Featured Ministry Africa Youth Ministries is an international Christian NGO that uses, among other things, sports evangelism and medical missions in its outreaches.  More Current Articles in Christ & Culture: • Juvenile (In)Justice by various authors • Good News Is Contagious by Kristyn Komarnicki • Sleazonomics: A review of Steven E. Landsburgs MORE SEX IS SAFER SEX by Bruce Wydick • The DNA of Hope  by Kristyn Komarnicki

Daily routines can become just that—routine. It can be difficult to find purpose in tasks such as showering and driving to work, but prayer can transform mundane tasks into something memorable. Here is a handy way to use our daily activities as reminders to pray for children living in poverty.

"And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. …The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

— James 5:15-16

1. Bath Time: Think Clean Water

Nearly 1.1 billion people are without access to clean water—that's more than the combined populations of North America and the European Union. Without access to clean drinking water, children are at a much higher risk for life-threatening diseases like diarrhea, intestinal worms, and cholera.

2. Off to Work: Think Child Labor

The U.S. national minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. Many children worldwide earn less than $1 a day, if they are even paid at all. Around 176 million children work in ways that are likely to harm their health, safety, or moral development—such as bonded labor, slavery, or sexual exploitation.

3. Lunch Time: Think Hungry Kids

McDonald's serves nearly 50 million people worldwide each day. Three times that number of children go hungry everyday, leaving them undernourished, vulnerable to disease, and prone to stunted growth.

4. News Break: Think Education

There are twice as many children worldwide—117 million—who do not receive a primary level education as Americans who receive a newspaper each day. Without education, these children are condemned to carry out menial jobs and will struggle to provide for themselves and their families.

5. Heading Home: Think Displaced Children

The number of displaced people in the world has steadily decreased over the last five years, but there are still an estimated 9.25 million children who have been forced by violence or disaster to leave their homes—that's 2.5 times more children than there are homeless people in the United States.

6. Take a Vitamin: Think Medical Access

Every year, 15 times more children die of readily preventable diseases than Americans who are killed by heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Many children lack access to health care for diarrhea, malaria, and measles simply because they are poor.

7. Bed Time: Think Orphans

There is more than twice the number of orphans in the world than children under age 15 in America. Africa is the only area of the world where the orphan prevalence rate is increasing, largely due to the AIDS pandemic.

This originally appeared in the winter 2006 issue of World Vision magazine. It is reproduced here by kind permission of World Vision magazine.