“I like Psalm 100!” declared seven-year-old Angeli, who often used to go to bed hungry before Barnabas started helping her family with a monthly food parcel. To her pastor’s delight, she recited word-perfect the first two verses.
Now Angeli always has enough to eat. What’s more, she and her older brother can go to school at last. Her mother, Nasreen is a Pakistani Christian widow who works as a street sweeper, a low-paid, dirty and dangerous job. She was already struggling to pay the rent and feed her family before her meagre wages were cut by half because of the lockdown. “My children no longer go to bed with an empty stomach. May God bless all people who support us,” said thankful Nasreen.
Many young Christian children in Pakistan have to go out to work to earn a few rupees. Some labour with their parents in the gruelling job of brick-making. School is just a dream for children like them, and the future offers nothing but endless toil, deprivation and hunger. Girls are vulnerable to kidnapping and forced marriage to Muslim men.
Around the world, many other Christian children are in need too.
Christian children are going to bed hungry – will you feed them?
Christian children are going without schooling – will you educate them?
Christian children are lacking warm coats for winter – will you clothe them?
£4 ($5; €4.50) could pay for half the food needs of a Pakistani child for a month
£9.50 ($13; €11) could provide enough ePap, with its health-giving micronutrients and protein, to nourish a starving child in Zimbabwe for two months
£20 ($27; €23) could provide a warm sweater for an Armenian child who has fled the violent conflict
£36 ($48; €40) could provide a year’s schooling for a Pakistani Christian brick-kiln child in an open-air “classroom”
