Jan 04 2009
2009 New Year’s Resolution: Get Involved with the International Justice Mission
Welcome to 2009 and to Unexpected Gifts: Discovering and Nurturing the Strengths in Every Child. As you move forward into a new year, I hope that in 2009 you will consider adding a new item to your New Year’s resolution list: to have a positive impact on the lives of a very special group of children and adults whose dignity, human rights and hope have been crushed.
These children include the 2 million children who are “exploited in the global commercial sex trade and the 1 million children living in detention and waiting trial for minor offenses.” You can read more about these children and the 27 million men, women and children living as slaves by visiting the website for the International Justice Mission, http://www.ijm.org/whoweare.
I first learned about the International Justice Mission (IJM) in August of 2008 when Gary Haugen was speaking in South Barrington, Illinois, at the Willow Creek Community Church Leadership Summit, http://www.willowcreek.com/lds/events_LS_2009.asp.
His story of how he became inspired to create a human rights organization and the stories he told of the life-changing victim rescue in 12 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America completely captivated the attention of the audience. Hearing him speak served as a call to action to the thousands of people who attended the conference in Illinois and at one of over 140 satellite sites around the U.S. Haugen’s speech truly opened my eyes to the need for more of us to get involved in this incredibly courageous humanitarian effort to fight worldwide injustice.
While I hope this blog helps others identify and nurture the gifts of every child, I do know that this is most likely not going to happen if the child or the child’s family is a victim of injustice. So, I ask that you join me and get involved. Visit the IJM website and find out how you and your family can make a critical difference in the lives of oppressed children and their families. Your involvement can lead to a life of freedom for countless children and adults. You can help change the future for a child whose strengths and gifts can be rightfully identified and nurtured and who deserves of a life of hope and dignity.
2 responses so far
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i know a little bit abt ijm.i live in the city of bangalore,india and one of my friends is an admin chief in ijm.yea,we need to do our little part whatever we can,to bring freedom to these little children and see to it that justice is shown to them.i know ijm is into a lot of justice related work splly their work among children needs a standing ovation.
this big big world is always in motion
where peace and love are a magic portion
Hello, Hannah.
I appreciate you reading my blog post and taking the time to post a comment. I’m so glad to hear that you are aware of the work of IJM! It’s certainly a courageous endeavor that your friend is involved with and I am in total awe of the work she and others are doing with IJM. I would love to be more involved myself with IMJ’s work and so I thought I could start by raising awareness of it through my blog and getting involved locally with justice issues at my church and in my community and state.
Since we are all entitled to the same basic human rights wherever we live and whoever we are, I am grateful to know that people, like your friend, are fighting for the rights of each of us to live a life of hope and dignity.
I hope that you might find a way to get involved in helping your friend at IJM and the children of Bangalore. Good luck to you!