The Affero Blog
Grandmum Adopts Child Soldiers – You Can Help
By Rob Harvey in News
Mary and I are looking forward to participating this week in the Nashville Benefit Dinner for International Justice Mission this week. Gary Haugen and his team at International Justice Mission serve as a human rights agency rescuing victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals perform rescue missions and provide aftercare to victims. They courageously prosecute perpetrators and promote functioning public justice systems around the world.
As I shared in a previous post, human trafficking is one form of modern day slavery. Affero aims to be a part of the modern day abolishment movement. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. We can stop it. We are working to bring it to an end.
But what about the child soldier? After 9/11 I remember reading an article in TIME about Mukhtar, an infrantryman in Afghanistan’s rebel army. He could shoot a man in a beard from a standing position at 200 meters or point out camouflaged Taliban bunkers through miles of dust. His platoon leader said the green-eyed soldier was perhaps the finest he commanded. Mukhtar took the compliment with a shrug of his skinny shoulders. “I have been in the army a long time,” he said. “So I should be good at my job.” At the time, Muktar was a four-year veteran of Afghanistan’s desert war. But he was only 15 years old.
The military use of children is widespread. There are international laws and dedicated organizations like Project: AK-47 committed to liberate child soldiers. The truth is many of the world’s youth have never known peace. Some kids are taken from their homes and forced to fight. Others join the war because there is little else to do and to keep their bellies filled. In countries with limited electricity or running water and few roads, many boys must forgo school to make money any way they can, even following cows with upturned palms to catch excrement to sell as fuel. Joining the army guarantees free food, clothes and cigarettes plus the chance to swagger. “When you fight for your people, you become a man,” says Shukrullah, 12, who strolls the mountainous streets of his country with a loaded, unlocked Kalashnikov. For these youngsters, it doesn’t matter that most soldiers have not received their $25 monthly salary for three months. “This is a very good life,” says baby-faced teenager Safaullah, sitting in a trench awaiting battle. “I can eat good rice, play chess with my friends and fire many interesting weapons.”
Children in war-torn regions of the world need our help. As I shared in a previous post, Affero is committed raise friends and funding to provide education and food for the orphans. Now consider a place like Uganda. Where 20 years of civil war has decimated it’s population to a litte more than 30 million and a median age of 14.9 years. Who will go and serve this young nation? Who will serve these children, provide day care, schooling, medicine and food? Meet Irene Gleeson.
An Aussie like our very own Lucas, she visited Africa and was moved by what she found. In 1988 she founded Childcare Kitgum Servants and left her beachside home, her four grown children and her grandchildren. This mighty grandmum courageously towed her caravan to the war zone of Kitgum and gathered her first 50 war-traumitized children under a mango tree and began to teach and feed them.
Today, Irene and her team give full day care, schooling and much love to over 10,000 children in five schools. They have established medical and malnourished feeding clinics and a AIDS hospice and infant orphanage.
Around the world, children are singled out for recruitment by both armed forces and armed opposition groups, and exploited as combatants. Easily manipulated, children are sometimes coerced to commit grave atrocities, including rape and murder of civilians using assault rifles such as AK-47s and G4s. Some are forced to injure or kill members of their own families or other child soldiers. Others serve as porters, cooks, guards, messengers, spies, and sex slaves.
But by sharing this post and joining the movement, you are changing all this. You are partnering with Irene and other champions working day in and day out as teachers, nurses, builders, drivers, counselors and cooks.
Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflicts around the world, and hundreds of thousands more are members of armed forces who could be sent into combat at any time.
Ordinary people can stop this. Your support is life changing for these kids. Thank you.
Unaccompanied Minors pt 2
By Steven McLaughlin in News
For the last two weeks I have struggled to put pen to paper (or to tap out my thoughts on a keyboard) regarding how I would wrap up my two-part piece on child soldiers. There seems to be so much information on this subject alone that I felt there was no way I am going to do it any justice.
On top of this I recently started a new job at work that has been eating up my free time like the Dilophosaurus chewed up Wayne Knight in Jurassic Park. That isn’t to say I don’t love my new job, on the contrary I do, however my writing has suffered in the past two weeks and been pushed to the back burner, and for that I apologize.
The third reason that I have struggled to finish this piece is that as a writer I tend to lean heavily towards being a comedy writer, and the fact of the matter is, the more I read and researched the dilemma of child soldiers, the less and less I found ways to make any sort of light hearted remarks regarding the issue. Face it; even the Dilophosaurus joke in the last paragraph was a bit of a stretch.
For these reasons among others I decided that I could not finish this piece on my own. Fortunately my friend (and co-affangelist) Mr. Rob Harvey pointed me in the direction of one Mr. Marcus Young. Marcus Young not only came to my rescue in helping me finish this piece, but he taught me more about the experiences of a child soldier than any book or article possibly could. Marcus and I had a great at length conversation regarding a group he has worked with for several years called Project AK-47.
Before I spout off about what Project Ak-47 is doing I have to precede it by saying that at the center of Marcus’ story of how he came to be involved with rescuing children from places such as Mexico, Burma and the Philippines is a man who very much so leans on Jesus in his life.
In short Project AK47 reaches into the depths of poverty and pulls out kids who weren’t given a fair first shot at having a childhood. Sure we could go back and forth and debate what it means to have a childhood, we could discuss how my Western idea of childhood differs from a world view of childhood, or even argue that there’s no such thing as a world view of child hood. We could do all that until we’re blue in the face, but the fact will still remain that kids as young as 3 and 4 are conscripted by their governments into militias. They start out as “go fers” running menial errands here and there, during this time they sometimes have food, clothing and shelter provided for them. Around the ages of 9 and 10 they start training the children in basic combat, and then at about 12 years old they join the ranks of other soldiers. At 12 they are physically large enough to carry the light, deadly and relatively cheap weapon that is an AK-47. The average time these children spend in some sort of paramilitary role on average is 7 years.
So yes, we could argue about what it means to “have” a childhood, but I’m willing to bet there are very few people that would wish the above paragraph on any child. What project Ak-47 does is to step in when given the chance and provide these kids with the food, clothing and shelter they need, but with the relationships they as children yearn for as well. The over arching idea behind Project AK-47 is that the children in these situations have two chances in life; to be a kid for 7 years or to be a killer for 7 years. A(a) kid (k)for (4) 7 or a(a) killer(k) for (4) 7. AK-47.
I think that if I were a sensationalistic writer I would reprint the parts of mine and Marcus’ conversation that shocked me the most, the parts that broke my heart and the parts that spurred me on. But that’s not my writing style and I don’t want to scare anyone into finding out more about this mission of Project AK-47. So here are my suggestions if you want to find out more or get involved with alleviating this darkness from our world.
1) Sign up for Affero (yeah, I went there.) Seriously though, sign up and vote for child soldiers to get your gift for the month. It can be that easy.
2) Go to Project AK 47′s website and get involved there. Read about their dog tag campaign. Their goal is to get 100,000 dog tags of child soldiers out to people to raise awareness of just how many children are in the bondage of armies, militias and other various groups. While you’re there look around and learn more about Project AK-47
3) Go to a library and type child soldiers into a search bar on the computer. The vast array of books and articles on the subject can lead to some great conversations and breakthroughs on this subject if you take the time to read them.
That’s it for me for the week. Thanks for your recent patience and I promise more regularity in the future when it comes to this column.
Peace,
Steve
Unaccompanied Minors part 1
By Steven McLaughlin in News
My challenge at the Affero project is to be able to help educate some of our readers on the different causes we want to help out with. My general knowledge on the subjects is/was just that, general. Since I began writing on this blog I have been blown away by how deep and dark some of these problems are that we want to help with. While we tend to be a light hearted group of people, these causes can leave one heavy hearted after enough time is spent learning and researching them. I believe for myself no other subject has moved me, changed me and disturbed me quite as much as the subject of child soldiers. Some numbers estimate that currently over 300,00 children under the age of 17 are forced into armed conflicts and UNICEF estimates that in the past decade 2 million such children have died in these conflicts, millions more have been left as refugees, disabled or orphaned.
Charles London’s “One Day the Soldiers Came” is an in depth view into the world of refugee children that I have thoroughly enjoyed. There have been times where I felt I just could not read any further, didn’t want to read any further, or was embarrassed at my own ignorance to the subject as a whole. Overall it’s been a great resource to finding out more about how refugee children end up as mass murdering soldiers.
One quote in particular from the beginning of the book has stood out to me, London says, “They’ve fought in different armies and come from different parts of the country. Fate has thrown them into this center together, turned them into a group, labeled child soldiers or ex-combatants or in some documents “youth who participate in conflict.” The labels tell you little. In the language of humanitarian aid, there are many categories for children; Street children, Internally Displaced children, Child Soldiers, Child Heads of Household, Unaccompanied Minors, Children in Conflict with the Law, Children Affected by HIV, Children Accused of Sorcery. Categorization is a way of processing children for targeted assistance in crisis situations.” I think this stuck in my head for so long because it communicates how wide and varied the experiences of child soldiers are and how different societies view them in different contexts.
One of the most difficult aspects for me to understand as I was researching this is that the idea of childhood is significantly relative to different cultures. It seems the more a culture values education, the more that society develops a set of rules to protect children. While the correlation of childhood and education may seem to be obvious to some, I think it only feels that way because of an ingrained western cultural standard. When I think collectively about every child I’ve ever known personally, from my own childhood on, I met almost all of them through an education system of some sort, whether it was through my own school or school’s I volunteered at or taught at. In our society education and childhood go hand in hand like facebook and birthday wishes.
My guess is that many of you reading this know a child. I know it’s a stretch to make that assumption, but I’m going to go ahead and exercise my creative judgment here and go with that assumption. Being a teacher I have gotten to know quite a few kids in the short time I have been in the education system, and I have to say that I can’t imagine any of them are ready to face war. I don’t know that anyone ever really is adequately prepared to give their life for some idea of patriotism or what is right versus what is wrong in some political argument that largely doesn’t concern their best interests. But this is what happens every day throughout the world in countries and territories that may take more than one attempt for you to pronounce the name of the land correctly. Our hope at Affero is that we can help out in some way by giving our combined efforts and resources to some people who are already on the front lines of this subject. I hate to end this with a cheesy quote, but Helen Keller once said “the highest result of education is tolerance.” And I couldn’t agree with that more than I do right now.
That about wraps it up for me for this week, next week I’ll be back with more on this subject.
Steve
Our Actions This Week Change the Lives of Poor and Orphaned Children
By Rob Harvey in News
You are getting the word out! We’ve had 1085 new friends join our group on facebook in the last 90 days. Way to go!
Thanks to your monthly support and sharing posts like this one, we are making new friends and making a real difference. Your help is vital if we are to be an effective in our mission, which includes looking after orphans and widows in their distress. Together, we are bringing hope to the orphan and rescue to the child soldier.
This week I was at Nine Fruits and met JT Olson, founder of Both Hands Foundation. JT knows that there are about 143 million orphans world-wide trapped in a vicious cycle of hopelessness, without anyone to love them, to protect them, or care for them. 
Both Hands helps widows in practical ways while raising funds for families willing to adopt. Many couples willing to adopt find the financial costs of adopting to be quite a challenge. That’s where the great work of Lifesong for Orphans steps in, offering matching grants to help cover the cost.
I thank God for the good work of Lifesong for Orphans around the world and for their early support of The Affero Project. Let me just highlight one of their incredible efforts in Zambia where there is a great orphan crisis. Did you know that one out of ten people in Zambia is an orphan? That’s over 1 million orphans. Lifesong for Orphans builds schools and launches feeding programs for these vulnerable children. They are taking a stand against poverty and bringing hope to those in need.
Many people don’t know the horrors of war up close or realize that children are used in armed conflict every day around the world. The use of children like is a great injustice. International agencies and grassroots organizations are courageously fighting the use of child soldiers. For instance, I know first hand the tremendous impact Project: AK-47 is having as they liberate child soldiers. Project: AK-47 has successfully and diplomatically negotiated the release of nearly 200 child soldiers in some very hard places around the world, like Myanmar, where they run four children’s homes and run three schools.
There is a world of poor and orphaned children who need our help. Thank you joining for saying “I’m in” and joining The Affero Project. Our collective action is making a difference!
Who do you know that would enjoy being a part of a community against poverty and injustice, committed to bring hope, sustainable change, and empowering communities all over the world? Remember to share this post with others so that your friends can learn more about great works around the globe and join in. Peace.
Welcome to The Affero Project!
Hey, thanks for stopping by! We’re stoked to officially launch the blog and ‘newsletter sign-up’ in preparation for ‘The Affero Project’ going LIVE in September. Its been almost a year in preparation and now we’re almost here! Let me take a few moments to explain the mission of The Affero Project and what were up to!
Have you ever thought to yourself, “gee I’d love to able to give away a million dollars one day?” Or after you heard a major need with an organization you support and pondered, “I wish I could write that $500,000 check right now and give it away?”… but the only problem is, you don’t have the money…. and probably never will! Well, you’re not alone!
About a year ago, a number of young and passionate global justice freaks dreamed together an idea that could revolutionize the way people give and increase the effectiveness of ones gift, by multiples of thousands! We said… what if we could create the worlds-first online giving platform and community that allows people to give small change every month, joining with thousands of others, and together they vote monthly, where and to what organization that money is given? What if we could make a program that could be accessible for those who could only afford to give $1 a month and also appeal to those who could give $1000 a month? What if we could create a way that people could spread their gifts out across many pressing global justice causes and needs, and assist the work of hundreds of amazing aid organizations, NGO’s and ministries out there changing lives? What if…
We got excited! We told others, who got excited and now its has grown and the platform is almost built and ready to launch!
The Affero Project is quite simple…. You Give, You Vote, You Decide.
The word ‘Affero’ is a ancient Latin word meaning ‘to contribute, to bring, to empower’. We have the ability to contribute small monthly commitments, whatever you can afford, to bring about sustainable change in communities and lives all around the world, and to empower individuals to break the cycle of poverty and oppression and succeed in life. We can actually do this!
You see its the law of co-operative giving. One person cannot give enough money, or shout loud enough to impact the whole world, but together, we can each do ‘what we can’, joining with thousands of others and do just that. A rising tide, lifts all boats, two voices are louder than one.
And its way more than just giving! As Affero grows we will have regular articles from people around the world sharing stories and insights into real situations on the ground. We will have teams of people going out all around the world engaging in ‘hands-on’ work in justice hot-spots, where you will have the opportunity to see first-hand, to help with some of these issues (human trafficking, child soldiers, poverty, famine, AIDS, and much more) and come back changed person. We’ll have film crews and photographers creating compelling presentations that you can use back in your schools, universities, churches and community gatherings to empower others to ‘be the change’. Plus much, much more.
Like the old Chinese proverb says “One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade.” We are a generation who will gladly plant the trees, who will tear up the seeds of injustice, scream for those with no voice, bring good news and hope to the hurting, give food, medicine and clothing to the poor, so that others in future generations can enjoy the shade. We are the Affero generation! And together… we can change the world!
Would you consider joining us today by signing up to the newsletter on the side of the page. In the next few months as we prep to launch the project into ‘beta’ phase, we’ll have many announcements and ways you can get involved on a grassroots level to help us build and grow Affero. There will be a number of ‘town hall’ type meetings in and around the Nashville area where we will gather input and ideas from you and the community.
It will be an exciting few months for sure and we’re looking forward to your input.
Here’s to changing the world!
The Affero Team