By James E. Copple John F. Kennedy and the new frontier defined my view of politics and why we should be concerned for the poor. I was 14 when Kennedy was assassinated and completely drawn by media coverage of his funeral. Watching endless commentary about his life and listening to his recorded speeches, I was […]

By James E. Copple Efforts to combat the Ebola virus are in full-throttle, with the regrettable but predictable picking-up-the-pieces in a crisis that is preventable but difficult to sell until worst-case scenarios lead the news. The CDC projects nearly 1.4 million people could contract the disease by the first of the year. Ebola, which is […]

A child shouldn’t have to sacrifice her body, safety and boundaries for tuition By James E. Copple Kariobangi North Girls Secondary School is an oasis in the midst of one of Nairobi’s worst slums, but the cost of an education, hope and a future can be criminal. We spent the morning at the Kariobangi North, and the […]

From the clandestine violence of child-trafficking, hers is a voice of anguish, hope By James E. Copple In the small town of Lafilya, Abebech and her family struggled to survive the worst drought in memory. Theirs is an impoverished community of nearly a thousand people in southern Ethiopia, where social advancement is impossible, and a […]

By James E. Copple   Where are the men? Gender-violence and human-trafficking are issues caused mostly by men but challenged mostly by women. There is a conspicuous silence and lack of interest on the part of Muslim men, government leaders (mostly men) and by men in general. Recent attention to the kidnapping of 276 Nigerian […]

By James E. Copple Human-trafficking lives in the shadows of our global urban centers.  “Shadows.” That’s her word, and she is a 15-year-old Eritrean girl sold by her parents and trafficked via container-truck to Nairobi, where she lives in a small shack. And hers isn’t an uncommon story in East Africa, where famine and drought […]

by James E. Copple That first sermon, I will never forget it. Less than four months after I found myself kneeling at an alter and accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior, I was now preaching.  My conversion was radical. I mean, I went from a hell-raising 15 year-old to a Bible carrying evangelist overnight. […]

There is a poverty in Swaziland that is difficult to describe and it is a poverty unlike I have seen anywhere else in Africa.  It is largely rural, pastoral and dots the countryside of a thousand hills.  Today, I was with The Luke Commission, a mobile hospital – some would call  it a clinic – […]

In a DC neighborhood, I talked with a family facing homelessness because their benefits and assets had just run out. More recently, I visited a Tribal Community in Oklahoma, and a slum community in Nairobi, Kenya.