In Quebec more that 80% of people claim to be Christian. I recently mentioned that of these, 42% said that religion was important for them and only 7% regularly attended worship. Add to these facts that the government is in the process of removing religious instruction from elementary schools and you have a situation where young children have very few opportunities to learn about God.

I often hear people say that religious instruction is the parents’ responsibility. This may have been true at one time but today things have changed. People don’t go to church and religion isn’t taught in school. How, therefore, can parents who have no training in religion teach their children about religion?

It’s with these ideas in mind that the “Coco and his Friends” program was born. With this program we have an opportunity to teach the children of our community about God. Of course we won’t convert these kids now but this is not the immediate goal of the program. The Coco project aims at helping children, who would otherwise have no religious instruction, come to know and draw near to God. As Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them.” Mt. 19:14.

We have to teach the children of our community about God because without this knowledge they will never believe in Him.

“But how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them?” Rom. 10:14

This essentially is why we have Coco.