Viva network – All Souls Church

We are now supporting the Viva Network, a global Christian charity that works with children at risk, to ensure their safety and give them opportunities such as education to help provide a better future for them. Viva works in 14 different countries supporting thousands of projects through partner organisations working with children at risk in 22 different city-wide networks including Harare in Zimbabwe and San Jose in Costa Rica.

‘The heart of Viva’s vision is to see children at risk kept safe and healthy, given opportunities to learn and empowered to play an active part in shaping their own futures. The
vision is simple, enabling organisations to work better together through combining their skills, ideas and resources.’

Viva is involved in:

• Education – working to ensure that every child has the opportunity of an education, hopefully to secondary level
• Safety – projects to ensure that children won’t be hurt or exploited and to prevent them from ending up on the streets
• Advocacy – campaigning for a world in which children are treated fairly, valued and respected and can play a part in shaping the world in which they will grow up
• Health – working to eliminate sickness and hunger amongst children

We have a great opportunity to hear more about the Viva Network from Patrick McDonald when he comes to speak at All Souls on Sunday 24th June, 10.30am.

Patrick McDonald founded Viva in 1996 after his experiences of working with street children in Bolivia. Patrick stepped down as Viva’s CEO earlier this year, although he is still an ambassador for Viva as its Founder President. As well as being Senior Partner and Founder of a new social innovation enterprise, Oxford Ventures, Patrick is also a Senior Associate with Billy Graham’s Lausanne Movement and has an MBA from the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. Originally from Denmark, Patrick is married with four sons and he and his family live in Oxford.