Gospel for Asia

“The poor do not need our compassion or our pity, they need our help.” — Mother Theresa It is almost impossible for us to understand the magnitude of the needs of the children of South Asia and their families needing the assistance and intervention of Gospel for Asia (GFA) and others. How bad can their life be? Frankly, their lives are much worse than most of us can even begin to imagine. Oh, you’ve heard the appeals over and over again from Gospel for Asia (GFA) , Save the Children, Compassion International, World Vision, and a seemingly endless number of NGOs who are committed to reaching out to those living in extreme poverty who are considered the lowest of the low in their home countries. But there are literally millions of precious, innocent children suffering indignities at levels we fail to comprehend. So, let us explain a few reasons these children need our help. 1. They are considered outcasts. Our national missionaries go into the urban slums and remote villages where the ...

Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia Special Report (GFA) – Discussing the troubling problem of the lack of toilets – basic sanitation, and open defecation for millions throughout the world. What If You Didn’t Have a Toilet? So I remind myself of toilet scenarios I do know about, then extrapolate some personal situations out to extreme what-ifs. Our home, in which we have lived for 38 years, has its own septic system. During that time, when we had extreme storms, the power would go out. This meant that no water could be pumped from our underground well, and this electric outage disabled our showers, our faucets and our toilets. I used to store plastic bottles of water so when things went black we could brush our teeth, get dressed by candlelight (since there are no windows in any of our bathrooms), and—get this—flush our toilets. If the power did not come back on for a couple days, the frozen food thawed and an excess of detritus threatened to overflow the toilet basin. So I extrapola...

Wills Point, Texas – GFA Special Report (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing the troubling problem of open defecation and the lack of basic sanitation for millions throughout the world. Talking Openly About Open Defecation Another key dilemma in this discussion—open defecation, hardly a dinner-table topic or a mission committee agenda item—is the fact that accessibility to toilets does not always indicate usage . Changing habits is mostly a matter of changing mindsets in the face of the stranglehold of deeply entrenched beliefs. Elizabeth Royte, in a comprehensive August 2017 National Geographic Magazine article , reports visiting Parameswaran Iyer, India’s secretary of drinking water and sanitation, in 2016. A hand-numbered sign on his wall tracks progress. “You see that?” he asks. “One hundred thousand is the number of villages that are ODF today.” (ODF is the acronym for open defecation free). Royte reports working the internal math: “Just 540,000 to go, I note; three years before Modi’s...

Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia Special Report (GFA) – Discussing the troubling problem of open defecation and the lack of basic sanitation facilities for millions throughout the world. 2.3 billion worldwide lack basic sanitation facilities and 892 million still defecate in the open, according to World Health Organization. For much of my adult life, it has been my privilege to hang out with the “renegades” of Christian missions, that relief-and-development crowd that rushes to help during natural disasters, struggles to alleviate the suffering and abasement of refugee displacement, and pays concerted attention to the everyday struggles of everyday living in the developing nations of the world. The first trip I made around the world was at the invitation of Food for the Hungry, and I traveled with Larry Ward, the executive director at the time, and his wife, Lorraine. It was on this trip I became convinced this particular crew of crisis-ready, crisis-solving, crisis-adaptive human...

Numerous studies have shown that the simple step of properly handwashing markedly reduces the risk of disease and infection. Unfortunately, many in developing nations around the globe do not know of this life-saving fact. For this reason, the Global Handwashing Partnership (GHP) established October 15 as Global Handwashing Day. The theme for 2018 is “Clean hands – a recipe for health.” It particularly applies to this year’s emphasis on making handwashing a part of preparing to make or partake of every meal. When the first Global Handwashing Day was introduced in 2008, the campaign focused on reducing child mortality rates by introducing behavioral changes, including handwashing. It was estimated that the simple act of washing one’s hands adequately with soap could reduce childhood mortality from respiratory disease by 25 percent and from diarrheal diseases by 50 percent. In fact , “Research shows that children living in households exposed to handwashing promotion and soap had half the...

Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – Discussing the challenge to change minds on open defecation in Asia. “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” —Galatians 6:9 If all your friends are doing it, would you jump off a cliff? That sounds like something your mom might have said. But what if the cliff is really just a big rock on a bank, and there’s a beautiful, clear swimming hole down below? Perspective changes everything, doesn’t it? Peer pressure can sometimes be great. In parts of Asia where open defecation is still widely practiced, tradition says that’s how things are done. But times are changing. Education is spreading. Nudges from the community to break with tradition and use a latrine can save lives. It takes a village to change a mind, and that’s happening throughout rural Asia right now. Proactive Communities Make Open Defecation Less Socially Acceptable In the hours after dusk and before dawn, a ritual as ol...

Gospel for Asia (GFA World) , Wills Point, Texas – Discussing what people can actually do to help resolve the global water crisis. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.” — Ecclesiastes 4:9 We learn about the importance of working together when we’re children. As early as kindergarten, careful teachers share lessons about helping others. Moms and dads often start those lessons even younger. If everyone helps out around the house, chores get done more quickly with less of a burden on one person. The core messages are responsibility and finding strength in numbers. The most daunting and insurmountable obstacles aren’t so intimidating after all, not when everyone shares the load. For one person reading sad stories about the global water crisis , it might seem impossible to solve. How much of a difference can one person really make? Alone, it would feel like moving a beach, one tiny grain of sand at a time. But together, people can be heroes who move mou...

Education for young girls in Asia is often sacrificed for family roles like fetching clean drinking water for their families . Tens of thousands of young girls in Asia drop out of school every year. Half of them stop attending at the primary school level, and The Times of India says the number is rising. Several factors affect the likelihood of girls graduating. But the drinking water crisis remains a constant threat . According to the United Nations, women and girls in rural Asia bear the overwhelming majority of responsibilities for finding and carrying clean drinking water. It’s not a minor chore, not like walking a few steps to a well and carrying it back inside the home. Clean, disease-free water is often miles away. Fetching safe drinking water is a necessary full-time job that comes at the expense of education, among other serious risks . GFA’s clean water initiatives does more than give families better access to water that’s safe to drink. It gives girls the freedom to focus o...

“So what does Christianity have to do with the defecation problems of the world?” That’s a question posed in Gospel for Asia ( GFA ) special report “Saving Lives at Risk from Open Defecation: Using Outdoor Toilets to Improve Sanitation.” The report, written by bestselling author and speaker Karen Burton Mains , takes an in-depth—and, at times, personal—view concerning open defecation problems around the world and those specific to Asia. In this part of the slums in Asia, many people live in close proximity to unhygienic surroundings—lacking facilities like toilets and proper drainage. Here’s an excerpt: Talking Openly About Open Defecation Another key dilemma in this discussion— open defecation , hardly a dinner-table topic or a mission committee agenda item—is the fact that accessibility to toilets does not always indicate usage. Changing habits is mostly a matter of changing mindsets in the face of the stranglehold of deeply entrenched beliefs. Elizabeth Royte, in a comprehensive Aug...

One of the first questions that real estate agents broach upon meeting a potential buyer or seller is “How many bathrooms do you need” or “… do you have,” as the case may be. As commonplace as that may be for most reading this article, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 4.5 billion people “either have no toilet at home or (have) one that doesn’t safely manage excreta.” Think for a moment. Let that number sink in. That is about 60% of the total global population. While Americans and most of the western world are flush with adequate, even fancy commodes and sanitary wastewater systems, nearly two-thirds of the people on this planet do not have access to the convenience of a proper toilet facility. It is estimated that nearly a billion of those with limited or no access to private or public toilet facilities practice open defecation. That is, they must find a place to go, whether it is in an open field, near a bush, along roadsides and railways, or in some corner away fr...

World Toilet Day , established for November 19th by the UN in 2013, coincides with the 2001 creation of the World Toilet Organization , an organization aimed at raising awareness about and addressing the need for toilets all around the world. Since Gospel for Asia’s field partners started constructing toilets in 2012 , we have helped provide more than 28,000 of these facilities across many Asian nations, including Nepal and India— 10,512 of which were constructed in 2016 alone . It’s an exciting thing to be able to come alongside impoverished families and give them a little dignity. On Oct. 2, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Swachh Bharat (Clean India), an initiative to clean India in multiple ways, including the goal of eliminating open defecation in the nation by Oct. 2, 2019—the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. We are proud to be a small part of impacting families, transforming communities and enabling education (more on that later) through toilets. Gosp...

Progress in addressing the sanitation global crisis shows direct aid is crucial for lasting change. Despite improvements, critical gaps remain in ensuring access to safe, hygienic facilities. Direct aid plays an indispensable role in solving this crisis, filling gaps and providing essential resources. UNICEF and GFA World, among other organizations, have played pivotal roles in advancing global sanitation efforts. They have been committed to improving sanitation access, particularly in regions where the need is most acute. UNICEF’s Contributions UNICEF has been leading efforts to provide safe drinking water and basic sanitation worldwide. In 2020, they helped nearly 19 million people access safe water and 10.8 million gain basic sanitation. [1] This achievement demonstrates UNICEF’s commitment to addressing the global sanitation crisis as a crucial component of overall well-being. GFA World’s Impact GFA World, formerly Gospel for Asia, has been instrumental in combatting open defecati...

Access to safe sanitation is not just about hygiene; it’s a catalyst for profound transformation within communities. As we delve into the safe sanitation impact, we uncover stories of resilience, health and hope that emerge when individuals gain access to a fundamental human right—dignity. Communities Transformed by Access to Sanitation In South Asia, impoverished communities face dire consequences of open defecation. However, change is coming. Families like Laal’s, previously living with inadequate sanitation, now have opportunities to improve their lives through better facilities and practices. [1] Laal, from a remote South Asian village, was among the few remaining families in his isolated community lacking basic facilities. His life changed when two GFA World workers from nearby facilitated the construction of a sanitation facility. This small change had an enormous impact, bringing health and hygiene benefits while fostering new friendships with the neighboring community. Laal’s f...

The global quest for improved sanitation highlights sanitation rural challenges. While urban areas progress, rural regions face formidable obstacles in accessing clean facilities. PAHO reports 15.5 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean practiced open defecation in 2019, emphasizing the issue’s prevalence. [1] Addressing these specific sanitation challenges in rural regions is crucial for global progress. The Rural Sanitation Dilemma Limited Infrastructure Accessibility – Rural communities often lack essential sanitation infrastructure, including sewage systems and proper waste disposal. This absence forces reliance on rudimentary methods, leading to open defecation and contamination of local water sources. [2] Scarce Financial Resources – Economic disparities between urban and rural areas exacerbate sanitation issues. Many rural families can’t afford solutions, lacking access to financing. The World Bank reported global costs of inadequate sanitation at $260 billion pre-...

Remarkable strides in sanitation global progress have improved access worldwide. Collaborative efforts combat inadequate sanitation’s consequences, leading to transformative statistical shifts. Ongoing support is crucial to expand these achievements against open defecation. Impressive Global Statistics on Improved Sanitation Access The global sanitation landscape has transformed significantly, driven by dedication from governments, international organizations, and communities. Recent data showcase remarkable progress achieved: Reduction in Open Defecation: Between 2000 and 2017, open defecation worldwide declined significantly. Practitioners decreased from 1.3 billion to 673 million, reducing from 21% to 9% of the global population. This marks substantial progress towards universal sanitation access, though challenges persist in achieving the 2030 goal. [1] South Asia Progress: A UNICEF report shows a significant decrease in open defecation prevalence, dropping from 65% to 34% across...

Do you know what is the single most effective method in cutting down the contraction and spreading of diseases? You do this every day. Hopefully more than once a day. It’s the simple, life-saving method of washing your hands! And you know what’s right around the corner? Global Handwashing Day . Oct. 15 is the day to raise awareness of how tremendously important washing hands is to saving lives. Many of us probably grew up in homes where our parents taught us to wash our hands before we ate or after playing outside. Maybe as kids we didn’t know exactly why we had to wash our hands, but it was still a lesson engrained in us, right? In some parts of Asia, many children don’t grow up with this common knowledge, because it isn’t so common.Children in a Believers Church Sunday School class participate in a Global Handwashing Day program on October 15, 2016. Children in a Believers Church Sunday School class participate in a Global Handwashing Day program on October 15, 2016. A report from...

For many little girls in the United States and wealthier countries, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, it was assumed they would receive an education and go on to find an occupation they loved. Yet, in certain parts of the world, a girl is far from guaranteed an education. She waits and hopes for a sponsor. A girl’s education path is not the norm in many developing countries. Worldwide, approximately 169 million girls are out of school. Of this number, 32 million are primary school age, 30 million are lower-secondary age, and 67 million are upper-secondary age. [1] Though the reasons for this are varied, the results are often the same: ongoing poverty, gender-based violence, human trafficking and child marriage. “Despite substantial progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in many countries, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels,” noted a joint report published by the Global Partnership...