In many parts of the world, being a child remains a difficult task. Being born in a mission territory often means growing up without guaranteed access to education, basic healthcare, or an environment that protects life and dignity. Faced with this reality, the Church has sustained for over a century and a half a discreet, constant, and profoundly evangelical initiative: Missionary Childhood Day, which the Church in Spain will celebrate next Sunday, January 18.

This Pontifical Society, entrusted directly by the Pope, has a clear mission: to support the work that missionaries carry out with young children in mission territories. It is the Holy Father himself who each year expressly asks for the support of the entire Church so that this work may continue, reminding us that children are “the first missionaries” when they learn to share faith and life with other children.

Thanks to the funds raised during this event, more than 2,600 projects in education, health, evangelization, and life protection are sustained, benefiting over four million children worldwide. Behind these figures are schools that remain open, clinics that can continue providing care, soup kitchens that don’t close, and communities that don’t feel forgotten.

But Missionary Childhood has a unique characteristic among the Church’s charitable initiatives: it is not directed solely at adults. Its heart is the children themselves. They are not merely recipients of aid but active participants. From a young age, they are encouraged to look beyond their immediate surroundings, to discover that other children need their support, and to understand that they too can be missionaries.

With this goal in mind, throughout the year, diocesan gatherings, camps, catechism classes, drawing contests, festivals, and activities in schools and parishes are organized. These simple initiatives, adapted to their language and age, aim to awaken an early missionary awareness and a sensitivity towards the most vulnerable. This pedagogy teaches something essential: faith is not lived only inwardly but is always translated into service.

As part of this event, the testimony of adventurer Telmo Aldaz de la Quadra-Salcedo was recently shared. He visited one of the projects supported by the Missionary Childhood Association: a center for people with disabilities in Dakhla, in the Sahara. It is a place where vulnerability is not hidden and where every life is cared for with respect, even in contexts of great hardship. These concrete testimonies put a face to aid that, otherwise, might be lost in the numbers.

Missionary Childhood Day, celebrated this Sunday, January 18, reminds the entire Church—as the Pope emphasizes—that solidarity is not an abstract idea or a fleeting emotion, but a sustained commitment. It also calls upon families, parishes, and educational communities to accompany children in this discovery of others, helping them understand that sharing is not losing, but multiplying.

In a world accustomed to measuring value by efficiency or utility, Missionary Childhood proposes a different logic: that of small gestures that change lives. Coins saved with hope, prayers offered with simplicity, drawings sent as a message of closeness. This Sunday, millions of children need help. And millions more can offer it.