Children touch us in a way that adults don’t. Through their vulnerability they awaken in us the responsibility to protect and nurture; through their openness they challenge us to help them find a way into the future; through their being in the moment they remind us of the simplicity and immediacy of life.
So it shouldn’t really be a problem to get attention for addressing children’s health, to leverage resources to provide for the needs of these so vulnerable members of society. And yet large numbers of children do not have access to even the most basic health services. And still, in spite of considerable improvements, millions of children die every year of utterly preventable causes; millions of lives started, filled with potential, and never fulfilled.
I often stand amazed at what people are willing to take on, to do and even to suffer for their children. They invest huge amounts of time and effort to secure what seems best for their child: the many sleepless nights, the willingness to hold on to a difficult relationship for the sake of the children, even taking on sex work so that the children survive.
How is it that so little of this effort is invested to secure some of the best for other children? What deep gulf here dividing “ours” from “theirs”, “my child” from “under-5s”, “us” from “them”?
What will it take for a different world to become possible? A world where there are places and communities that signal the rule of God – a God of love and justice – where the separation into “them” and “us” is not so glaring, the discrepancies not so stark, the reality a closer reflection of justice and love?
Bringing new energy to a hopeless situation
I have learned a valuable approach in six years of working in the African Religious Health Assets Programme (ARHAP) – and that is to start with assets. So often we start with what is wrong – of course, millions of children dying every year of preventable causes is something approach that looks at what is present rather than what is missing can bring a new perspective and energy to a seemingly hopeless situation.
Assets are a range of capabilities, skills, resources, links and institutions already present in a context. They carry value and may be leveraged to access greater value. While needs-based approaches often depend on having a deficiency remedied from outside, the asset focus emphasises local agency – the available capacity to do, to act – without denying the important role of outside agencies.
Assets are present even in the most desperate situations and the most needy communities. Bringing people together to identify these assets as they plan a way forward has, in our experience, shifted the dynamic, brought about new energy, and forged new collaborations to address the needs.
Taking stock of our assets
So, what are the assets available to the development community to secure better health outcomes, especially for the well-being of children at the margins of society? Here are a few:
• There is now much evidence of what does and does not work, and much experience to draw on. The significant reduction in child deaths that has been achieved testifies to that. This is an asset to be leveraged.
• Communities of faith are present across the globe, even in the most remote communities, and are connected through their world-wide denominational web. These groups and their facilities always constitute one of the assets local communities can leverage for access to information and resources, and very often to some health service too. It is an asset that has many demands made on it; as a result it is often over-stretched. Here the biblical image of the one body – and the reality it reminds us of – is important. We are in this together. We cannot separately do it all. Nor do we need to.
• For Christians there is the asset of a challenging and invigorating faith. Gary Gunderson, one of ARHAP’s founding members, says, “Faith makes possible adaptive leaps because it is not surprised by surprise; it anticipates that which may not yet have precedent; it enables action beyond data; imagination not entirely captive to existing technique.”
• Theology, too, offers assets by helping us make sense of how our faith is realised in this world. Paul Farmer, the medical doctor, anthropologist and health activist, claims that since many diseases make a “preferential option for the poor”, churches need to follow God in his preferential option for those on the margins, those affected disproportionately and seriously by ill health. Drawing on the tradition of liberation theology he shows what this could look like: listening to the poor for their view on their position and needs; taking action with them as well as on their behalf; and passing judgment on conditions that result in preventable deaths. He speaks of “pragmatic solidarity” with the poorest of the poor, of standing alongside them and advocating not for just any health services, but for the best.
There is a need to develop the political will to do more, of course, and much has been said on that. But political will starts out of civil will, out of small and growing pockets of people who are not satisfied for things to be as they are, and who see a way forward and demand that it be taken. I have often been encouraged, when I felt overwhelmed by the huge demands facing us, by anthropologist Margaret Mead’s bold statement: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The history of the church over the past two millennia gives ample illustration of this. An asset indeed. -- Barbara Schmid