1. How did you become involved in Compassion Australia?
Sure, I started with Compassion about 9 years ago and before that my whole career was in print journalism. I am a journalist by profession.
2. What publication did you work in before being employed by Compassion?
I was the editor-in-chief of the Newcastle Herald. It is a regional daily newspaper and before that I ran a group of suburban newspaper in Brisbane called Quest newspaper where I was an editor-in-chief there. So my whole career before Compassion was journalism and while working in Newcastle, I really felt the Lord telling me to lay down journalism. And through a series of events that included having some aptitude testing with a guy in my church who is a psychologist, he said that you would be really good in a care profession, something like the Red Cross, World Vision or Compassion. And it just really lit something inside me, like yeah I care about people; I care about injustice; I would love to do what I love. And I became a journalist to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted so everyone who is involve in journalism wants to write some kind of wrong and make the world a better place. And so when I heard about it and it lit this kind of fire inside me and I was just sharing that with someone in my church. And I was called to lay down journalism and called to do something else and then somebody said Compassion was looking for someone. And it was really interesting because I only just heard about it through an unusual event where I got a lift home from church one day and I kind of don't remember why I got a lift and I said what are you doing and she said that she works for Compassion. And I asked what Compassion is and she said it was helping children in developing countries and we do it through a local church and it was discipleship and not just feeding the hungry. So when that person said Compassion was looking for someone, it was like wow that was interesting so I remember ringing up and I spoke to the then CEO of Compassion, Laurie McCowan which started Compassion in Australia. And I just started to mumble about something that I was a journalist and I got some writing skills and I think that I can speak a little bit and then he said why don't you come in for the interview. So I went into the interview in 1998 and he just told me about Compassion, I was not really focused for anything else and from that moment on he wasn't offering me a job but if he had I would have paid to work for Compassion. Then I had a couple of interviews with the board and I was accepted as a communication manager. And then in July 2001, I took over as the CEO from Laurie when he retired so I have been with Compassion ever since. That is the short version of a very long story.
3. What is the 'About Me' Program is it timed with the Hillsong Conference?
Yes, absolutely, we have been involved with the Hillsong Conference for a dozen years. I can remember sponsoring 100 children throughout the whole week and we have been partners with them for a long time and we have done all sort of things trying to video to sending the kids out into the crowd to getting people like Brian, Bobbie and Darlene to talk about it. Yet something was lacking. We kept thinking of how to engage people and video can engage the eyes and the ears and we wanted to help people feel poverty and smell poverty and taste and touch it. We decided why not re-create poverty.. And so we decided to make it a journey and make it interactive and let's make people feel like they are in this child's life and make them experience what they have experienced in some way and the rest is sort of history and 'About Me' was born. 'About Me' is really a play on words where change is literally about me and the story is about me and how I fit in the world amongst all of this, and the story is about the individual child in poverty and crisis and poverty is so big that it paralyses people that they think they can do nothing. And we are saying, hey, poverty destroys one life at a time and it can be defeated one life at a time. You are one person and you can make a difference. I don't know how many people, but up until a few hours ago we had well over 2500 people and our goal is to get 5000 people through and you can see out there, there are hundreds of people lined up. If you want to go through and it is really impacting them I hope that you get a chance to go through one and see for yourself. And at the end, there is a reflection room and if you really want to see how it is impacting people look at the messages written. People are writing prayers to children on the paper stationed on the back wall. We are going to deliver that to our Compassion project offices and Compassion local offices and every child who comes will be able to see that and say look this is someone who is from Australia and this is what the people of Australia said when they heard about your story and someone like you.
4. 'Is the 'About Me' tour in the Compassion booth interactive?
It is. It is interactive in the way where you sit in a child's bedroom, or the kitchen, or lounge room, the whole house is one room. You feel what it is like to be trapped on the border, or work in the cocoa plantation. There is one 18+ story and that is where the child is sold into prostitution and you actually go into the brothel and you hear the sound of children and the client and that sort of stuff.
5. Can you please describe your feeling when you see first-hand the projects Compassion is undertaking around the world.
Poverty is really shocking and is really bad, I have been to hundreds of projects and met tens of thousands of sponsored kids and you can see that they are places of hope. Whenever I go I am always shaken by the condition the children live in, but I am actually hopeful in what I see and the transformation that we are bringing. I never come back depressed. I come away inspired that what we are really doing actually makes a different and I guess it makes me more passionate about we do and more determine to see it through. Look, if I can stand on my head to get a child sponsored then I will do that.
If I can build a house and I have to somehow take everyone in Australia over there to do it then whatever it takes, I will do it. That's the sort of thing we are demonstrating, taking Australians out of their comfortable middle class and letting them see that the way we live is actually not how the world lives it is an aberration.
6. From what Christian Today Australia can see, it seems that your volunteers are very committed to the ministry.
They are amazing. They are a flame, we are trying to fan the flame into the coal of the church and we have all been inflicted with this thing called Compassion. In addition, we are trying to inflict other people with the same virus because they have seen the need and they can see the difference we can make. Some of them, some of those people and what they have seen and experienced convicts them to do something about it. You can't not do something, you do not have to motivate those people out there, they just get it but they can make a difference. So that is what advocacy is, it is speaking out for those who cannot speak for themselves and that is all it is about. Compassion is helping the poor and it is a ministry close to God's heart. And Proverb 19:17 says that when you give to the poor you lend to the Lord and the Lord will reward you for what you have done and then on the other hand Proverbs 19:22 says do not exploit the poor and do not crush the needy in court because the Lord will take up their case and plunder those who plunder them, so we say that if you mess with the poor you mess with God if you bless the poor God will bless you. We don't do it to get blessed but when you talk about God's grace it is God's blessing for us and the children. It is a ministry close to God's heart. It is not just about feeding hungry kids but introducing them to Jesus and that is the essential difference that Compassion makes. We are addressing the spiritual problem and not just the physical and economical problems. What is it that a man benefits from the whole world if he forfeited his soul? Until a child knows that they matter to God and that we love them; until then, poverty just sucks them and takes their whole life out of them and their dreams, it destroys their future, it kills their hope. Their circumstances and their own experiences are so contrary to what God wants fro them.
7. Does Compassion Australia works with other Christian ministries?
We do. We do microfinance, which is providing small loans to developing world projects, through one of our partners called Opportunity International. We are good at child development and so we focus on that and we are good at partnering with other ministries and working alongside them. The other focus we have is Habitat Humanity. We can repair and rebuild children homes and we use Habitat to do that . We partner with the Bible Society and we buy bibles through the Bible Society, at a very reduced price and the children and their family try to get really close to the gospel and so it is important that we work with others. We don't think we are the only show in town, we don't think that we are the best ministry in the world. We do a bit, and in the big scheme of things aware of the enormous needs, we are only scratching the surface. 1,000 children is wonderful but there are 600 million children living with less than a $US 1 a day so all the child sponsorship organisations in the world sponsoring 6 million children, is 10 percent. When we feel good about ourselves, we remind ourselves about the size of the problem.
8. Do you have anything further to add?
At Compassion we believe that the mandate to help the poor is through the church, and we certainly don't mind non-believers being sponsors. We are doing this to experience and learn about God's love. Compassion's mission is holistic in that we aim to challenge, partner and equip the Church to release children from spiritual, economic, social, physical and emotional poverty in Jesus' name. We believe that the problem is not too big to act and that is why we focus on changing one life at a time. The About me campaign shares the experience of 'one' child living in three different countries. Sponsoring a child is not just a good deed and we don't want anyone to mistakenly think that sponsoring a child will automatically lead them into heaven and that is the subtle fear we have where they think that sponsoring a child lead may lead them into heaven. This ministry is close to God's heart but it is by grace that we are saved and it is not through good deeds.