The Human Right We Can't Afford to Forget
December 3, 2012
When Tiffany was 9 years old, she opened a book in her classroom just outside a slum in Peru. She didn’t know it then, but she had also opened a door to a new life.
Tiffany lived in San Juan de Lurigancho—a squatter community just outside the city limits of Lima—where her family had fled after rebel armies drove them away from their home in the mountains.
Tiffany grew up in a shack her family cobbled together with anything they could find. Their home was as fragile as the family that lived in it—an alcoholic father, abused mother and hungry children all barely holding it together each day.
If it’s social injustice to deny a human being the basic needs to thrive in this life, then it’s spiritual injustice to deny them the truth of life through Christ and the hope to come.
But one day visitors came to Tiffany’s classroom and handed out what they called the Book of Hope, filled with colorful illustrations and stories proclaiming God’s truth. She took the book home and read it with her mom that night. The next day, they went to the visitors’ HopeFest celebration, where they dedicated their lives to the man called Jesus they had read about in the book.
But it didn’t stop there. Tiffany’s brother and sister also chose to follow Christ. Then Tiffany’s father, witnessing the transformation of his family, began to attend church with them. He stopped drinking, committed his life to Christ, got a new job and moved his family into a better neighborhood with a real home.
It’s common knowledge that every child is entitled to certain basic human rights—access to food, clean water, education and physical safety. These basic elements keep a child in good health, and compromising any one of them is widely considered an injustice.
OneHope believes another injustice exists. If it’s social injustice to deny a human being the basic needs to thrive in this life, then it’s spiritual injustice to deny them the truth of life through Christ and the hope to come. This is why OneHope brought the Book of Hope to Tiffany and her classmates—and why they’re bringing it to many other children around the world.
OneHope is committed to a vision of bringing God’s Word to every child by 2030—because “every child deserves the right to receive God’s truth to bring hope to their situation.”
Studies show the years between 4 and 14—also known as the 4/14 window—are some of the most formative. This is the period in which a child’s values, character and worldview are critically developed, as well as the timeframe in which children are most likely to make a decision to follow Christ.
By reaching the 2 billion children of the world today with God’s Word in this pivotal stage of life, OneHope seeks to transform the next global generation from the inside out.
Fourteen years later, Tiffany has a classroom of her own—a preschool where she teaches children under 5 and reaches them with the love of Christ.
“This is why I am here,” she says. “To teach them ... about the life of Jesus.”
As Tiffany knows, transforming children can also transform their families, their futures and their communities.
That’s the power of God’s truth.
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