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Artist Associates: The Power of Partnership |
Fusing music and ministry, Artist Associates is a partnership between World Vision and performing artists to encourage their audience to become child sponsors in an effort to share God's love in a tangible way with the world's poorest children and families.
Currently, Artist Associates, partnered with a growing list of over 400 performing artists, have become a major contributor to the success of World Vision’s child sponsorship program. With sincerity and passion, these artists have worked to make a difference in the lives of over 500,000 children in the past 11 years.
For more information about World Vision or Child Sponsorship, please click here. |
Featured Artist
Margaret Becker |
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With all the morphing and changing that takes place in a life or career, you’ll be thrilled to know that Margaret's heart is still what drives her every offering…it’s just that now there are so many more outlets. Whether it’s writing books, speaking, putting on her Coming Up For Air Anti-Conferences, producing artists, offering life and artist intensives, making dining room tables, writing songs, and oh yes, we almost forgot – putting out records, Margaret Becker is still the Maggie B. you’ve come to love. Be sure to check out music from Maggie’s new record, Air, at www.maggieb.com.
Last fall, Margaret accompanied World Vision staff on a trip to Malawi, Africa. Watch the video above to see footage from the visit, and read her journal entry below to hear her thoughts on the experience.
Margaret Becker Blog - Africa Vision Trip Thoughts from the Field
11.15.07
Malawi - Day 1
No power, no phones. We’ve got to leave here in about an hour for a full day of visiting and shooting, and there is no power. Tried to call down to the front desk. No phones.
Reminds me of Timbuktu.
You can’t see my photographs, because, I left my camera behind. My task this visit is to remember pictures I can manage to paint verbally. There’ll be fewer of them, and perhaps, their content will be unique to me, my perspective; never the less, here they are.
Brick, the color of rich red clay. The clay of the Adirondacks. The clay of Indian Paint Pots. Brick uniformly misshapen. Like hand-cut logs, similar but not nearly exact. It is the wall I am staring at in this tiny home, built by Dustin.
Although it’s very dark, and I am one of eight people who line the wall in ramrod straight wooden chairs, I am impressed.
Dustin baked the brick and built the house. It’s a fact I consider as I watch his father tolerate the questions and conversations going on around him. They are not in a language that he does not understand, although he offers no evidence of discomfort. He is proud, and tells us through a translator about his hopes for his sons and daughters. He is proud of Dustin, and all his children. He is for them. He encourages them to become all that they can become, “even his girls,” he says. Because he says, “His father did not. His father was not a father to him.”
The statement has a sting, but no guile. I think we all understand that there is much more to the story, but now is not the time. It is about Dustin today.
Dustin is in his early 20’s, and he is still sponsored by a generous forward thinking sponsor. Dustin started sponsorship when he was thirteen, he explains in perfect English. His sponsorship “inspired me,” he recounts, “to become more-to be inspired.” We laugh.
His brick house is sturdy, the tin roof enchanting, crackling from the heat. His story continues on in a lilting voice as we admire his attention to detail. His story has rich detail as well because as he explains it, it all starts with sponsorship. Through his sponsorship, Dustin tells how he aced his primary school exams because of small things like, “soap,” and: school fees,” and “shoes,”—all sponsorship amenities. Soap and shoes led him to a scholarship to “accounting school.”
“What so you want to do when you graduate?” we ask.
Without pause, he looks at each of us, wide-grinned with the answer; “Work for the organization that made all this possible-you see I would not have the clay and the pit to bake the brick, to build this house—if we did not get a goat and some fowl. And I would not have the goat and fowl if we did not have clean water—and no clean water without the tools to dig it with . . .” and the list goes on. He gestures to everything he has, including his accounting possibilities and he says, “ . . .none without World Vision. I want to work for World Vision here!”
As I stare at his sun-baked father, I see the brick. I see the cleanly wiped mortar and I see the sponsor who continues to pitch in for books and clothes. I look at Dustin, and I see the journey of many; all converging in his promising eyes.
Read more of Margaret's blog and listen to her music at www.maggieb.com.
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|  | 1-888-511-6548 : P.O. Box 9716
Federal Way, WA 98063-9716 Who Is World Vision?
We are a Christian relief and develop- ment organization dedicated to helping children and their communities worldwide reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty.
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