How Viva started
With collaborative effort, more children are safe, thriving and learning, living life in all its fullness.
It was a Monday in 1992, and 18-year-old Patrick McDonald was volunteering in Bolivia. That evening, he was in a park in the city of Santa Cruz, where he came across four different church groups feeding children, many of whom lived on the city’s streets. He was so impressed to see churches caring for children in this way.
However, when he returned to the same park on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the other days that week, he realised that no one was there feeding the city’s street-living children. They were getting four meals on a Monday, then nothing for the remainder of the week!
Patrick gathered the churches together and encouraged them to coordinate their efforts, each choosing a different night to run their feeding programme. Within weeks, more churches joined.
This simple solution is the idea that inspired Viva. As networks of churches and organisations were established in cities around the world, networks of donors in Denmark, the UK, the USA and Hong Kong followed, providing the funding required to make even more impact.