The Book

Although there are many books on children at risk, they are highly theoretical and are inaccessible to the average layperson. With the trend toward short-term missions and the growing number of children at risk (due to AIDS and rising refugee numbers) more and more non-professionals are working with hurting children. Even brief encounters, such as a two-week short term missions trip, can make a wonderful difference for a child in crisis. The value of Creating Hope for Children in Crisis is that it lays out specific things a non-professional can do to facilitate healing without overstepping that role, which can have negative consequences.

For the past three years, Cherilyn Orr has been working on the book Creating Hope for Children in Crisis: A Practical Manual. It is written for the layperson with the intention of giving practical ideas of how to help a child at risk. Using the framework of resilience to discuss specific actions, the reader is educated about how they can impact a child's life, build a child's resilience and give children hope for their future.

Creating Hope for Children in Crisis had its birth in Athens, Greece, where Cherilyn spent several years heading up the ministry for refugee children. She and her husband, Mark, were working with refugees at the local and international level. While in Athens, she saw many well-intentioned people who came to work with the children have limited effectiveness, simply because they lacked knowledge and training. This book is a compilation of basic information on working with children in crisis (i.e., inner city kids, street kids, refugee kids and orphans) and examples of programs/activities that Cherilyn has run in Africa, North America and in Europe.

The book starts with a brief overview of understanding children at risk, then using the language of resilience, activities (i.e. crafts and games) are described and discussed for their use with hurting children. The manual includes a five lesson Bible curriculum with special emphasis on how to tell a child at risk about God's love. This is followed by 200 pages on different programs for children in crisis and their families including camps, plans for special occasions, informal education materials, a parenting course, and discipline policy guidelines.

For more information, see the Table of Contents.

The first part of Chapter 2 is available here for preview.