It’s hard to imagine in our 21st-century world that innocent children could be suffering from the horrendous abuse of modern-day forms of slavery, but it’s true and their pain is very real. 

One of the greatest risk factors for abuse and neglect in children is poverty. In the Philippines, approximately 4.8 million children live in acute poverty, meaning they often worry about where their next meal will come from. Devastatingly, more than 1 in 10 children are engaged in child labor and an estimated 60,000-100,000 children in the Philippines are trafficked into prostitution. 

These forms of physical and sexual abuse are horrendous circumstances for any child of any age to endure. To make matters worse, sometimes these children are trafficked by their own family members. Because they cannot provide for them, they are tricked into or turn to these forms of abuse out of desperation.  

The Sunflower Center Offers Hope and Healing

At MercyWorks, our mission is to bring dignity to the world’s most marginalized children by meeting their basic educational, psychological, spiritual, and physical needs. MercyWorks supports The Sunflower Center in the Philippines, a professional ministry of counselors and social workers who have made it their mission to end child sexual and physical abuse. 

The Sunflower Center works to accomplish this goal on three fronts: through the clinic, the halfway home, and in partnership with other governmental agencies and nonprofits. 

Our clinic is staffed with professional counselors who offer psychotherapy to survivors of abuse. Children of all ages, as well as young adults, come to our clinic seeking healing from past trauma. Because of your generosity and the generosity of our donors, we are able to provide services for everyone who walks through our doors, regardless of their ability to pay for counseling sessions. 

Our halfway home offers shelter to abused and neglected boys who are homeless and living on the streets. Many of these boys have been abandoned by their families who cannot afford to feed, clothe, house, or educate them. At the Sunflower Center halfway home, these boys find a place of unconditional love and belonging, both necessities if they are to work toward healing and wholeness. 

Our partnership alongside governmental agencies and nonprofits works to restore children to their families and offers healing from the wounds of abuse that keep them from thriving. Together, our organizations offer education and support services to families to help prevent abuse from occurring in the first place and help survivors of abuse reintegrate into normal family life. 

Help Us Sponsor 100 Children 

Right now, we are on a mission to save 100 children from sexual and physical trauma — and we need your support. In order to offer high quality, professional counseling services to these children, we need to pay the salaries of professional psychotherapists. Many parents cannot afford the cost of a counseling session, but we never turn anyone away because they cannot pay. 

This is where you come in. By supplementing the cost of the therapy sessions, you can offer live-giving healing and hope to these children. 

$13.75 covers the cost of one professional psychotherapist session at the Sunflower Center. Children who are survivors of abuse and neglect typically need eight to ten sessions to start the process of healing and begin to thrive again. 

Here’s How You Can Help

In order to offer our essential services at the Sunflower Center and help bring healing to the Philippines, we need your help in one of the following ways: prayer, advocacy, and financial support. 

Above all, please pray for us. Please pray for the children we minister to, for their healing and reintegration into loving families. Please pray for our therapists, missionaries, and staff that they would be the hands, arms, and voice of Jesus Christ — the Divine Healer.

We invite you to share our work at the Sunflower Center with your friends, family, and on social media. The more people who know about the important work occurring at the Sunflower Center, the faster we can bring healing to the children who need it most. 

Finally, we invite you to prayerfully consider joining us in our mission through your financial support. When you donate to the Sunflower Center 100% of every dollar you give goes directly to our projects — that is our promise. Here are some of our greatest needs and suggestions for how you can support our work through your donation:

• $13.75 — Sponsor 1 session of psychotherapy
• $20.00 — Sponsor 1 day of care at the halfway home
• $55.00 — Sponsor a child’s psychotherapy sessions for 1 month
• $110.00 — Sponsor all of a child’s psychotherapy sessions on their road to healing

Sponsor a Child's Healing Today

Everyday, child survivors of physical and sexual abuse and neglect are experiencing healing and hope, but this can only continue through your support. We invite you to join us in our mission to save 100 children from sexual and physical trauma. Thank you in advance for your support and may God bless you! 

Change the life of a child in need by sponsoring their counseling and therapeutic healing. Join the mission today!