The gift of GIVING

KERRE FINDS OUT FIRST-HAND THAT YOU CAN MAKE A VERY REAL DIFFERENCE

It’s been heartening to see the response to the stories I wrote about the work World Vision is doing in India and Myanmar. I travelled to these two countries in August for three weeks, interviewing young women and their families who had been affected by child labour, child marriage and trafficking.

The stories were published in the paper over the past fortnight and it’s been lovely having my faith in human nature reinforced through that.

Working in talkback, I hear comments such as, ‘Why bother giving overseas when there are so many problems in New Zealand?’ or, ‘Why doesn’t India look after its own people?’ And perhaps the most brutal, ‘Why would I care about people in India or Myanmar?’

The good thing about giving is that everybody has their own special area of interest. When I was younger, I donated to environmental organisations. Once

I had Kate, I was more concerned with charities that looked after children. Friends of mine who don’t have kids tend to be big supporters of the SPCA and other animal welfare organisations. So between us all, we manage to cover most of the worthy causes.

I’m also committed to helping Kiwis who are struggling, but it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. For very little money, you can make a huge difference to a community overseas. I saw that when I travelled to Tanzania with World Vision to promote micro-financing, and I saw it in India and Myanmar too.

With no welfare system, families who are already in precarious financial circumstances suffer dreadfully should the husband and father suffer an accident or fall ill. Children are taken out of school to work in mind-numbingly boring and often dangerous jobs for precious little money. But every rupee is necessary to survive – and the kids know this. So the girls are married off at 14 or 15 – one less mouth to feed in a household that’s struggling to get rice on the table. Children as young as 13 work 14-hour days just to keep their families’ heads above water. And in Myanmar, a combination of desperate poverty in many parts and the one-child policy in neighbouring China has fuelled a roaring trade in human trafficking.

In China, many men from rural regions and those who are mentally or physically disabled struggle to find wives. Some of their families think nothing of paying a trafficker to hoodwink a young woman from Myanmar over the border. The girls are promised short-term contracts working for good money in Chinese factories – in fact, they’re sold as sex slaves and married off to men they’ve never met. Their stories are harrowing.

It was a privilege to meet the families that I did. They were so warm and hospitable in welcoming me into their homes. Most of these were one-room shacks, but they were immaculately clean, and there was a place for everything and everything was in its place.

The parents spoke of their frustration in not being able to give opportunities to their children and the girls told me they were determined that their younger siblings wouldn’t be married off young or taken out of school to work.

Things are changing. World Vision is working with the communities to emphasise the importance of education for young people and the dangers of marrying off girls too young, and it was wonderful seeing how empowered many of the communities we visited had become. They were becoming their own agents of change and they were excited by that. Everyone told me visiting India would be life-changing. And they were right. I just hope that as a result of me sharing the stories of the young women I met, I can help change their lives too.