Page 24 - Priorities #49 2011-April/May

24
Hope
Unlimited
by Maddie Pierson, Class of 2012
Imagine a girlwho lives in a comfortable suburban house surrounded by a loving family. She attends Stanford games and vacations in Newport Beach with her family. She attends private school.
Imagine another girl who lives in a home of cardboard and ply- wood, without plumbing or electricity. She walks barefoot on a dirty, trash-filled street. Her mom suffers from mental illness and has to leave the house and take medication to avoid hurting her children. The father is a drug addict. On the way home from school, this girl sells herself on the street to earn money for her family.
These two girls met this past summer. If you haven’t already guessed, I am the first girl.
Last summer, I traveled to Brazil to visit a Christian nonprofit orga- nization, Hope Unlimited, which rescues children who have been sexu- ally exploited and are living on the streets.
When I returned to the US, I struggled to understand what I had seen and experienced. It was hard for me to find the words to describe it.
In American culture, we tend to use a narrow definition of the word “love” to describe romantic relationships, or close rela- tionships with friends and family members. We encourage love and compassion towards others, but we do not really consider who or what we would be without the love we experience. My whole life I’ve lived in a tight-knit environment where I have ex- perienced love and expected it from those around me.
In Brazil, the family system works differently in some seg- ments of society.
In the poorer classes, many families are so desperate as a re- sult of poverty and addictions, that they make money off of their children by selling them into prostitution or using them to sell drugs. The children are not cherished members of the family, but are products used to support the family.
Hope Unlimited works with social service agencies in Brazil to rescue teenagers living in these situations of imminent risk. Hope provides homes for these children with loving house par-