Featured Story

Breaking the Cycle
Why the standard of care should be our first priority, not the number of children served.
January 2003

Written by Robert Benson.  

The other day I received a call from another Christian organization that was interested in partnering with Arms of Love. The organization provides funding for the initial construction of children's homes, and according to their website, they have already funded the construction of 47 homes that currently house about 1500 children in 20 countries.

Following a brief discussion of our respective ministries, the president of this organization asked whether Arms of Love could use funding for the construction of any new children's homes. I told him that if we had the funding, the next children's home that we would build is in the Philippines. Specifically, we would like to begin construction of a second children's home complex that would include four distinct homes, at a total cost of about $60,000. This would result in an average construction cost of $15,000 per home, each of which would accommodate 12 children plus staff.

The response I received surprised me. "Fifteen thousand dollars for twelve children …" The caller mentally did some math. "That would be more than one thousand dollars for each child. That is far too expensive. For $15,000, we would want you to house 30-50 children. I could purchase a warehouse in the Ukraine for $15,000 that would house about 50 children, which is only $300 per child. I'm not going to spend more than $1000 per child when, some place else in the world, I can 'rescue' children for only $300 per child. I'm sorry, but your program falls outside of our ROI ('return on investment') parameters, so we will not be able to partner with you."

No inquiries concerning the quality of care that we provide the children. No questions concerning the nature of our programs. No inquiries concerning the effectiveness of our model or our philosophy of care. Just a naked calculation of the dollars invested divided by the number of children housed. He made his decision based on that ratio and nothing else.

The direction of the conversation caught me off guard. But as with many such conversations, it proved useful in that it catalyzed further thinking on my part, and ultimately, a greater clarity of our vision.

The telephone call I received raised a question that is always faced by social service organizations. With any given budget, it is almost always possible to care for fewer children using a higher standard of care, or more children applying a lower standard of care. A ministry must decide where, along the spectrum of possibilities, it will strike the balance of "quality vs. quantity." Within a certain range, there is no "right" or "wrong" answer to the question - it often boils down to a value judgment that is necessarily driven by the vision of the ministry. And the vision God has given Arms of Love requires that we strike a balance decidedly in favor of the quality of care, rather than the raw number of children served.

Impacting Future Generations

The vision of Arms of Love is to break the cycle of poverty, abandonment, and abuse in the lives of the children we care for. Moreover, when each child grows up, we want that child to have the same or greater opportunities relative to other children - and ideally, we would like our children to become leaders in the local church and in their community.

This has important implications for the way in which we care for the children. From an economic viewpoint, we want to break the cycle of poverty by equipping the children to support themselves and their future families. Since many children have been absent from school for many years, this often means tutoring the children sufficient to accelerate their educational progress so they can graduate at an appropriate age. Through some combination of education and the learning of vocational skills, each child must be equipped with the tools needed to obtain a good job - preferably one of their own choosing - when they move out of our home.

From an emotional and psychological standpoint, we also want to break the cycle of abandonment and abuse in the children's lives. It is well-documented that children who are abused when they are young are more likely to abuse their own children as adults. Breaking this cycle requires a great deal of love and attention from the staff. Professional psychological counseling and care is often helpful. And how well will the children function within their own families some day, if they never experienced the love of a family as children? Having a substitute mother and father growing up - a couple who loves them as their own - is critical to creating a foundation that the children can work from in caring for their own children in the future.

For children who have suffered as much as ours' have - children who have spent years dealing with unimaginable physical and sexual abuse, abandonment by their families, homelessness on the streets - the challenge of genuinely changing the direction of their lives, and the lives of their children and subsequent generations, is a significant one. And it cannot be accomplished by focusing solely on the children's basic physical needs of food, clothing and shelter. The best solution is one that integrates physical care with a loving family environment, a high level of staff-to-child interaction, care plans that are tailored to the special needs of each child, professional medical and psychological care, spiritual discipleship, and strong attention to each child's educational and vocational needs.

In practical terms, this philosophy drives us to our current model, where each child has a houseparent couple that they relate to as their "mom" and "dad"; a staff that is dedicated to ministering to all the needs of the children; and all other programs and facilities necessary to provide an environment in which the children can thrive and realize their full potential.

Even if we were to reduce the question to one of mathematics, breaking the cycle of poverty and abuse has a far greater long-term impact than simply maintaining the lives of a group of children today. In the countries where we are working, 100 children today will have nearly 25,000 progeny over the next 100 years. If given a budgetary choice between providing for the basic needs of, e.g., 300 children today, but having minimal impact on future generations, or providing for all of the economic, educational, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs of 100 children so as to break the cycle of poverty and abuse for future generations, we can have a far greater impact in the long run by focusing our efforts on fewer children today and ensuring that we genuinely change the direction of their lives and the lives of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

The Importance of Relationship

The importance of relationship is clearly illustrated in the context of compassion ministry among adults in a developing country. A lunch program may attract significant numbers of impoverished adults to church - but if you take away the lunch program, church attendance will evaporate. Individuals will attend, and be a part of, a church only if there is relationship. A compassion ministry, like a lunch program, may provide the means and opportunity for building relationship, but ultimately it is the relationship - not the food or other "hand-out" - that will have a genuine and lasting impact on their lives.

The same can be said of children at risk. We can gain legal custody of children. We can provide for their basic physical needs of food, shelter, and clothing. We can send them off to school. But unless we develop meaningful relationship with them, we will be unable to reach into their hearts and minister to the wounds of their past, bringing healing and change to the course of their lives.

Relationship is the means by which the children allow us into their world, giving us "permission" to speak into their lives and change their future. And relationship is only possible with a high level of interaction between the children and a staff that truly loves them and takes the time to care for their multi-layered needs.

"You're Worth It"

Sue Leak, who directs our ministry in Mexico, writes, "The children don't really need the physical side of things, they want someone to care and to be committed to them. They want someone to take the time to say through their actions, 'you're worth it.' A lot of kids don't believe that you can love them just for who they are. They don't see themselves as worthy of having something good happen in their lives."

Street children in less-developed countries are typically scorned within their own communities. The reason they are homeless in the first instance is that they were abandoned and abused by their own parents and relatives, and the feeling of worthlessness that results is only exacerbated by life on the streets. Since street children resort to begging, stealing and prostitution to survive, they are typically viewed as a "problem" to be eradicated, not as children in need of love and nurturing. Physical and sexual abuse of such children will often be neglected by law enforcement, and even the killing of street children (e.g., during a robbery) will often go unpunished or attributed to "self-defense."

Is it any wonder that, coming from such a context, the children we receive feel completely unworthy of love? Unworthy of something good happening in their lives? Unwilling to believe that someone genuinely cares about them? Such children will naturally work from the assumption that their new caretakers at the "children's home" don't really care about them. The ministry must have some ulterior motive, a desire to use them in a new way, a means to some hidden end. Perhaps the project is just a device for attracting money from rich foreign donors - which money "must" be going toward lining someone's pockets rather than caring for the children (which, unfortunately, is too often the truth).

The way in which we care for the children can significantly, though perhaps subtly, affect the children's view of themselves and our own motives in caring for them. A very poor or minimalist standard of care can reinforce the children's pre-existing view of themselves as being without significant value, and their cynical perception of our own motives in caring for them. By contrast, a program that provides the children with a nice home, a good and varied diet, a good school to attend, and most importantly, a high level of love and attention, will lift the children's view of themselves and their potential and raise their aspirations in life and hopes for the future.

Could it be that these people really love me for who I am, despite all that I've done in the past?

Could it be that I am "worthy" of such wonderful things?

Could it be that some day, I could have a nice home and family of my own?

Could it be that God really cares about me?

These are the questions we want the children to be asking - because these are the questions that will guide them toward truth, trust, and ultimately, change. But the questions will go unasked if we give them the crumbs from our table. They will only arise when we give them the best we can offer - caring for them as if they were our own.

There are many other wonderful organizations and ministries that are called to different visions and tasks. Some ministries, for example, are focused more on "relief" efforts, which must necessarily be directed at the basic necessities of life. But God has given Arms of Love a specific and unique vision for permanently changing the lives of the children He brings to us, and it is our commitment to find the best way to implement that vision.