India Mission Trip Monday

Monday, February 13

Today was our first ‘working’ day on the trip and it consisted of visits to the India head offices of Compassion International and the International Justice Mission – both of which are in Chennai.

In India Compassion International is called Caruna Bal Vikas (Caruna for short) and it serves about 70,000 children in 310 projects.  The organization has a 3-fold mantra: being Christ Centered; Child Focused and Church Partnering.  We were given a very interesting and challenging introduction to their work and were introduced to the key staff members including the Country Director, all of whom are wonderful skilled, warm people of faith!  One of the most striking and memorable statistics that we heard was that there are more poor people in India than there are in the whole of Africa!  Caruna in India is determined to tackle the extreme poverty by focusing on the development of children.

We were treated to a great traditional Indian lunch at a local restaurant and then went to visit the IJM office.  IJM India is another impressive organization that is dedicated to fighting injustice in the name of Jesus.  The Chennai office focuses exclusively on the scourge of bonded labor – which is basically modern day slavery!  They informed us that there are over 40 million bonded workers in India alone! We met some great people here too including Haugen the President who happened to be in the Chennai office today.
As we reflected on these two organizations we were struck by two over-riding impressions – one is the high caliber of people that we met throughout both organizations, and the other is the passion and determination with which these organizations go about their work, under some pretty tough conditions! They are both doing amazing work.

Our day concluded with a trip to a shopping mall where we had a taste of Indian markets.

Included in today’s photos are a couple of city scenes to give you an idea of what we see each day as we travel around Chennai.