“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” - by Stephanie Rhodes

After roughly a year spent in Israel/Palestine, I’m getting really sick of talking about peace. Sick of the word even. It sounds pretty awful, I know.

But the thing is, nothing seems to change. I’m still saddened by news reports, but it’s difficult to feel shocked by them. People are killed, houses demolished, settlements constructed, guns carried, and on and on and on. And I’ve yet to hear any real answers.

There are lots of projects, some of which I’ve been involved in, that seek to effect small changes, usually in the attitudes of the next generation. It’s a noble idea and maybe even the most practical one. But is it enough? Is anything, really?

From my perspective, everyone is wrong. All of the systems are not only broken but obsolete. It’s hard to know how to make anything better, and fixing it seems so far beyond a pipe dream.

Most people simply try to live their lives. Some are admirable activists for peace. And the ones with the big guns take the chemotherapy approach: wipe out the good with the bad and hope that there’s something left to save.

Stephanie Rhodes divides her time between Alabama and Jerusalem, where she directs Palestinian aid projects.

"Opportunity" -- by Dr. Christiana Russ

We've just finished celebrating the Fourth of July – a day in which we celebrate our independence and our freedom here in the United States. Freedom is often painted in a military way – freedom of speech, freedom of religion. As I watch attempts to protest in other countries on TV, of peaceful gatherings that get violently broken up be it in Tibet or in Zimbabwe, I can remember and appreciate our freedom to speak out against what we view as wrong, even against our own government. Reading about women in some Muslim countries who are abused for inadequately covering their heads or faces again prompts me to thank God that as a woman living in the United States, I can go outside on a hot day in shorts and a t-shirt. Today is a day to relish and give thanks for our substantial freedoms.

Amartya Sen, a brilliant economist and winner of the Nobel prize, wrote a book called ‘Development as Freedom.’ He talks about development of individual freedom as a social commitment, and expansion of freedom as ‘the primary end and principle means of development.’ By freedom he not only refers to political freedoms and economic facilities, but also to social opportunities (health care, education), transparency and protective security. He argues that as these freedoms expand, people’s economic opportunities expand and communities develop further.

So when I think about freedom this time of year, the person I think of and pray for is a man named Silus. Silus lives in Maseno in western Kenya. If you’ve read my blogs before you will know that I worked at Maseno Hospital, an Anglican mission hospital, for several months last year as a pediatrician. Silus worked at Maseno Hospital as a clinical officer – having had a few years of medical training after high school. To say he was clinically good is an understatement. I have been in many African hospitals where despondency reigns, and in my experience Silus was a bright light against despondency at Maseno Hospital. He would go the extra mile for his patients, cared about not just their medical problems but social problems as well, and worked incredibly hard to provide them with the best medical care he could muster in a place with limited resources.

So I was absolutely delighted to find out several months ago that Silus was accepted to medical school in Kampala to start this fall. However Silus does not have the same economic freedom that I once had as an aspiring medical student. He doesn’t have parents who can help him financially. He doesn’t live in a country with low interest rate, easily obtained student loans (for good discussion on the ability to take out loans as a right and freedom read Muhammed Yunus’s book, Banker to the Poor).

Silus needs $2600 per year for tuition and hopes to raise an additional $1400 per year for living expenses for the next 5 ½ years of school. I have spoken with a few individuals and groups about raising this money and haven’t found it easy. There is no guarantee that Silus will return to help out in Maseno Hospital upon his graduation, and we have little infrastructure for such a long term investment. Thus people focusing on Maseno are understandably reluctant to divert money to an individual.

And yet incredibly good things can come of having one more well trained, clinically astute and socially responsive physician in Africa, which is in desperate need of more such people.

So today I pray for Silus, that through friends and organizations he will be able to raise the money to obtain the freedom of furthering his education as a doctor. I pray he will use that freedom well to improve the health care and opportunities of the patients he works with. I pray that those few drops of freedom expand opportunities and increase development as Amartya Sen describes, to touch more and more lives.

Dr. Christiana Russ is a pediatrician doing her residency at Boston Children's Hospital and splitting her time at an Anglican mission hospital in Kenya through a joint arrangement with Children's and the Diocese of Massachusetts. She is also chair of the Executive Council Standing Commission on HIV/AIDS.

If you want to learn more about how you can help Silus, you can contact Christiana at cmruss(at)gmail.com.

"US farm bill "too little, too late" for developing world" -

NEW YORK , 1 July 2008 (IRIN) - New ground was broken in US attempts to break the link between foreign food aid and supporting its own farmers in a new farm bill, but for many, including the Bush-led administration, it was too little, too late.

(See IRIN in-depth on global food crisis:)

For the first time, the legislation freed some of the money to be used in cash for food purchases locally or regionally in recipient countries instead of in-kind produce shipped from the US, the world's largest food aid donor.

The farm bill governs food aid and is updated every five years.

But the amount - US$60 million over four years - was a fraction of the $300 million President George Bush had sought for one fiscal year and will be spent on a pilot programme.

Congress's decision was rued by Bush, who noted that the farm bill, "restricts our ability to redirect food aid dollars for emergency use at a time of great need globally . The bill does not include the requested authority to buy food in the developing world to save lives."

The bill authorises $1.2 billion for food aid. As this often amounts to $2 billion or more in the appropriations phase and Bush asked for 25 percent for cash payments, this could have reached $500 million.

The issue - and the lack of bolder Congressional action - goes to the very heart of the food price crisis and reforms that the UN, governments and NGOs say are needed to avoid plunging up to 130 million more people around the world into hunger, in addition to 850 million already suffering.

In the short term, local purchasing provides much more food for aid since it frees up money used on expensive freight and reduces delivery delays that can reach four months. In the longer term it could help stimulate agricultural production in the developing world as part of a global solution to the crisis.

Almost all food aid donated by the US is tied to domestic requirements for procurement, processing and shipping.

Mixed reactions

"We are happy to see at least a new precedent for some funding for local purchase. They never got anything in the past," David Kauck, senior policy analyst at CARE, told IRIN.

However, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, said: "I deplore the fact that the US have not learned the lessons from the past distortive impacts on local markets in recipient countries of food aid distributed in kind, especially in a context where, due to the increase in the prices of oil, the transport of food by US ships will significantly raise the costs of providing aid and thus the net benefits for the end beneficiaries."

Oxfam policy director Gawain Kripke agreed: "The farm bill itself doesn't demonstrate a lot of leadership or vision about how agriculture should operate and it's pretty much a validation of the status quo."

And International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) research fellow Marc Cohen said the US was still using approaches that were 50 years old. "Not only the European Union but also Canada and Australia have moved towards providing more of their food aid locally and
regionally," he told IRIN. "The US is lagging behind even though it's the leading source of food aid."

Costs of transporting food

The US Government Accounting Office (GAO), the Congressional investigative agency that examines the use of public funds and evaluates federal programmes, estimated last year that transportation costs totalled 65 percent of overall aid, with only 35 percent going
to actual food.

Since then, skyrocketing commodity prices that translate into fewer tonnes and higher transportation costs due to soaring oil prices, have further upset even the previous adverse ratio.

NGO officials are loath to put a figure on lives potentially saved or additional people helped if the money spent on transportation went to food instead, but one analyst said it could roughly double the number of beneficiaries based on the assumption that 70-80 million people now receive US food aid annually.

A supplemental appropriations bill for another $1.2 billion for the fiscal years 2008 and 2009 is winding its way through Congress, but that too would be subject to the in-kind strictures of the farm bill unless otherwise directed by the legislators. At present it would provide some $50 million more for cash purchases.

Subsidies

The huge subsidies for US agriculture are seen as putting farmers in poor and developing countries at a great disadvantage.

"When commodity prices are at record highs, it is irresponsible to increase government subsidy rates for 15 crops, subsidise additional crops, and provide payments that further distort markets," Bush said in his veto message.

Kauck of CARE said African farmers had to compete with American and European farmers on very disadvantageous terms but stressed that if subsidies were to be dramatically reduced or eliminated, agricultural prices would go up.

"This would provide development opportunities for farmers and traders in many places, so it could provide a stimulus for development in many developing countries, but it would at the same time put poor people who are net purchasers of food and food deficit countries at an even greater disadvantage," he told IRIN. "So it would essentially contribute to the kind of price rise that you are seeing now."

Challenges

In a report in April 2007, the GAO noted that multiple challenges hindered the efficiency of US food aid programmes by reducing the amount, timeliness, and quality of food provided.

"Specific factors that cause inefficiencies include (1) funding and planning processes that increase delivery costs and lengthen time frames; (2) ocean transportation and contracting practices that create high levels of risk for ocean carriers, resulting in increased rates; (3) legal requirements that result in awarding of food aid contracts to more expensive service providers; and (4) inadequate coordination between US agencies and food aid stakeholders to track and respond to
food and delivery problems."

Indeed, Concern Worldwide chief executive Tom Arnold told IRIN: "[The farm bill] is not going to help the situation on food aid nor will it help to make any deal in the World Trade Organization talks more likely. Overall, from a development viewpoint, it would have to be seen as a setback."

"Choosing the Good: Praying for the G8" -- by the Micah Challenge

Today's post is from the Micah Challenge, a global Christian campaign to achieve the MDGs. Part of their mission is a weekly prayer emailing like the one you see below. You can receive it in your email box every week send a blank email to regine.nagel@micahchallenge.org with the words 'subscribe prayer' in the subject line.

Reflection

“ ‘Desire for strength in order to do good’ has led many leaders into becoming a strongman. All dictators begin with the noble impulse to enlist power on the side of the good.”

Based on the JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Dr Melba Maggay from the Philippines reflects on the seductive nature of power as symbolized by the Ring.

‘To choose weakness, to refuse the tempting power of the Ring and be on the side of an apparently losing good, takes a great deal of courage.’

Jesus showed us how to do it. We read in Matthew 4: 1-11 of Jesus resisting Satan’s temptation in the wilderness and Jesus’ triumph to save the world by accepting the cross.

Again drawing on the ‘Lord of the Rings’: ‘This is the sort of heroism that garden variety hobbits like Sam are shown to be capable of. Faint and weary from the travails of what looks like an impossible journey, Sam realizes how early on, he and Frodo have had many opportunities of turning back, and comes to understand that heroism consists of making repeatedly and freely the choice of good.

Today, there are those of us who are being asked to make repeatedly and freely the choice of good.’

Prayer

Let us pray:

• That we can be courageous enough to ‘repeatedly and freely make a choice for the good’ – against all odds.
• Next week 7-9 July, the most powerful political leaders of the world will meet in Japan for this year’s G8 summit. Besides the G8 nations, several other countries were invited to join the discussions.
  
  In the past, many promises that were made were not kept.
  
  Please pray:
  
• That this year's discussions will not only lead to good plans but committed actions!
• For the establishment of a system of monitoring the progress of delivering commitments that reports into each future G8 summit.

At the meeting in Japan, the following topics are likely to be discussed: aid, climate change, food crisis, African development including gender, health, HIV/AIDS and water and sanitation.

Please pray:

Aid: that the G8 countries will commit to the Gleneagles pledges from 2005. This includes increasing Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) levels by an extra $50 billion by 2010, with $25 billion of this for Africa. Each G8 nation also should provide a detailed timetable for their budget increases to achieve this in the next two years.

Climate Change: It is critical that global leaders continue commitment to the binding emissions cuts and green technology agreed in the UN Climate talks.

Pray for a commitment to emissions cuts of 25-40 per cent by developed countries by 2020 and a peak and decline in emissions in 10-15 years.

Food crisis: The G8 must respond to the growing food crisis with decisive and effective measures.

Pray for immediate emergency action to ensure there is the necessary mobilisation of funding to prevent the immediate starvation of millions of people. This aid must come in the form of grants and not loans that will only deepen the debt burdens these countries carry already.

Pray that the G8 will double their efforts to meet and exceed the Millennium Development Goals to ensue the food crisis does not lead to a deterioration in the limited progress towards meeting the MDGs.

Africa and development: The G8 should take leadership to further widen an African development agenda.

Women are disproportionately impacted by poverty, please pray that the G8 will take concrete steps in the provision of adequate and long-term financial resources for the implementation of key gender equality frameworks.

HIV/AIDS: pray that G8 nations will help African countries to design and implement clear and long-term plans for assisting, expanding and strengthening public health systems to ensure the 2010 HIV/AIDS targets are met.

Public Health: pray that countries will deliver their share of promises made in 2007 which was to provide $60bn for further action on HIV/ AIDS, TB and malaria.

Water and Sanitation is the most off-track MDG sector which undermines wider development efforts. Please pray that the G8 will endorse a Global Water and Sanitation Action Plan recognizing the integral role of water and sanitation in the achievement of the MDGs.

For more information on policy asks of the G8 please see a comprehensive summary here.

---

Meditate on the Statistics

As you spend time in prayer and reflection, you may like to take a moment to silently understand with your heart the focus statistic we include each week (see below). Our hope is that you will find this series of statistics a useful resource in preparing presentations.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation

‘A billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people (40 percent of the world population) do not have access to basic sanitation. Meeting the water and sanitation targets will require doubling the current annual investment to about $30 billion.’

Source: Global Monitoring Report 2008; IMF and World Bank, 2008

"Millennium Congregation -- What One Person Can Do" -- by Reynolds Whalen

Let me tell you about a new non-profit called Millennium Congregation. I’ll start with a quote…

“If you want to eradicate poverty and promote justice, compassion and reconciliation, then I invite and encourage you and your congregation to join Millennium Congregation's exciting initiative in support of Millennium Villages."

+ Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu

Most of us know the statistics by now surrounding the horrors of extreme poverty. We live in a world where a child dies every three seconds from a preventable illness, where half a million women die every year in childbirth, and where 110 million children do not even have the opportunity to learn how to read the books that tell them about the 1.2 billion people worldwide living on less than $1.00 a day. For people of faith who believe in global justice and enacting God’s love through our very own lives, these numbers should excite and invigorate us.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Certainly, these figures can be daunting and depressing. But they also represent an incredible opportunity. The entire premise of drafting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was this: for the first time in human existence, we have the ability to eradicate extreme global poverty.

It’s time to stop wallowing in the figures, using their enormity as an excuse for inaction. We must stop focusing on the statistics when educating our congregations about the MDGs and start focusing on the amazing things we can do to change them. This is what people like Dr. Josh Ruxin and the Rev. Jay Lawlor are doing.

For the past couple of years, Josh has been living in Rwanda and implementing the Millennium Villages Project (MV). In an era where “development” and “aid” have become a fad and far too many programs serve their own interests before the communities they seek to improve, MV is a shining beacon of light. This is one of the few development projects using a comprehensive approach by addressing all eight MDGs at once, and at the level of an entire village. Rather than building a house for one family or installing a water pump for one neighborhood and creating dependence on those who installed it, MV equips entire villages with a self-sustaining system of productive growth. To read more about their incredible work and success, go here. This is one of the most amazing and effective development projects in the world, but it is not cheap.

Here is where you and I come in.

Several months ago, the Rev. Jay Lawlor launched an initiative to support MV called Millennium Congregation (MC). This non-profit operates on the principle that extreme global poverty is an issue on which all faiths can unite and have a significant impact. By pledging as little as $50 a month, your congregation can join other communities of faith in changing the course of human history.

Soon, I will be traveling to Rwanda to film, interview, and document Millennium Village’s story, putting stories and faces on the incredible people Millennium Congregation seeks to support. We also hope to establish more internet communication, including blogs and international video web-chat. Most importantly, MC plans to offer members of congregations the chance of traveling to the villages themselves. All of these initiatives will provide you and your congregation with the personal connection you need to warrant a financial and personal commitment. Now, your 0.7% (or more!) can support a comprehensive and effective development program in which you can build relationships and see the direct impact of your contribution.

The time has come for us as people of faith, and as caring human beings, to take the next step in eradicating extreme poverty by joining forces and doing something really big. Millennium Congregation simply provides the networks and the tools. It’s up to us to pick them up and use them.

Reynolds Whalen is a 2008 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and has traveled extensively in Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan. He spent fall semester 2006 in Kenya working with AIDS orphans -- read his blog on it here and has made a documentary film on that experience. He is currently raising funds to spend 2008-9 working in Rwanda for Millennium Congregation helping people in the villages of Rwanda tell their stories. You can give toward Reynolds work in Rwanda with Millennium Congregation here (be sure and put Millennium Congregation - Reynolds Whalen in the designation field)

"Everyone, Everywhere" -- by Gordon Brewer

On the back of my office door there is a collection of tote bags that I have gathered from the various conferences I have attended over the last few years. I am not sure how the tradition got started, but it seems to be a pretty good idea. Inevitably, I come away from conferences loaded down with all kinds of “stuff”. Most of it is seemingly useful stuff, like pens, pencils, luggage tags, tape measures, and notepads. Other stuff is maybe not quite as useful, but more on the “fun” side of things like stress-balls, balloons, and foam hats. When I look at the totes hanging on the back of my door, I wonder what I really took away from those conferences besides all the pens, refrigerator magnets and stress-balls…

On the weekend of June 6th there were about 300 Episcopalians and Anglicans from all over the world that gathered at a conference in Baltimore, MD. And despite all the anxiety about the “issues” in the Episcopal Church, not once did any of that come up; thanks be to God! This conference was different… “Everyone, Everywhere” was the first of its kind in which 300 people came together to pray, think, hear and discuss the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s). You know all that stuff we are really called to do… The “stuff” I came away with could not begin to fill any sort of tote bag. The “stuff” was a sense of purpose and calling that was shared by the people in the conference. There was a resolve that echoed through out the conference that the Millennium Development Goals are not just something we MIGHT do, but something we MUST do.

The MDG’s are pretty basic goals:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development.

At first these goals sound pretty overwhelming. When you realize that all it would take is 0.7% of the world’s wealth to accomplish these goals by the year 2015, it sounds a little more doable. It can not be done alone. It will take a lot of collaboration by the people of the world to accomplish this. But, the paradox of it all is this: it has to start with each of us individually, by recognizing how one can contribute a minimum 0.7% of what we are each privileged to have here in our part of the world.

I came away from this conference with a lot of thoughts and ideas to process. First of all, with all the poverty that we still continue to see here locally, why even focus on global issues? I guess the main reason is that it is something we are called to do by virtue of what it truly means to follow Christ. But to put it in more concrete terms, now more than ever, with the increasing global economy, the rest of the world is truly more of our neighbor now than it has ever been. Other thoughts: we do have a lot of need in our own country and we need to continue to help those in need that are literally next door to us. However, even the poorest of our poor here in our country have a much larger safety net to help out (school lunch programs, federal/state aid, Medicare/Medicaid, food banks, etc.). True, the safety net is not perfect and we need to continue to help our local neighbors who are in need, which in reality is just as much part of the MDG’s as global reconciliation. Nonetheless, the level of poverty found outside the US in third world countries is exponentially much more severe and widespread than we find within our own borders. The first step in trying to tackle this momentous task of ending extreme poverty, illness and starvation in the world is to become aware. And once we are truly aware, we can be motivated to action through our prayer, use of our resources and the things we advocate for in our ability to vote.

In the end, I did come home with a few trinkets typical of most conferences. But the real stuff, the stuff that matters most, was the common resolve of the participants of the conference to keep spreading the good news of Christ throughout the world through our actions. The main point of it all: “The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” (Matt. 25:40)

If you want to find out more about ways you can help visit these websites:

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation
ONE Episcopalian
Episcopal Relief and Development
The Millennium Campaign

Gordon Brewer is an EGR diocesan contact person for the Diocese of East Tennessee.

Two More Views on the Food Crisis

EGR diocesan contact (& blogger) Carl Hooker pointed us to these entries on the continuing food crisis and its effect on the poorest countries.

First, from Betsy Aviles on the ONE Blog.

In Ethiopia, only enough food for the "hungriest"

The food crisis has taken its harshest toll on the poorest countries, Ethiopia being one of the hardest hit.

From the Christian Science Monitor :

In this African nation, about 10 million people, more than 12 percent of the population, are now in need of emergency food aid after a drought wiped out harvests. But because grain is now twice as expensive as a year ago – if it is available at all – there is not enough food in Ethiopia to feed everyone in need.

The UN estimates that 4.6 million Ethiopians are suffering from “severe malnutrition,”, but the lack of food is so severe that foreign and domestic aid-workers need to “prioritize” who is the most needy. Some have take to weighing children on wooden scales and providing food rations to the most malnourished.

UNICEF has made an appeal for $49 million to go towards “immediate intervention” in Ethiopia. UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson emphasized the severity of the situation:

“We talked to mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers and all actors in the field. This picture was confirmed by all of them and a clear message was conveyed: there is no food. The assistance needs to be taken to scale and it has to happen urgently.”

Next, from yesterday's New York Times

Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher
By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN

BANGKOK — At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at affordable prices.

When it comes to rice, India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports. Fifteen countries, including Pakistan and Bolivia, have capped or halted wheat exports. More than a dozen have limited corn exports. Kazakhstan has restricted exports of sunflower seeds.

The restrictions are making it harder for impoverished importing countries to afford the food they need. The export limits are forcing some of the most vulnerable people, those who rely on relief agencies, to go hungry.

“It’s obvious that these export restrictions fuel the fire of price increases,” said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization.

And by increasing perceptions of shortages, the restrictions have led to hoarding around the world, by farmers, traders and consumers.

“People are in a panic, so they are buying more and more — at least, those who have money are buying,” said Conching Vasquez, a 56-year-old rice vendor who sat one recent morning among piles of rice at her large stall in Los Baños, in the Philippines, the world’s largest rice importer. Her customers buy 8,000 pounds of rice a day, up from 5,500 pounds a year ago.

The new restrictions are just an acute symptom of a chronic condition. Since 1980, even as trade in services and in manufactured goods has tripled, adjusting for inflation, trade in food has barely increased. Instead, for decades, food has been a convoluted tangle of restrictive rules, in the form of tariffs, quotas and subsidies.

Now, with Australia’s farm sector crippled by drought and Argentina suffering a series of strikes and other disruptions, the world is increasingly dependent on a handful of countries like Thailand, Brazil, Canada and the United States that are still exporting large quantities of food.

Read the entire piece here.