For those of us who live in the developed world, the gnawing uncertainty perpetuated by the continuing worldwide financial melt down is simply that, uncertainty.
Ultimately, the crisis may call for a rethinking of our lifestyle, currently defined by our fixation with profiteering and our appetite for consuming far more than we truly need – a condition that brings the moral poverty of our affluence into sharp relief.
For those of us who live in the developing world, the uncertainty created by the melt down is far more sinister because it is, in a very real way and often deadly way, certainty.
If, for example, your family was malnourished and chronically hungry before the melt down, they are now certain of starving. If your opportunities, modest though they may be, were limited before the melt down, they are now all but nonexistent.
For your family, uncertain times guarantee, with absolute certainty, that you can count on life getting significantly worse – if indeed this is actually possible given your current proximity to suffering and loss.
While we in the developed world ponder just how far we’ll have to cut back on our discretionary spending in order to maintain some semblance of the lifestyle to which we’re become accustomed, the choices being made in the developing world are far more difficult and profound.
For example, in a run-down hut in one of the poorest places on earth, a widowed mother, at her wits end, contemplates becoming a prostitute in order to earn the meager amount of money she needs to buy food for her children. Things have gotten so untenable that she is willing to trade her body for the well-being and security of her children. She is, in fact, choosing to die a little bit each night so that her children can live a little bit each day.
So, while we cut back in an attempt to deal with and ameliorate the uncertainty that keeps us up at night, the poorest of the poor slide even further into obscurity and remain, as they so often do, the collateral damage of our lifestyle.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Philippines: ‘Don’t Worry Because I Will Study Well’
In Mindanao, a part of the Philippines where up to 40% of the population is living on $317 dollars a year - yet a kilo of rice still costs about $0.70 - serious poverty is the norm.
Here, as in the rest of the optimistically labelled ‘developing’ world, poor families frequently cite education as their greatest dream, the element that could change everything for the generations to come. Yet, if you’ve got to find out how to keep 5-8 people from starving when a kilo of rice costs 70% of your daily income, school fees are not in the cards.
Finding creative ways for the poorest children in the world to attend school is something HOPE International Development Agency devotes itself to. If our mandate is to see families make a permanent break with poverty, then investment into education is an obvious stratagem.
A number of Canadians are currently helping young Filipino students at the primary, secondary, and university levels to fulfill the dreams of their families. It is an incredible arrangement. The letters we read from these young scholars always reconfirm our basic intentions. These are children who work hard, and will enrich their families and communities with the advantages an education affords them. One theme is constant in the letters: I will make good on your investment into me. One fourteen-year old girl writes:
‘Before anything else I would like to greet you a pleasant day. Thank you for the support that you give, I can now able to proceed my study. Sometimes I can absent in school because sometimes we lack of food in our home. My parents work hard for my study; don’t worry because I will study well for you and for my family.’
Because we know how serious and frequent the reality of ‘lack of food’ is for girls like her, the energy she pours into her studies commands our respect and support all the more.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Hunger: World’s #1 Killer Finally Earns Title of ‘Crisis’
Even in a time of economic decline, the threat of simply not having enough to eat is a remote one for the great majority of westerners. So it comes as a surprise to many North Americans that hunger and malnutrition are the number one risk to health worldwide, greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
This problem has worsened in poor countries to such an extent that the media is finally using the kind of language that is accorded to ‘real’ issues, those worthy of global attention - namely, the label of ‘crisis’. Google ‘Food Crisis’ and you will get tens of thousands of hits, all referencing the same phenomenon: namely, many more people are starving today than they were before.
The following are statistics on world hunger from the World Food Program and the Office of the U.N. Secretary-General:
- In 2008, the number of undernourished people in the world rose to 963 million (more than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union), up 40 million from 2007.
- Hunger does not affect just the individual. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development is stunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5 percent to 10 percent in lifetime earnings.
- The total food surplus of the United States alone could satisfy every empty stomach in Africa; France's leftovers could feed the hungry in Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished.
- Today 25,000 people will die from hunger. A child dies every six seconds of malnutrition or starvation.
- There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.
HOPE International Development Agency has invested into the ability of the most-poor to feed themselves for over thirty years. If hunger is not something you have experienced, count yourself blessed - and then act to bless somebody who has.
This problem has worsened in poor countries to such an extent that the media is finally using the kind of language that is accorded to ‘real’ issues, those worthy of global attention - namely, the label of ‘crisis’. Google ‘Food Crisis’ and you will get tens of thousands of hits, all referencing the same phenomenon: namely, many more people are starving today than they were before.
The following are statistics on world hunger from the World Food Program and the Office of the U.N. Secretary-General:
- In 2008, the number of undernourished people in the world rose to 963 million (more than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union), up 40 million from 2007.
- Hunger does not affect just the individual. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development is stunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5 percent to 10 percent in lifetime earnings.
- The total food surplus of the United States alone could satisfy every empty stomach in Africa; France's leftovers could feed the hungry in Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished.
- Today 25,000 people will die from hunger. A child dies every six seconds of malnutrition or starvation.
- There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.
HOPE International Development Agency has invested into the ability of the most-poor to feed themselves for over thirty years. If hunger is not something you have experienced, count yourself blessed - and then act to bless somebody who has.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Sri Lanka: In Peace or War, People Make Progress
It looks as though the interminable conflict between Sri Lanka’s government forces and the insurgent Tamil Tigers may be coming to a head. In recent weeks, the army has vanquished the Tigers in a series of engagements that have substantially shrunk the territory under the control of the latter.
Political history aside, any development that secures an end to the fighting that has claimed more than 70,000 lives in Sri Lanka is to be welcomed. It is safe to say that both sides have seriously abused the civilian population caught in their decades-long crossfire.
HOPE International Development Agency has worked in Sri Lanka steadily for decades, prior to 2004’s horrific tsunami and throughout these vacillations of war and peace. While at one level, Sri Lanka is a troubling national character, a bastion of bad news and gloomy outcomes, there is another Sri Lanka in which ordinary people live and work, and in this place, there is always reason to hope. No matter how chaotic their national condition seems to be, the poor continue to make the best of difficult situations whenever they are given the opportunity.
For example, stories like Gnanasiri Lokugallappatthi’s are not preempted by civil war. Before the tsumani destroyed the village market, 56 year-old Gnanasiri had the extremely strenuous and low-paying occupation of carrying bags of consumer goods on his head and shoulders to local vendors.
One year ago, HOPE loaned a little less than $100 to Gnanasiri to start his own business. He rented a stall at the rebuilt Devinuwara Public Market Complex and began selling rice. Before long, he earned a good name and reputation as a rice dealer. Nowadays, he makes a little over $100 profit each month, and has just about paid off his loan.
As with most families, the crown of success is education. Gnanasiri’s son is graduating from high school, and his daughter is being trained as a nurse. In very little time, this family has emerged from a situation of drudgery and tenuous survival, to one of prosperity and new choices.
Ordinary Sri Lankans keep striving to make their children’s lives happier and freer. Their efforts are fruitful regardless of what developments happen to be grabbing headlines. Let us just hope that many, many more stories like this can proceed unimpeded in a climate of greater peace.
Political history aside, any development that secures an end to the fighting that has claimed more than 70,000 lives in Sri Lanka is to be welcomed. It is safe to say that both sides have seriously abused the civilian population caught in their decades-long crossfire.
HOPE International Development Agency has worked in Sri Lanka steadily for decades, prior to 2004’s horrific tsunami and throughout these vacillations of war and peace. While at one level, Sri Lanka is a troubling national character, a bastion of bad news and gloomy outcomes, there is another Sri Lanka in which ordinary people live and work, and in this place, there is always reason to hope. No matter how chaotic their national condition seems to be, the poor continue to make the best of difficult situations whenever they are given the opportunity.
For example, stories like Gnanasiri Lokugallappatthi’s are not preempted by civil war. Before the tsumani destroyed the village market, 56 year-old Gnanasiri had the extremely strenuous and low-paying occupation of carrying bags of consumer goods on his head and shoulders to local vendors.
One year ago, HOPE loaned a little less than $100 to Gnanasiri to start his own business. He rented a stall at the rebuilt Devinuwara Public Market Complex and began selling rice. Before long, he earned a good name and reputation as a rice dealer. Nowadays, he makes a little over $100 profit each month, and has just about paid off his loan.
As with most families, the crown of success is education. Gnanasiri’s son is graduating from high school, and his daughter is being trained as a nurse. In very little time, this family has emerged from a situation of drudgery and tenuous survival, to one of prosperity and new choices.
Ordinary Sri Lankans keep striving to make their children’s lives happier and freer. Their efforts are fruitful regardless of what developments happen to be grabbing headlines. Let us just hope that many, many more stories like this can proceed unimpeded in a climate of greater peace.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Democratic Republic of Congo: ‘Our Hospital Is Back!’
Last week, a large donation of medical supplies that HOPE International Development Agency procured for people in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrived after an arduous journey over land, sea, and (most obstructive of all) national boundaries. This process of delivering critical supplies to deserving communities illustrated two things. First, it demonstrated just how intense the challenges are for Congolese men and women working for the good of their people. Secondly, it evidenced just how severe the need for this work is.
A list of the bureaucratic hurdles that must be overcome in order to get live-saving supplies to villages in dire need does not make for entertaining prose. Suffice it to say, it is long, complex, and occasionally quite discouraging. But the outcome, once these hurdles are cleared, is pure joy.
HOPE’s representative Mossai Sanguma was present when the shipment arrived in the city of Karawa. He said that it was an amazing moment – people lined the streets as the cargo arrived. The whole city was energized. Many were exclaiming, “Our hospital is back!”
Their excitement was a reflection of their lack. For about a year there have been little or no medical resources available to medical staff in the hospitals and clinics of the northwestern Congo. In these conditions, people do not bother taking the time to visit their doctor. The care they might receive is not worth the walk. A medical system that might be serving people is rendered totally ineffectual—hospitals become little more than buildings. This donation is seen and felt as a bit of a revival, a blood transfusion for a weak and depleted system.
Some of the supplies will be used in the hospital at Karawa, where there is adequate storage and a pharmacy. Karawa is also a processing point, as the bulk of the HOPE donation is intended to be distributed to four health zones through out the northwestern district – to Loko, Watsolo, Dumba, and Bukada, and the approximate 100 rural clinics located in these zones.
The donation, in the end, filled two forty foot containers. This is a large gift, but in the grand scheme of things, it is touchingly finite, truly small-scale. The DRC, after all, has a population of 65 million. But even this humble modicum of assistance is linked to serious obstacles—and a spirit of gratitude that is even more sobering.
A list of the bureaucratic hurdles that must be overcome in order to get live-saving supplies to villages in dire need does not make for entertaining prose. Suffice it to say, it is long, complex, and occasionally quite discouraging. But the outcome, once these hurdles are cleared, is pure joy.
HOPE’s representative Mossai Sanguma was present when the shipment arrived in the city of Karawa. He said that it was an amazing moment – people lined the streets as the cargo arrived. The whole city was energized. Many were exclaiming, “Our hospital is back!”
Their excitement was a reflection of their lack. For about a year there have been little or no medical resources available to medical staff in the hospitals and clinics of the northwestern Congo. In these conditions, people do not bother taking the time to visit their doctor. The care they might receive is not worth the walk. A medical system that might be serving people is rendered totally ineffectual—hospitals become little more than buildings. This donation is seen and felt as a bit of a revival, a blood transfusion for a weak and depleted system.
Some of the supplies will be used in the hospital at Karawa, where there is adequate storage and a pharmacy. Karawa is also a processing point, as the bulk of the HOPE donation is intended to be distributed to four health zones through out the northwestern district – to Loko, Watsolo, Dumba, and Bukada, and the approximate 100 rural clinics located in these zones.
The donation, in the end, filled two forty foot containers. This is a large gift, but in the grand scheme of things, it is touchingly finite, truly small-scale. The DRC, after all, has a population of 65 million. But even this humble modicum of assistance is linked to serious obstacles—and a spirit of gratitude that is even more sobering.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Bangladesh: Nasty, Brutish, and Short - But Still a Child’s Life
Given the way homelessness affects people in North America, it’s difficult to imagine what the experience of street children in developing world countries could be like. In a place like Dhaka, Bangladesh, Hobbes’s vision of life as nasty, brutish, and short is still accurate.
These are pictures of children being sheltered, educated, doctored, and fed in a HOPE International Development Agency-supported center in the city. They are being taught reading, writing, and specific skills that will earn them a stable income and allow them to become self-reliant adults. As evidenced by the photographs, they are shockingly young. Despite this, the biggest challenge that Bengali HOPE workers encountered was in convincing the children to attend the center at all. They had, in their short lives, only encountered exploitation and abuse at the hands of any number of adults. The pimps, politicians, drug dealers have already reached these children before they come to HOPE.
Fortunately, the children have been making measurable gains since the programme was launched in December 2007. In this short time period, 60% of the formerly illiterate children have become capable of reading and 50% have learned basic accounting skills. All of the children are healthier. Many had never used toothpaste before coming to the center, and now all of them are regularly seeing dentists and doctors.
When asked, the children say that the greatest thing about the help they have been given is the opportunity to play games. In the recreation room and in the yard outside, they feel totally at home, safe and happy and at rest. A board game in a clean, warm room is a little bit of heaven on earth, a paradise they never thought would open up to them. Children are still children—even when they’ve seen things we wouldn’t want to imagine.
These are pictures of children being sheltered, educated, doctored, and fed in a HOPE International Development Agency-supported center in the city. They are being taught reading, writing, and specific skills that will earn them a stable income and allow them to become self-reliant adults. As evidenced by the photographs, they are shockingly young. Despite this, the biggest challenge that Bengali HOPE workers encountered was in convincing the children to attend the center at all. They had, in their short lives, only encountered exploitation and abuse at the hands of any number of adults. The pimps, politicians, drug dealers have already reached these children before they come to HOPE.
Fortunately, the children have been making measurable gains since the programme was launched in December 2007. In this short time period, 60% of the formerly illiterate children have become capable of reading and 50% have learned basic accounting skills. All of the children are healthier. Many had never used toothpaste before coming to the center, and now all of them are regularly seeing dentists and doctors.
When asked, the children say that the greatest thing about the help they have been given is the opportunity to play games. In the recreation room and in the yard outside, they feel totally at home, safe and happy and at rest. A board game in a clean, warm room is a little bit of heaven on earth, a paradise they never thought would open up to them. Children are still children—even when they’ve seen things we wouldn’t want to imagine.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Myanmar: bridging past and future with HOPE
2008 was a challenging year for Westerners and the global poor alike. The rich have seen their stocks crash, and people in places like Myanmar have seen their homes, families, and entire environments wiped away by disaster. However, each New Year brings a promise of renewal, and we have recently been told many stories that validate that promise.
A HOPE International Development Agency worker in Myanmar shares this photograph and story:
This bridge was jointly built by the Christian and Buddhist communities which live on the respective sides of the stream at Kathabaung Village. The previous bridge was destroyed by the cyclone and they have been using a somewhat narrow single log since the cyclone. The bridge is both a symbolic and very practical way of keeping their community connected, in spite of their identity differences. With HOPE International Development Agency’s help, they decided to build a memorial bridge with substantial concrete posts so that it would be more resilient than the previous bridge. They dedicated it with a community-wide ceremony upon completion.
Let’s do as these Myanmarese villagers are doing and pour our energy and resources into building bridges. From one year to another, from setbacks to progress, from despair to hope.
Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 25, 2008
A very special Christmas wish from Afghanistan
Christmas Day became even more meaningful today with the arrival of special Christmas wishes from the people of Jeloucha, a remote village in Northern Afghanistan.
The real spirit of the season shines through in their words of greeting and appreciation. Quite amazing actually, especially when you consider that the people of Jeloucha are in the midst of a severe food shortage just as winter arrives. Multiple crop failures have left families without food for the winter.
Greetings from Esmat, Qasim, and Asmat, Afghanis working with HOPE International Development Agency, and Habibullah, the Chief of Jeloucha, are a reminder of the real meaning behind giving, especially during the Christmas season.
Esmat, our Afghanistan Coordinator, sends along a very special “thank you” to HOPE donors who responded to our recent call for emergency assistance for people in Jeloucha who had run out of food. Esmat says that many more Afghani families are in urgent need of help as winter sets in. In fact, people are coming to his home and our small office almost every day in search of food. Hunger has already set in as evidenced by stories of entire families sharing a single piece of bread for their supper meal.
Prolonged drought has caused massive crop failures and without help, families will be separated this winter as fathers and sons leave their villages in search of whatever work they can find, wherever they can find it – a difficult and potentially dangerous choice in this region.
As Esmat has told us, many more families need our help this winter or they will surely starve as their meager food supply runs out. A special “end of year gift” of $50 will provide food supplies that will ensure that families stay together and survive until they can plant new crops in the spring.
The real spirit of the season shines through in their words of greeting and appreciation. Quite amazing actually, especially when you consider that the people of Jeloucha are in the midst of a severe food shortage just as winter arrives. Multiple crop failures have left families without food for the winter.
Greetings from Esmat, Qasim, and Asmat, Afghanis working with HOPE International Development Agency, and Habibullah, the Chief of Jeloucha, are a reminder of the real meaning behind giving, especially during the Christmas season.
Esmat, our Afghanistan Coordinator, sends along a very special “thank you” to HOPE donors who responded to our recent call for emergency assistance for people in Jeloucha who had run out of food. Esmat says that many more Afghani families are in urgent need of help as winter sets in. In fact, people are coming to his home and our small office almost every day in search of food. Hunger has already set in as evidenced by stories of entire families sharing a single piece of bread for their supper meal.
Prolonged drought has caused massive crop failures and without help, families will be separated this winter as fathers and sons leave their villages in search of whatever work they can find, wherever they can find it – a difficult and potentially dangerous choice in this region.
As Esmat has told us, many more families need our help this winter or they will surely starve as their meager food supply runs out. A special “end of year gift” of $50 will provide food supplies that will ensure that families stay together and survive until they can plant new crops in the spring.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas: when giving is celebrated
Merry Christmas to all those who seek to learn about, advocate for, and invest into the lives of the poor!
At this time of year, it’s typical to lament our level of consumer spending. But rather than attack the instinct to be generous, why not just redirect the impulse somewhat?
Our giving at Christmas is inspired by love, but oftentimes our purchases just do not do that love justice. Check out this amazing comparison of consumer spending versus the cost to end specific facets of global poverty.
Recently, the local New Westminster paper, The Royal City Record, spoke to HOPE International Development Agency's Executive Director, David S. McKenzie, about the gifts people can give to the poor at Christmas as an alternative or a supplement to the material gifts we lavish on family and friends.
Generosity should be celebrated, not critiqued. The fact that we have enough to give presents that bring pleasure to our loved ones and people around the world who are suffering is nothing to complain about!
Thank you, once again, to all who have chosen to give to the poor this Christmas and throughout this year. This is the time of year when your generosity truly shines.
Learn more about gifts that transform lives.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Swaziland: AIDS creates 70,000 orphans and countless heroines
Of all Sub-saharan African nations, Swaziland is being gutted by HIV/AIDS, with one in four Swazi adults currently infected. With this epidemic of AIDS has come an epidemic of orphans. 70,000 children have seen their parents die.
It is mind-boggling. Where do 70,000 children go to sleep, eat, be cared for? We don’t contemplate the logistics of such a tragedy clearly, much less the emotional fall-out, but there are nevertheless extraordinarily difficult basic, everyday matters to attend to in the wake of this death toll. But Swazi survivors, in particular the women, are coping with these issues with a dignity, courage, and practicality that is rarely reported in our discussions of the epidemic.
A few years ago, HOPE International Development Agency discovered a phenomenon in Swaziland that needed to be championed. Female care-givers were starting up their own centers for orphans in several villages in the Malkerns Valley. Called ‘Neighbourhood Care Points’, and cobbled together out of whatever materials were available in the village, these centers became a place for orphans to be fed, educated, and loved. The care-givers donated their time, working in shifts. Each woman contributed what she felt she best could, whether that was cooking a meal for fifty children, teaching a class, or giving affection and attention to traumatized boys and girls.
As with every initiative HOPE takes on, all of the human resources were there before any financing arrived on the scene. But critical material support was needed. We began to construct good, solid, appropriate buildings in place of the rickety shelters passing as Neighbourhood Care Points. The caregivers received the wherewithal to expand, grow vegetable gardens, teach organized classes with the proper equipment, and provide regular, wholesome meals for children under proper shelter.
The pictures (shown above) are of a group of caregivers and a classroom in Esibuyeni village, just one example of several HOPE Neighbourhood Care Points established in partnership with Swazi women. HOPE has plans to do construct more of these as donations come in from our donors. It is extremely important to support the real heroines in this crisis, which is not just a crisis for Swazi people, or Africans in general, but all people. Where there is real courage, we must not let it become discouragement.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
South Sudan: the work is underway
Those who've seen the film Long Road Home, made by HOPE International Development Agency’s volunteer film crew in late 2007, know that HOPE is helping Sudan’s refugee families to put back the broken pieces of the communities they’d once abandoned in wartime.
There are three expressions of basic need in Southern Sudan: enough to eat and drink, a way to be educated, and the means to become, and stay, physically healthy. To this end, HOPE is providing clean water, the means for sustainable agriculture, and well-equipped schools and clinics.
As with every other country where HOPE is at work, the people are there, the people are ready, the people will do their very best, but the ‘stuff’ is missing. Building materials, technology to find and access clean water sources, medicines for qualified and compassionate doctors: just ‘stuff’, really, but what can they do without it?
In the photo, Reverend Simon Peter Modi prepares to coordinate the distribution of essential medical supplies donated to HOPE. He received the shipment this past week. It is part of a dream coming true for Sudanese families who are returning home after years of the severest deprivation and displacement.
The picture might be unimpressive: it’s just a bunch of boxes, only a rusted container. But it’s this ‘stuff’ that will allow Sudanese people to slowly rebuild their nation. To people like Simon, this stuff means a lot more happiness for a lot more mothers, fathers, and children.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Myanmar Update: rebuilding and healing
Half a year later, Cyclone Nargis survivors in Myanmar are working hard to recover home, health, and occupation. The face of recovery has many different expressions. HOPE International Development Agency is at work with the people on initiatives ranging from road reconstruction to memorial services to honour the dead. The photo shown above was taken at one such service.
Two themes, physical work and communal healing, continue to permeate this rebuilding effort. A HOPE worker describing the clean-up process has said:
An organizing process takes place so that volunteers are matched up with community members from a set of villages near one another. These joint teams select leadership from among the community members and then they work together to clean up not only their own village, but those of their nearby neighbors, as well. In this way, we are trying to use the cyclone as an opportunity to help people reach across former boundaries to create a new sense of community and sharing where the old community and community relationships may no longer exist. HOPE has provided basic cleanup equipment and supplies to each of these teams, along with feeding all the team members during the cleanup process. HOPE has also helped to define the organizing and operating principles that the teams use and has provided counsel to local partners regarding the inevitable trauma experiences that this cleanup process will evoke. Our local partners have managed to gain the support of 1,431 volunteers and community members in these cleanup teams! As one foreign aid worker recently said, work on the Nargis aftermath reminds us of an anthill – thousands of local people are swarming to repair damage in many small and some not-so-small places and ways. The story of this disaster response and of its successes thus far includes actors from both inside and outside the country. But the heroes continue to be the local people who, time and time again, rally to overcome the insurmountable.
Survivors are working hard to put together the broken pieces of their material world, but the task of healing Myanmarese society is always pressing. Many are taking up this task with real heroism.
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