’s Yalonda, and I implore you to listen well and ask God what he has to say to you through her words.

First, what the gentleman said about my post:

I am truly sorry and my prayers are with Trayvon’s family for their comfort at this unimaginable time. Now, on to the race thing. Why did we not see our President, President Obama come on National TV and talk about the Chardon, OH shootings?? Two white guys, one black guy gunned down in cold blood by a white kid. However, one black kid gets shot and killed, the black community rises up in protest, and our black president feels he, the president of the united states of america, whom I have served proudly over the past 11 years in uniform takes to the airways to give his comments. Yes, I think there is a touch of racism in our beloved nation all the way to the top. Can we please get over this already and move on with the future working together as one people, one nation, under God?????????? I am so sick and tired of the hand outs, priviledges, everyone’s history month, except white history month, that would be considered racist of course. Get on with it already. The more we focus on the past, the further into the obiss we sink as a nation while the third would nations come together and concur. Grow up, become adults, act like adults, don’t expect anyone to hand you anything, work for what you want and give all you have into acheiving your goals and dreams without depending on your skin color to get you there. That is how you earn true respect from all and true satisfaction out of life. Again, my true most heart felt condulances to both the families of the Chardon, OH HS victim’s families and the parents relatives and friends of Travon. May God bless the USA and those who fear Him and seek to know Him for who He is, “OUR” creator. Oh yeah, btw, we are all related from way back.

And Yalonda’s reply:

Good morning – Thank you so much for serving this great country for 11 eleven years. I appreciate what you have given.

I just want you to know that President Obama did publicly address the Chardon School shootings. In addition, he called the principal of the school to personally express his condolences and thoughts. I also want you to know that he didn’t purposely take to the airwaves to address the Trayvon Martin shooting. He was actually making an announcement of his nominee for president of the World Bank and then a member of the media asked this off-topic question… the president was responding to the question.

I also want you to know that both are tragic, but these two situations are in no way alike in terms of the motives behind the shootings. Neither is more important than the other… children are dead.

It’s the motives behind the Trayvon Martin shooting that have black people, in particular, so outraged. Black people are outraged because this is a modern day lynching, and the perpetrator has been allowed to walk free. But, I’m not foolish enough to believe that everyone will feel outrage. Everyone’s heart strings are pulled by different things, and that’s fine.

Trust me when I say that I would like nothing more than to just “get over this already,” as you suggested, but my heart will not allow me to. In my walk to love mercy and to act justly, how can I? How can I “get over it” when my son is no safer than Trayvon Martin? This is not an isolated incident… it’s just the most recent…and it’s just that it’s so blatant and overt. How do we get over this and move into the future without addressing what’s happening now? How do we move forward and expect justice in the future without demanding justice now?

You mention “handouts” in your post and it seems like you’re talking about something else, other than the topic of the post. Surely, it’s not a “handout” to expect that a boy could walk home from a convenience store with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea. It’s not a “handout” to expect reasonable safety. It’s not a “handout” to expect that he would not be shot down in the street. These are not privileges either… these are rights. You served our country to make sure we all have these rights, and I thank you again.

Would Black History Month be more palatable to you if there was a White History Month? I would contend that when I went to high school, White History Month was September through June because I didn’t learn about any people of color during those months, but I certainly learned about all the “forefathers” of our great country. Does that mean that people of color didn’t contribute to our fine nation… no, it just means that the only opportunity that my teachers took to talk about ONE of them was during Black History Month. Black History Month should have just been called Martin Luther King, Jr Month. My hope is that our education system has evolved since then. Like you, I yearn for a time that Black History Month is not necessary because children will be taught the true history of this nation in school. But until then, I guess we have to live with what we have.

I do agree with you though, people should work hard and earn respect, without depending on skin color to get there. But, we would be remiss if we didn’t address the problem here. There is in fact more than one starting line.

Regarding the shooting of this innocent child… if it had been my son, and his killer had been allowed to walk free, without being subjected to an arrest or a sobriety test, a full background check, or even a hard line of questioning… I would want the world to be outraged… I would not want your condolences, I would want your help to make some changes to this country that you spent 11 years serving.

I say these things respectfully and I am glad we live in a country where we can all have varying opinions. I just hope that mine are considered to be well thought out and fact based, laced with appropriate amounts of emotion. This is truly an emotional topic for many and I thank Marla for having the courage to talk about this.

Thank you, friend. I’ll be here tomorrow chatting about Chapter 4 in our Read-a-Long, but this conversation isn’t over. And I invite you to be a part of it in the days and weeks to come.

We need your voice.

And your ears.

My friend Dela posted something on Facebook earlier today that caught me off guard. She said it bothered her that out of all the outrage she’d seen from her friends on Facebook about Tray Martin, only three of them were white.

My friend is black. And I wasn’t one of the three white friends she was talking about. And that bothered me.

If you haven’t heard, Trayvon Martin was an innocent, unarmed black teenager (17) who was shot and killed by a 28-year-old Latino man because he looked “suspicious.” Trayvon was wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles and an Arizona iced tea and doing nothing wrong. His killer claimed he shot him in “self-defense” and no charges were pressed.

I read this post from my friend Tara in Haiti, and it broke my heart. I love her precious family, and Isaac’s words made me want to cry.

Tara linked to this article by a white guy named Tim Wise, who has researched and written extensively on the topic of racism. Wise says (and I agree) that, “If Trayvon Martin had been, say, Todd Martin, a 17-year old white male, in the same neighborhood on the same evening, it wouldn’t have mattered that he was wearing a hoodie, looking at homes as he passed them by, or fiddling with his waistband.” That was the “suspicious” activity his killer reported on a 911 call.

Wise challenges the notion long-held by most white people (including me, ashamedly) that black people are “exaggerating the problem or making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill.” (Here’s another great article along those lines.)

“Empathy,” Wise says, “— real empathy, not the situational and utterly phony kind that most any of us can muster when social convention calls for it — requires that one be able to place oneself in the shoes of another, and to consider the world as they must consider it. It requires that we be able to suspend our own culturally-ingrained disbelief long enough to explore the possibility that perhaps the world doesn’t work as we would have it, but rather as others have long insisted it did.”

I posted a link to Wise’s article on Facebook and added this: “Injustice is real. And alive and kicking around the world and right here in our own country. And it’s not okay with our God. And he demands time and time again in his word that it not be okay with us either. I don’t always know what to do with/about it, but that’s no excuse. God, give me your heart for justice.”

Call me naive, but I did not expect the ensuing comment thread to turn into angry talk about “racism going both ways.” That black people can be just as racist as white people and “I’m tired of white people being called racist,” etc.

I tried (and failed) to explain that yes, every color of person can be racist. But in this country, white people aren’t going to get profiled/accused of stuff/killed just because they’re white.

And a black person very well might. And has. And is.

After an icky discussion, all of my “opponents” (one goes to my church and one is a blood relative) said they “bowed out” and were basically sorely disappointed in my inability to “let this go” and my insistence at calling them “white racists.”

And I felt powerless. Because I knew that we were all missing the real point I was trying to make. Mostly because I had no idea how to say what I really meant.

But I couldn’t just stay silent, because I love my black friends (most of whom I know in real life and go to church with), and their outrage and their pain was not okay with me. I wanted to understand it and feel it, and I wanted to stand with them and fight for them and their kiddos whom I love so much. I begged God to show me how I could do that as a white girl. I didn’t see how it was possible, but I felt like I had to try.

But I didn’t want to say anything that made it sound like I knew what it was like to be black. I don’t. And I didn’t want to sound like I was trying to be a hero. I’m not. And I didn’t want to post out of white guilt or whatever. Yuck.

And then I had a little chat with a friend online. And then a couple friends texted me and told me to please keep fighting for what was right. And I asked God again for wisdom. And then my friend Rebecca told me about an article that had helped her think about race issues in a way she never had before.

And it all started to click. No, I don’t have it figured out. And no, I don’t have any brilliant conclusions for this blog post. But now I can put my finger on what’s been eating at me.

The article is called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack. Holy cow.

“As a white person,” author Peggy McIntosh writes, “I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.”

“I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.”

That’s it right there. That’s what I’d been thinking but had no idea how to articulate. Racism isn’t just about white people doing/saying bad things to black people (or vice versa). It’s deeper than that. It’s this underlying… thing… that says, “If you’re white, you automatically get these certain privileges. If you’re black, you don’t.”

But no white person wants to admit that white people get these privileges. We want to say (and think) that everything is fair for everyone, that we live in a free country steeped in Christian values, that everyone who works hard enough is entitled to everything that anyone gets.

But it’s not true.

Here are 6 of the 26 privileges the author admits that she has (that her black colleagues don’t):

I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
I can be sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge” I will be facing a person of my race.
If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

“Obliviousness about white advantage… is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.”

Why do my black friends see my white privilege when I’m completely blinded to it? Because the advantages I have are advantages I have never not had.

Spending time in Cambodia exposed my blindness to my own wealth and privilege as an American. Because it opened my eyes to what I have that others don’t.

I want the same thing to happen with my friends of color in my own community. I want my eyes opened to the privileges I enjoy merely because I was born with cream-colored skin. And I want to fight for justice for my friends whose skin is a different shade.

This post is a start.

And I’ll leave you with a poem written by a friend of a friend. Yalonda Bond Wilson is a beautiful black woman with a gorgeous little boy.

Friends, whether you’re a mama or not, put yourself in this mama’s shoes for just a minute and see if it doesn’t break your heart.

My TrayVon Martin is four years old and I weep when he sleeps

He sleeps so peacefully because he is unaware that the world doesn’t recognize
his worth.
I weep because i know that no matter the joy he brings to me, he will be seen as
a threat
I weep because he is magnificent and splendid and one of my life’s greatest
treasures
And it breaks my heart to know that someone, anyone could blot out his existence

He sleeps so peacefully because he hasn’t yet realized his power
I weep because there will always be lingering questions of motives related to
his hue
I weep because I know that the best way to preserve his earthly life would be
To raise him to be a non-threatening figure, to placate, and to shuffle
But what self-respecting mother raises a son to be weak?
My son will stand strong and stand tall and be broad shouldered and to know that

He doesn’t have to respond to any ordinary Joe who asks a question
He will know his rights and he will respect the rights of others … All others
He will be prepared to mentally spar with the greats

But raising my son to be strong is a risk; raising him not to be is even riskier
I weep because his mountain is unfairly steeper than anyone else in this land of
the free
I weep because his trail will have hidden obstacles and barriers that will build
strength
Strength that will help him develop into a man, yet strength that may make him
ominous

Tonight he sleeps in the crook of his father’s arm, at peace and protected
But me, I am awake praying for a mother and father in Sanford; praying for
justice
Yet grieving because no amount of justice restores the loss of the joy that is a
child
Heavy hearted because I don’t believe our sons will ever know a level playing
field
Frightened because our grandsons may not either

My TrayVon Martin is just four years old, and I weep when he sleeps.

This will be our final post in this initial series on orphan care (Post 1, Meet the McCollums, Post 2, Post 3), but the discussion isn’t over. I’m sure I’ll have John back to share his wisdom (and maybe even his sarcasm). And besides, I’m madly in love with a family of kiddos at one of the Asia’s Hope orphanages, and I won’t be done talking about them anytime soon.

But I have lots of other stuff I need to get to. Like the 7 Read-a-Long (go sign up!) and Traffick Jam 2012 (goodness, it’s coming up quick!), and all that other stuff I listed in this post. And then a bunch of other stuff I just thought of.

If you’ll recall, I interrupted John yesterday just as he was getting ready to share some so-what-can-I-do? wisdom with all of us. Let me repeat the question and John’s initial thoughts, and then I’ll let him keep talking this time.

Me: I have lots of friends (online and in real life) who have a real heart for orphans. What advice would you give for those who want to be involved in a hands-on way (besides just giving money)? And beyond Asia’s Hope, what kinds of things do they need to find out before giving their time/money/resources to an orphanage (or organization that supports orphanages)?

John: First of all, I want to offer a word of encouragement and affirmation. Caring for orphans is one of the highest, noblest aspirations I can think of. As a Christian, I believe that God’s spirit dwells in a very real way among the poor, the oppressed, the orphaned and the abandoned. There is a special blessing for all who give sacrificially to help orphans, a deep communion with Jesus that is impossible to attain from mere church attendance, formal worship or even Bible study. That having been said, some strategies and some motivations for serving orphans are more helpful than others.

I think that the first step toward hands-on involvement is one of deep and often painful self-examination. Think and pray long and hard and commit to doing what’s best for the orphaned kids and not what seems most rewarding to you. Ask yourself if you’re willing to work in anonymity, willing to work in submission to those with spiritual authority in the communities in which you wish to serve, and willing to work for little or no discernible reward if doing so will provide the greatest benefit for orphaned children. If you’re willing, then I believe you’re on the right path.

After my first trip to Cambodia, I wanted with all of my heart to move to the country, and to just immerse myself and my family into daily, hands-on interaction with the people there. I’ll admit, I believed that I was uniquely called and equipped to make a difference with my presence ‘on the ground.’ I was challenged – and saddened, at first – by a Cambodian pastor who said to me, “John, we do not need you here. We have experienced, skilled workers here. We need you to help us provide financial resources that we cannot get here, and to tell our brothers and sisters in America about what God is doing in Cambodia and ask them to help.”

I had to do a real gut check. Was I in this for me or for the people I was claiming to serve? It was only after I decided that I would continue to work for the good of the Cambodian people even if I never received any of the warm feelings and personal affirmation that I really got confirmation from God that this was the right path for me and my family. I don’t mean to suggest that there is no role for hands-on involvement for Westerners in international ministry; I just mean that we all need to check our own priorities at the door and focus on what really is best for the people we’ve been called to serve.

Second, you need to take personal inventory of your skills, your talents and your spiritual gifts and determine which of these are most useful in meeting the needs of orphaned kids. Do you have money or access to money through your church or circle of friends? Mobilize those resources. Talk to your boss; approach your pastor. Encourage them to make orphan care a priority.

Are you a skilled communicator? A photographer? A graphic designer? Do you have logistical, technical or accounting skills? There are dozens – maybe hundreds – of existing organizations doing great work that could use your services. Get involved. Volunteer.

Some of these opportunities might even lead you to in-country involvement. If you’re a nurse, doctor or dentist, or if you are certified to teach English as a second language, you might be uniquely equipped to go short- or long-term to minister overseas.

Third, you need to figure out which organizations you align with philosophically, strategically – even theologically. This may take some time and some research. But it’s a really important step. If you’re going to pour your heart and soul and your money into a cause, it’s worth making sure that the cause is well-run and well-conceived.

Here are some key questions you should ask to determine whether or not an orphan care organization is worth supporting:
• Does the organization align with my ethical and theological world view?
• Is the organization legally registered with the government?
• Does the organization meet or exceed the government’s minimal standards for child care?
• Does the organization have long-term, trained and well-supervised staff?
• Does the organization have a child protection policy that covers all staff and visitors?
• Are sibling groups kept together?
• Does the organization attempt to replicate family living?
• Does the organization have workable strategies for stable, long-term funding?
• Does the organization have strategies in place to transition the children into successful, independent adults?
• Does the organization respect and empower indigenous staff?
• Is the organization and its staff financially transparent and accountable?

If you can answer “yes” to all of these questions, then I’d say you’re working with an organization that is trying its best to do what’s best for the kids in its care. If not, then you should exercise real caution about getting involved. No organization is perfect, but you should expect to see progress toward all of these goals.

Wow, great stuff. Thanks so much for taking the time to spell all of that out for us, John. This series has been super helpful. Lots to process, lots to pray about, lots to get moving on.

And thank YOU, friends, for your contribution. Any more questions for John? Have at it.

A couple items of interest before we jump back in to our discussion on orphanages and whether they’re helpful or harmful to children.

1. It’s not too late to sign up for the 7 Read-a-Long. Remember, you’re not signing your life away, just introducing yourself to your fellow sojourners. We won’t even judge you if you become a Read-a-Long Drop-Out. (you’ll be joining the ranks of some mighty fine folks from read-a-longs past)

2. I know I’ve alluded to some hard stuff going on in our family of late, but I didn’t feel at liberty to share details (except privately with concerned friends). But my sweet hubby posted this on Facebook tonight, so I’ll share it here too: “Been maybe the roughest week of my life, with a nice dose of anxiety and panic attacks months after the 10/29/11 heart attack. But, my God will never leave me (Deut 31:6), and He sure has chosen the right people to help me out!” Thanks for your prayers, friends. God is crazy good.

Alrighty, here we go. If you missed the first 3 posts on orphan care, we’re talking to John McCollum, Executive Director of Asia’s Hope, and you can catch up on those posts here, here, and here.

Me: Tough question for you, John. UNICEF is concerned about the emotional loss that the children may feel from exposure to a revolving door of volunteers. “While at the orphanage most volunteers seek to build emotional bonds with the children so they can feel they made a difference. Though well intended, this leads to a never-ending round of abandonment.”

Do you think this is something you need to be concerned about at Asia’s Hope? How can you know that visits from mission teams are helping more than hurting?

John: This is certainly something to be concerned about. And this type of issue is one that we’ve addressed a multiple levels in our organization. A bit of context, first. There are a number of orphanages in Cambodia and across the developing world who rely on donations from “voluntourists” to fund their operations. This is a very risky model that opens the kids up to all kinds of potential dangers.

Aside from the very real attachment-related issues identified by UNICEF in the article you mention, children at these types of institutions are subject to wild fluctuations in the level of care they receive – when they get lots of visitors, they have enough food and medicine and money for schools. When they don’t, they don’t.

Also, this type of an arrangement is a child-protection nightmare. By inviting a never-ending stream of strangers, you drastically increase the chances of giving pedophiles access to vulnerable children who may be abused at the institution due to poor oversight by the staff or enticed away from the institution by offers of money or promises of other favors. As a result, many people who walk away from these types of visits feeling like they’ve done something good for the kids, actually end up propagating a model that can be harmful.

Although we at Asia’s Hope do host visitors from abroad at our children’s homes, our model is philosophically, strategically and tactically very different from that critiqued by UNICEF and others as “orphanage tourism.”

Asia’s Hope is not a volunteer placement organization, nor are we a short term missions oriented ministry. We exist to provide high-quality, family-style residential care for orphaned children at high risk of sexual and economic exploitation. The good of the children is always our top priority. All of our homes enjoy stable, ample funding from Asia’s Hope International, which recruits church partners in North America into long-term relationships with individual homes. We work hard to foster real, respectful relationships between the staff and kids at our homes and the leadership and selected congregants at the partnering churches. To maintain that relationship, we facilitate visits from the partnering churches, usually one or two times a year. Each visit operates under the authority of a partnering church, and within strict guidelines detailed in our child protection policy. We also occasionally host “vision trips,” designed to recruit churches and key donors into long-term funding relationships with Asia’s Hope. On a very limited basis, we also permit families who have supported Asia’s Hope in the context of a church partnership to visit the homes.

Me: Well, praise the Lord for very limited bases (basises?). I speak for my whole little family when I say THANK YOU for letting us spend so much time with our dear friends at Prek Eng 3. They mean the world to us.

Oh, sorry. I totally got all carried away. MAN, I miss those kids! Where were we…?

We work hard to respect the needs and wishes of our indigenous staff when we plan these visits; we try to schedule them at times that are conveniently aligned with the kids’ school calendar, and we work with our staff to make sure that visitors engage in activities that promote, rather than detract from family cohesion. In short, our homes are not tourist attractions. We welcome family and family friends, but like your home and mine, we do not have an unmediated, “open door” policy.

Me: I can vouch for everything you just said. And very well said, by the way.

Okay, this next question’s another tough one. I have lots of friends (online and in real life) who have a real heart for orphans. What advice would you give for those who want to be involved in a hands-on way (besides just giving money)? And beyond Asia’s Hope, what kinds of things do they need to find out before giving their time/money/resources to an orphanage (or organization that supports orphanages)?

First of all, I want to offer a word of encouragement and affirmation. Caring for orphans is one of the highest, noblest aspirations I can think of. As a Christian, I believe that God’s spirit dwells in a very real way among the poor, the oppressed, the orphaned and the abandoned. There is a special blessing for all who give sacrificially to help orphans, a deep communion with Jesus that is impossible to attain from mere church attendance, formal worship or even Bible study. That having been said, some strategies and some motivations for serving orphans are more helpful than others.

Me: I’m so sorry to cut you off, right before you give us some of those awesome strategies, but we’re out of time and space. Tomorrow!

In the meantime, what questions do you have for John? Or, again, feel free to share some of your own personal experiences with orphan care (either good or bad).

If you’re looking for Read-a-Long Details, TOMORROW! And here are some links if you missed Part 1 of the What About Orphanages? series and/or Meet the McCollums.

I do want to say something before I hand the blog over to John. This whole issue of orphan care is so vast and so complex, I can’t even begin to put a dent in it with a little series of posts here on my blog. There’s so much to say/learn/understand about so many things–like adoption (both domestic and foreign), foster care, maternity programs that are helping mamas keep their babies, education, and on and on and on.

Please don’t think I’m saying I have all the answers. Or even any really. God has just laid this on my heart, and I’m taking a small step toward learning more, educating others, and getting these precious children the love they deserve.

That’s all.

Oh! Before I forget, I’d love to extend a personal invite to anyone who’s interested in Orphan Care to attend an Orphan Summit right here in Columbus on March 9-10. Wess Stafford, President of Compassion International, will be the keynote speaker. If you’re from out of town and need a place to stay, I might just know of somewhere cheap and exciting. E-mail me.

That’s really all this time.

Take it away, John.

John: Before diving into the first set of questions, I wanted to point out that although there are some universal concerns about orphanages to address – and even some misconceptions to clear up – I can only speak with authority for Asia’s Hope. That having been said, many of the criticisms I hear about residential orphan care ring true to me, especially for organizations that provide care in a traditional institutional framework.

I would agree, for instance, that large institutional orphanages staffed with shift-workers – as opposed to family-style children’s homes with full-time moms and dads – tend to exacerbate rather than alleviate many problems facing orphaned or poor kids. Unfortunately, many people who rightly criticize poorly conceived and badly run institutions paint with an overly broad brush, ignoring the complexity of the issues facing orphaned kids, their communities and the organizations trying to serve them, and obscuring the differences between good and bad strategies for care.

I hope that this dialogue will provide some helpful perspective for your readers who wish to understand the issues at hand and advocate for best practices in orphan care.

Question: “Three out of four children living in orphanages are not orphans – they still have at least one parent alive.” (I got this quote from the article I linked to in the first post.) Is this true of Asia’s Hope orphanages?

First of all, I think that we have to clarify what we mean when we say “orphan.” Colloquially, most people think of an orphan as a child whose mother and father have both died. For our purposes at Asia’s Hope, however, we define an orphan as any child who has no parents who can or will care for them. So, while we do prioritize for admission kids whose parents have both died, we also provide care for kids who may have, for instance, a mother who has died and a father who is in prison or who has abandoned them.

Just yesterday we admitted a sibling group – two boys and a little girl – whose father had committed suicide, and whose mother had abandoned them. The kids had no food, no access to healthcare, no shelter and no education. Neither the villagers nor their extended family could or would take them in. Do these kids fit the popular definition of orphans? Maybe not. But they fit ours. So, offhand, I can’t quote you stats on how many of the 600 kids in our care have one parent living, but I can say that we only admit children for whom no other credible options exist.

We wholeheartedly support the organizations out there that provide different kinds of care – village-level education, preventative and emergency health services for poor families, well-baby care, advocacy for safe and humane working conditions for destitute laborers – these are all essential! But for a small percentage of poor children – those who have no one else to care for them, especially those who are at high risk for sexual and economic exploitation – we provide essential, lifesaving help.

Question: “Orphanages tend to separate children from their parents and from family life which is paramount for a healthy adulthood. Nothing is done to reunite children with their families and little is done to maintain strong relationships between children and their parents.” Is this true?

Well, as I explained in my previous answer, most of the kids in our care have already been separated from their parents, and have received little or no help from their extended families, either because the families do not have the resources to provide that care, or because the families have simply abandoned them. So, for many kids, a reunion with a biological family is impossible. And in many other cases, it is the remaining family members – aunts, uncles, cousins — who have been exploiting the kids, forcing them to work on the streets as beggars, or in the fields as farm laborers. To reintegrate the kids into this kind of situation would be unwise and unsafe. But where possible, we facilitate continued contact with extended families. Often family members will come to visit, and occasionally, our staff will accompany kids back to their villages to help maintain contact between the child and their community of origin.

On the other side of the equation, we work hard to provide a real family for the children in our care. We don’t have huge, institutional facilities; we build or rent single-family dwellings. We don’t hire shift-workers, who come and go; we recruit full-time, long-term moms and dads who become parents to the kids in their care. And we work to keep the homes small.

We’ve seen huge orphanages – sometimes with hundreds of kids. Every study we’ve read and every piece of anecdotal knowledge we’ve accumulated indicates that kids from those types of institutions fare poorly as adults. That’s why we try to admit only 20 to 25 kids per home, and we generally maintain a high 1:5 staff-to-child ratio. The kids in our care develop stable, lifelong relationships with real mothers and fathers, real brothers and sisters. We believe that this will provide our kids with the kind of loving family environment that all experts agree works best for kids, especially kids who have suffered the trauma of loss and extreme poverty.

Thanks, John. Stay tuned for Part 3 on Wednesday. And feel free to ask John (or me) any questions you might have or share your own personal stories of mission trips/orphan care in the comments.