This weekend you are being invited to spend some time praying for the world’s vulnerable children.
It’s a small request for a big problem; there are an estimated 1.2 billion youngsters under the age of 18 at risk due to disease, disaster, trafficking and exploitation.
They’re in urgent need of change in their lives - change that will see a physical and emotional transformation to bring them back to childhood.
Tearfund partner Viva is organising the World Weekend of Prayer for Children at Risk, and wants the church to unite in intercession.
Viva, which works with Tearfund in supporting partners in South America, Uganda and India, believes that even though more children than ever are at risk, the church has the potential to make `a profound difference’.
Aneeta Kulasegaran, Tearfund’s Child Development Advisor, said, `It is timely that Tearfund prays for children at risk around the world as many of our partners work with children in very difficult circumstances.
`We need to pray believing that tremendous changes will happen to enable children to develop physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually to enable them to have the best opportunities and outcomes in life.’
• Please pray for those who are hungry – 10 per cent of under-5s in developing countries are severely underweight.
• Pray for those who are thirsty – one in six people in the world has no access to clean water and nearly half are children.
• Pray for those who are on the streets – 150 million children live or work on the world’s streets
• Pray for children who are being trafficked – more than a million youngsters have been taken or sent away from their families and exploited for their labour, including being exploited as commercial sex workers.
• Pray for those who are sick – every minute a child dies of an AIDS-related illness and every year 1.8 million die from a diarrhoeal-related condition.
For more information, go to Viva's website.