This video from Compassion gives a little of the background for the Global Food Crisis.
If you care enough to want to see change and to save the lives of those who are suffering the most, please consider joining me on the FAST for FOOD throughout November.
Please read my previous post Every 7 Seconds … for more information.
How desperate are you to see an end to poverty? We have the means to do it but do we have the will?
In April this year I saw the frustration of extreme poverty boiling over into violence. I was in Haiti, the least-developed country in the Americas where 80% of the population is estimated to be living in poverty. Haiti now ranks 146th of 177 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index (2006).
I was there with other Australian radio broadcasters to see the work of Compassion Australia. We had planned to be in the country for around a week to visit a number of projects but just a day after we arrived riots took hold in Port-au-Prince our hosts felt it would be safer for us to leave as soon as we could.
Our team managed to get out of Haiti under some extremely trying circumstances. It was very difficult getting to the airport and at times we were in very real danger. We had to dodge barricades of burning car tyres and rioting mobs. We were finally led to some armed police who escorted us to the airport.
When our plane finally left the ground I was filled with a mix of emotions. As I looked out the window at the dozens of fires around the small nation’s capital I was relieved that for us the danger had passed but I couldn’t help think about the millions of people we left behind who couldn’t afford to put food on the table for their families. Many people were actually eating dirt to try and survive. I remembered looking into the faces of the children within Compassion projects and seeing a hope for the future and contrasting those faces with those outside those projects, like the children who ran past our vehicles with fear in their eyes as they fled the riots.
The riots were about the lack of food in Haiti and the incredible price rises which had put even basic food items out of reach for the majority of the population. The people of Haiti just wanted the government to take their plight seriously and to do something to save the lives of their families who were literally starving to death.
Faced with the enormity of the situation the Haitian people took extreme action. Back home we complain that the world financial crisis makes it tougher to buy the stuff we feel we deserve. In countries like Haiti all they want is for those of us who really have more than enough, financial crisis or not, and have the capacity to make a difference, to realise that we still have the power to make an enormous dent in the problem of poverty.
Since my visit things have become even harder for the people of Haiti with recent storms destroying life and property.
If you feel that poverty is too big to tackle can I encourage you to sponsor a child in Haiti or another developing country? I’ve seen the difference it can make. You may only be able to make a difference for just one child but imagine if it were your own child. Wouldn’t you want someone to make the difference for just that one?
If you’d like to hear a radio report I compiled for Compassion Day after returning from Haiti just click the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post. The audio begins with the delightful voices of dozens of Haitian children from the one Compassion project we were able to visit before our trip was cut short.
[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/COM150508_1107.mp3]
I don’t think I could imagine life without pets.
I grew up surrounded by cats and we always had a dog at our place. We have a cat at the moment and my son, James, has a couple of mice.
Pets are wonderful. We hear about studies from time to time that tell us how much healthier we can be if we keep pets. They’re great for company and can increase our general sense of wellbeing. I even heard of a recent study that said kids who grow up with a dog in the house are more resistant to a number of illnesses. I really do get the whole pet thing.
On the other hand, I get concerned about the importance some people place on their pets.
Seeing the poverty that people are facing in Haiti and Dominican Republic makes coming home pretty tough. It’s hard to see the amount of money that some people spend on animals here when people not so far from us can’t afford to put food on the table for their families.
So how do we think rightly about our furry and feathered friends?
Pets are wonderful but in the end they are just pets. They are not equal to children and talking about them as such devalues human life.
Charles Colson has written an interesting article for Christianity Today titled Keeping Pets in Their Place. In the article he reminds us that it was William Wilberforce, the man who fought so hard to abolish slavery, who founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824. It is absolutely right that we treat all God’s creatures with respect (even the tasty ones) but Colson is concerned with the push to remove the distinction between animals and humans.
Christianity teaches that humans are unique in all of creation: we are conscious of our existence, aware of death, capable of works of great creativity, and the only part of creation that bears the image of God. Humans alone have eternal souls, which confers unique moral status.
Many animal-rights activists dismiss any distinctions between humans and animals as “speciesism,” which Princeton professor Peter Singer defines as “a prejudice” that favors “the interests of members of one’s own species … against those of members of other species.” If the material world is all there is, if humans are nothing more than the product of evolutionary forces, then they are essentially no different from pigs, dogs—or rats, as Ingrid Newkirk of PETA once famously said. Humans are merely the latest stage in evolutionary development.
Whether you look at it from a faith perspective or from a purely secular point of view, surely we need to maintain some kind of perspective. Animals are animals and while they are important to us and valuable in so many ways, they are not humans.
I was sent a survey this week from LinkMe which says that Australians put animals above people living with HIV/AIDS.
76% of Australians would offer their hand for voluntary work yet far more people would consider lending their time to help animals rather than people living with HIV/AIDS, according to the results of a survey conducted by leading career building and networking company LinkMe.com.au.
The survey of 1568 Australians revealed that whilst 13.8% of people believe people living with HIV/AIDS are in need of support, 40% of people are receptive to the plight of animals.
People recognise children as those most in need of additional services (46.6%) with sick and homeless people lagging at 23.5% and 26.1% respectively marginally ahead of people living with HIV/AIDS.
List of voluntary support for various groups:
Children (46.6%)
Animals (40%)
The elderly (36.9%)
Poor people (27%)
Disabled people (26.6%)
Homeless people (26.1%)
Sick people (23.5%)
People living with HIV/AIDS (13.8%)
Don’t you think that there’s something wrong with our priorities when we value the lives of animals above humans? At least children seem to rate higher than dogs.
So what do you think? Do we place too much emphasis on our pets? Is it morally right to lavish so much attention on our pets while the people of Haiti are literally eating dirt?
I think the song Angel by Everything But The Girl puts it well in talking about a young girl begging in the street.
And if she were a kitten
Someone would take her home
But we’ve no pity for our own kind
Our hearts are stone
Our eyes are blind
I know that pets are only one of the excesses of our society and that there are many other things we could and should sacrifice to allow us to better care for people both overseas and at home. It’s not easy to gain the right perspective on so many things when we aren’t faced with the reality of poverty every day.
Maybe we need to force ourselves to face the reality of life for people in developing countries and the poor in our own backyards, not to make ourselves feel guilty, but in order to equip ourselves to take some small but life saving steps towards serving those in need.
What does it really mean when we talk about breaking the poverty cycle?
It’s the kind of phrase that we often use when we’re talking about helping those in the developing world but do we really understand what it means in practical terms?
Look at the man in the photo in this post. That’s what it means to break the cycle.
When we talk about the cycle we’re talking about those living in poverty having children who live in poverty with their poor lifestyle being handed down from generation to generation. When someone has little money they’re unable to create a foundation for their children to build a better life. Unless someone is prepared to step in, desperate poverty will be handed down through each generation.
The guy in the picture above came from a poor background and was sponsored through Compassion.
Something exciting has happened through the sponsorship of this young man. He is now the accountant for one of the Compassion projects we visited in Dominican Republic. He’s no longer relying on the support of others, he’s working and earning money for his family.
Now here’s the exciting bit … his son isn’t part of a Compassion project. He doesn’t need to be. Thanks to the generous support of this man’s sponsor, the cycle has been broken. Not only is he able to take on meaningful, paid employment, his son doesn’t have to rely on sponsorship to give him a hand up and he won’t have to pass down a life of poverty to his children.
As I saw time and time again during my trip to Haiti and Dominican Republic, sponsoring just one child does far more than touch just one life. Sponsoring just one child may effect generations of his or her family. What an amazing oppoprtunity we have to break the poverty cycle.