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A silent call from a distant land Crying for a helping hand, so How long will it go on? Ignorance and vanity Supercede humanity, so How long will it go on? Another child is laid to rest. Another day of hopelessness, so How long will it go on? And every day we're on the fence. Another fatal consequence, so How long will it go on?

These words from award-winning singer/songwriter/activist Michael W. Smith paint a vivid picture of where his heart is today: ending global poverty and disease and bringing hope to children everywhere. From Smith's work with the youth club he founded, "Rocketown," in his home of Nashville, Tennessee, to his work as a spokesperson for Compassion International and more recently, his ties with DATA (co-founded by Bono of hit rock group U2), Smith says that his life is no longer driven by success, but by giving back all he can.

"I have really come to a place in my life where it doesn't matter to me if I ever win another award or not; I know clearly that my calling is all about giving, whether it be money, time, or talent," Smith said. "Part of our Christian call is not to just worship God vertically, but to take care of the orphans, widows, and homeless all around us." This is a call Smith takes very seriously. He has even been credited with in%uFB02uencing the current President Bush's signing of a $15 billion initiative to help Africa in eliminating poverty and disease, most speci%uFB01cally AIDS.

Smith recently brought his "Healing Rain" tour to Tyler, Texas, a music project inspired by his passion for Africa and his work as a spokesperson for Compassion. Compassion is an advocate for children, releasing them from spiritual, economic, social, and physical poverty and enabling them to become responsible, ful%uFB01lled Christian adults. His concert drew a large audience from a broad spectrum of ages-from teens who are discovering him for the %uFB01rst time with Healing Rain to parents who grew up 20 years ago listening to the younger Smith, who began his career in 1978 by playing keyboards for Amy Grant.

Smith quickly made his own mark, becoming one of the early trailblazers of the popular Christian music movement. "I never thought of myself as leading the way for others," says Smith. "I was just doing what I wanted to do, but it is great to see Christian music being taken more seriously now than in the 80s. We have raised the bar for excellence, and the world is paying attention." Smith leverages this attention to draw his admirers not to him, but to Christ. "I can exalt myself or point people to Christ-and pointing them to Christ is what I choose to do," says Smith. Just a few days after the 1999 Columbine shootings, Smith performed at the memorial service in Littleton, Colorado, an event that would change the course of his life forever. "I came home from that event a changed man," says Smith. "I knew the rest of my life would be spent trying to make a difference, and this tragedy is actually how Rocketown came about."

Rocketown is Smith's vision-a nonalcoholic youth club in Nashville that provides nonthreatening fellowship and entertainment for kids. Hugely successful as a concert venue,indoor skate park, and coffee bar, the true goal is for club staff to get to know the kids one-on-one in order to positively in%uFB02uence them and ultimately share Christ with them. "Thousands of kids come through Rocketown each week," says Smith. "And we have seen many kids turn from really destructive pasts to come to know Christ.

"I'm doing what I'm doing for the right reasons more so today," he says. I have a heart for the lost, and I have a heart for impacting culture. It's a real call of God. There's more of an urgency-it's too late to mess around."

Rocketown

Compassion International

The Second Chance Movie

Americans support charity more than ever before. But a recent hearing of the Senate Finance Committee reveals that the nonprofit sector has been growing so fast that charity abuses are out of control. It's a serious problem. However, are restrictive new laws the answer?

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Review courtesy of Penguin Group (USA)

"At the age of fifty, Mother Antonia left her comfortable world in suburban Los Angeles to dedicate her life to caring for the poorest of the poor - the inmates in one of Mexico's most notorious jails. Carrying little more than a Spanish dictionary and a toothbrush, she moved into a cell to live among prisoners who ranged from petty thieves to some of the most powerful drug lords in Mexican history. Twenty-eight years later she still lives in that Tijuana cell, and the unstoppable force of her good works has become legendary. Mother Teresa met with her, Pope John Paul II blessed her, presidents in the United States and Mexico have lauded her work, and she has now founded a religious community, the Servants of the Eleventh Hour, designed to give older women - many of them widowed or divorced - a way to bring new meaning to their lives." "Mother Antonia was born Mary Clarke and raised in a wealthy Beverly Hills family surrounded by the glamorous stars of 1930s Hollywood. A beautiful blonde with star power herself, she was offered a job by the famous choreographer Busby Berkeley. But Mary's dream was to be a happy wife and mother. She first married in her teens and raised seven children, but her two marriages both eventually ended in divorce. In the mid-1950s, she began devoting more and more of her time to charity work, finding herself energized by helping the poor. One day, on a trip across the Mexican border, she visited La Mesa prison in Tijuana and experienced an intense feeling that she had found her true life's work. As she recalls, "I felt like I had come home."" Determined to devote herself from then on to a life of service, and undeterred by church rules banning older or divorced women from joining religious orders, she donned a nun's habit that she sewed herself and became Mother Antonia. Church officials soon blessed her unorthodox mission. From her new home in a small, cold cell she has profoundly affected the lives of thousands of people.

This article appears courtesy of The Bernstein Journal, Spring 2005.

Foundations can make sense for charitable giving, but with the investment environment looking less favorable, success will require strict management.

Bernstein Website

Bernstein Journal Spring 2005 pdf

This article appears courtesy of the Union Tribune

Jacob, an African boy, looks into the camera and lets go with great, chest-heaving sobs. He cries until both he and the viewer hurt. Then he cries some more.

Surely at some point the camera will look away. But it never does.

When night falls, Jacob runs and hides with thousands of other youngsters in basements and back alleys of towns in Northern Uganda. They flee a rebel army composed largely of children like them who were beaten and brainwashed into fighting in a pointless, 18-year civil war the world has largely ignored.

Jacob cries for his brother who was slaughtered by the rebels. The boy expresses his grief in plain English. He hopes, Jacob says, to rejoin his brother someday in heaven.

It is one of many gripping scenes from "Invisible Children," a documentary whose plaintive appeal is surprising effective.

The core truth of this deceptively crude film, its harsh beauty, flows from the blissful innocence, unyielding idealism and self-acknowledged naivete of its makers.

They are three white kids who grew up safe and comfortable in San Diego's suburbs. They firmly believe their documentary, still a work in progress, could be powerful enough to change the world.

"The children of Northern Uganda are being killed and brutalized, and the fascinating thing to us is that no one is telling this story," said Jason Russell, the guiding force behind "Invisible Children."

"This tragedy gets no international attention at all. We are going to change that."

Between now and March, Russell and fellow filmmakers Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole are out to raise awareness and money at screenings locally and across the country to support a return trip to Uganda.

They've formed a nonprofit organization, set up a Web site (www.invisiblechildren.com) and hope to raise $700,000 and take 20 young filmmakers back with them to expand their movie, which they plan to be ready for release in theaters by 2006.

Jason Russell, 26, graduated from El Cajon's Valhalla High and the film school at the University of Southern California. Russell, whose parents Sheryl and Paul Russell founded the Christian Youth Theater, said he was transformed during a church-group trip to Kenya in 2000.

"My American bubble popped," he explained. "I suddenly realized we are the privileged percentage of the world. And I knew I had to go back to Africa, because there are so many important, untold stories there."

When he got out of film school in 2002, Russell said, he asked every one of his friends to accompany him to Africa, to capture on film the suffering there and expose it to the world.

Two of them bit: Bailey, 22, a Poway High grad and fellow film student at USC; and Poole, 21, who went to Helix High and now attends UCSD.

They bought a camera on eBay, did some research, got their shots and headed for Africa in March 2003, on the day the United States invaded Iraq. They had no sponsorship, few contacts and no plan other than to find a story and film it.

Using savings, money scraped up from a few friends and their parents' credit cards, they wandered from Sudan to Kenya at first. They got sick (scabies and malaria) and became exhausted in 130-degree heat. Russell admits they had no idea what they were doing.

"For the boys, it was like, 'OK, we're here, we want to start filming