Nearly 770 million people around the world—many of them children—live below the $1.90-a-day extreme poverty line. Many children are forced to work to help provide for their families, rather than attend school. 70 percent of these children who should have been in primary or secondary education lives in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

Poverty and low education are each self-perpetuating. Those born into poverty (or illiterate households) often live the remainder of their lives in that same condition and have nothing more to offer their children. What’s more, it is as if poverty and low education have a magnetic attraction, relentlessly pulling those who are caught in one cycle deep into the other too. One study found that if all the students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, more than 170 million people could be lifted out of poverty—the equivalent of a 12 percent cut in world poverty.

TEL International is playing its part in this effort with an emphasis on nurturing children through its adopt-A-school program, where thousands of children receive free tuition and health care. Meanwhile, simple hygiene lessons mean children who do attend school miss less days through sickness.

When I think about the potential of these children, we are terribly excited to think about their future and all they will do and become. And not only these children but also their families and communities will benefit from the investment being made in their lives right now. However, millions of families are still living a desperate, hand-to-mouth existence, and we are gripped to do everything we can to help them. So, we will move forward, as an extension of the life of God, bringing more and more of them a better life.

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