Perhaps you know someone who scrambled to get their infant’s name on the waiting list for the good schools. There are pre-kindergarten and pre-school programs for children as young as three! And even beyond that, much of our parenting techniques center around development benchmarks. Our children are inoculated with Baby Einstein and Sesame Street.

Imagine what faces parents in the developing world: you care for your child, but every day is a struggle. Shortly after giving birth, you must to go back to work simply to eat. The stark reality is that given a lack of clean water, sanitation, and nutrition, almost 9 million children die each year before their 5th birthday.

But let’s say you are the child. You reach your 5th birthday. And your government decides that it will provide schooling to all children for the first three years. Until this point, you never really thought of going to school. No one in your village had. But now -- now it is available and you will go.

Your first few days are so overwhelming. You are expected to sit quietly and pay attention even though there are four other bodies sharing your bench. The teacher goes so fast. You have no idea what he’s talking about. Numbers, letters. You get the impression that you should know them, but you don’t.

You grow tired of sitting still for so long each day. Soon you are in trouble for leaving your seat. The older kids snicker. You’re embarrassed.

You’re told you must learn your letters and numbers. All five-year-olds know their letters and numbers, the teacher says. You feel ashamed. You don't know how to write, and you can't bring the pencil and paper home to practice. You fall more and more behind.

You don’t like wearing the shoes that are required by the school, so you walk barefoot to school, intending to put your shoes on when you arrive. The teacher won’t let you inside with dusty feet. You begin to use the end of your shirt to brush things off and he is offended. He sends you home because your feet and now your uniform are dirty.

Every day the message grows stronger: you don’t belong here. You decide to not go anymore. Maybe you’ll try next year. But that feeling of falling behind never leaves you, and the next year it grows even worse. You are bigger than the other kids. You stick out. Your education is over before it began.

Such is the experience of many children in Mission of Mercy’s programs. Even if a child is capable of catching up quickly, the opportunity may be cut short when the government sets a cap on the number of grades it will provide. Or it runs out of funds all together.

Either way, despite government decree, fees will be instituted for the most random things, usually to help pay the teacher. And if you want to attend beyond the government-provided grades, the school fees begin to multiply in earnest.

To lessen the number of challenges a child faces in pursuing an education, Mission of Mercy offers academic support in many ways. In some countries, we have formal schools that teach the government-prescribed curriculum. In others, we (as a nongovernmental organization) are not allowed to teach and instead offer tutoring and support. And whenever possible, we help parents pay the school fees and find uniforms so even the small details don’t derail a child’s chance.

The children in our programs could find discouragement at every turn were it not for the positive reinforcement, assistance and praise available at our programs. And in your letters – those simple words, the reminders that you believe in them, that you pray for them – that is their strength they need to defy the odds.