“I’m convinced that if I could somehow tie the stories of the poor people here in Sri Lanka to America’s favorite fried poultry that, perhaps more Americans might take a moment and just pay attention to what’s happening on an island in the middle of the Indian ocean. That perhaps a headline like “The Five Ways Chick-Fil-A Failed Sri Lanka” or “The Church Goes All Chick-Fil-A For Sri Lanka’s Poor People” might create enough viral noise so that people might engage a story or two about what’s happening in Sri Lanka.” (Matthew Paul Turner)
“When she was three, Afra was playing with the neighbor children in her village. A truck driver coming down the road swerved playfully at a friend he saw. But he didn’t see Afra. She was pinned up against a wall, and her leg was crushed and mutilated in the truck’s rear wheel. The trucker got out of his truck, saw the little girl and, thinking that no one was looking, kicked her into the ditch. To him, she was poor trash.” (Tony Jones)
“Then I stop. I stick my feet down into the flow of time and I will it to pause. Pause, darnit! I want to absorb the entirety of this moment and keep it for myself for later and for DanO to recount to him and for you, friends and readers (who are friends I just haven’t met yet) so that I can tell you what the face of a sponsored child – and a mother of a sponsored child – truly looks like, feels like.” (Allison Olfelt)
“Today I saw something I have never seen in the developing world before. I saw the end of poverty.” (Roxanne Wieman)
“We climbed back up the hill towards the World Vision vehicle and I looked down the road at the row of shaky, squatting huts. Instinctively, I framed a photograph in my mind of the structures contrasted against the tall palm trees. I raised the camera and thought, ‘this would make a beautiful picture.'”
“Shocked, I lowered my hand.”
“This is not a beautiful picture.” (Laura Tremaine)
“Denying aid to Sri Lanka because they aren’t helping us first is like telling the victims of the Joplin tornado to manicure the White House lawn before we will help them rebuild. Requiring a third world country to help a first world country is like telling a child sex slave that we won’t rescue them until they send Donald Trump $100.” (Joy Bennett)
“There is one major difference between Amila and myself. While I make about the median income for an American household, he worries about these things on an average wage of less than five dollars a day when he’s lucky enough to find work at all. To put that in some perspective, that means that it takes him almost six weeks to make as much money as I make on a normal day.” (Darrell Dow)
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World Vision is in the midst of this, forming relationships and leading communities out of poverty in sustainable ways. Please read more about what they do HERE and consider sponsoring a child.
(All photos by Matthew Paul Turner. Copyright World Vision.)
I’ve been following along on the journey and this is a beautiful recap. The stories from the whole team were very powerful. Thanks for sharing them.