Why A Night of Hope is My Perfect Halloween

By Oli Lewington, Social Media Communities Manager, World Vision UK

I have to be honest; I've never liked Halloween.

As a child it was probably too scary (I was a massive scardy-cat when I was a kid) and as a teenager I had better things to do, like sitting in my room playing video games and not talking to anyone.

As an adult it just never really appealed to me – it seemed like yet another overly-commercialised festival of nothingness.

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that it wasn't until my early 20's that I really understood what All Hallow's Eve is, but even then it made me wonder how on earth All Hallows Eve got so corrupted that it ended up having a day before it dedicated to people dressing up in scary costumes and asking around the houses for sweets.

Mind you, there are quite a few random British traditions that look somewhat peculiar if try to explain what actually happens.

A night with a difference

Earlier this year at World Vision we started internal meetings to talk about plans for the next 6-12 months and what we were going to do. When the idea of doing "Halloween with a difference" was put forward it immediately made me sit up.

As things developed, I dropped out of the planning process and left it to those far more adept at such things and was eventually introduced to the concept of A Night of Hope. I reacted, I think, in the same way many of you have, judging by the comments on our Facebook posts – I loved it!

There's something so positive and liberating about seeing the traditional emblems of Halloween turned into something so completely different. That twist on the familiar helps to really bring the message home.

As Lesley Waters puts it, it's turning a symbol of fear into a lantern of hope.

A wider context

The thing I most love about working for World Vision is that everything we do here always sits within a wider context – there is always a story behind it.

When my colleagues returned from a filming trip some months ago, they were bursting to tell Sylvia's story to us all.

We deal with subjects like early marriage constantly at World Vision as we work to enable children to live free from fear, but it can be hard to understand them until until you see the stories through the eyes of the children who have experienced them.

In the footage the team gathered, you could see the story not only through Sylvia's eyes, but in them.

Sylvia was on the verge of being sent into marriage by her brothers, against her will, aged just 15. Thanks to World Vision, her brothers were helped to understand how vital it was not to force Sylvia into this marriage and how they could help her to prosper and live life in all its fullness. What's more, it promised a better future for her younger sister.

Finding hope

Appropriately, Sylvia's little sister is called Hope. Hope is what we strive to give to children across the world, but it's also what drives us in everything that we do: the hope that one day we will see every child free from the fear of early marriage. Every child free from fear of things that no child should have to face but that far too many are, today, all over the world.

I'm joining A Night of Hope, carving my pumpkin, putting my lantern in the window, because I want to send the message to my friends and neighbours that there are children across the globe who live in fear every single night of the year, not just for one night in October.

I want to show these children that despite their circumstances, despite the horrors of the world, despite the atrocities happening around them, despite the hardships they experience, there are people in the world who want to give them – and can give them, and are giving them – hope.

Will you join me?