Philippines: Education for indigenous children

Poverty is often viewed solely within the present tense. The long-term consequences, however, can be equally troubling. This is particularly true when it comes to children who do not have the benefit of an education.

For Leila, a young mother and member of group of neglected and poor indigenous people in the Philippines, the long-term consequences of poverty have and continue to be devastating.

Leila believes the poverty she endures today is a direct result of being denied an education when she was a child. She worries that her children's experience will the same as hers... and for good reason!

About 75 percent of children not in school right now have mothers who did not have the opportunity to attend school.

In addition to helping families with their immediate needs, HOPE International Development Agency donors are addressing the long-term consequences of poverty by providing scholarships to indigenous children whose impoverished parents cannot afford an education for their children.

The one-year scholarships provide everything children need, including tuition fees, school books, and supplies. In addition, the scholarships also provide nutrition training, health education, and nutritional supplements for children. Enhanced skills training for rural teachers and additional resource materials for rural schools are also provided.

By providing these scholarships, HOPE donors are addressing both the immediate and long-term needs of indigenous Filipino families and the communities within which they live.

Leila's children will not inherit the poverty that has marred her life. Her children will be the first generation to attend school and in doing so, they will have the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty that has kept their communities impoverished for generation after generation.

Learn more about how you can help send children to school this September by visiting www.hope-international.com

With a Little Help From Friends

Impoverished families often find themselves tossed aside, left to languish on the side of the road like discarded household items that are either broken or deemed less than useful by their owners.

When HOPE International Development Agency first met Marie Fe, she was an impoverished young Filipino mother residing in the Philippine city of Calamansian - discarded by society you might say

When our HOPE Filipino colleagues spoke with Marie Fe, they did not see a broken woman tossed aside by society; they saw a person who had a valuable contribution to make, to both her community and her family!

Today, through her ingenuity and hard work, and a little help from a HOPE micro credit lending program, Marie Fe has created a sustainable livelihood amidst the discarded. Marie Fe’s family-run business recycles, reuses, and resells what others, far more fortunate than her, toss aside.

In addition to creating a sustainable livelihood, Marie Fe is also making a valuable contribution to the local economy and the environment. Collecting discarded, but valuable items from the streets and alleys is just one part of her business. Marie Fe’s business also buys discarded items, by the kilogram, direct from walk-in sellers, and in doing so, creates new value for her and her customers.

HOPE has had the privilege of helping Marie Fe build her business and livelihood since 1995, when a local micro credit program we established provided Marie Fe with her first modest, low interest loan. There have been a number of loans since, and in every case, Marie Fe has paid back her loans quickly – a sign that her business is thriving!

Today, Marie Fe and her family live in a modest but comfortable home, directly connected to her expanded shop and storefront. A pioneer member of our Camarin Micro Credit Branch, Marie Fe is now leads a group of 30 women entrepreneurs in her area. In addition to running her own successful business, Marie Fe tends to the needs of the members, guiding them as they develop sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families.

Marie Fe’s success lays in her ability to see value where others cannot. She likes to say she sees the “shine”, and hence the value, just below the surface on a piece of rusty, discarded metal.

Suffering – An unintended consequence of a comfortable mind?

The mind, pampered by the seemingly unending parade of comfort that accompanies life in the developed world, can quickly fall prey to rationalization.

As admirable as it may be, the ability to rationalize our way toward that which makes us comfortable, both in body and mind, often has the unintended consequence of abandoning others to their suffering.

Rather than being deeply troubled by the plight of orphaned and abandoned children in places such as Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for example, many of us find a way to rationalize not helping these children – some of whom are a mere 5 years-old.

We should be deeply troubled and frankly, very uncomfortable with the fact that an 11 year-old girl, abandoned to the streets of Addis because she lost her parents, has her childhood stolen from her one night in a dark alley. We should be moved to action by the troubled lives of the more than 3.8 million orphans whose trajectory is not unlike the 11 year-old girl just described.

Yes friend, we should be moved. Perhaps even more importantly, we should be very wary of that which impedes being moved - our ability to rationalize away the hurt and needs of others. This is especially true when you consider that in most cases, it costs us little or nothing to help relative to what we have and enjoy.

The comfortable mind is dangerous to our health and potentially deadly to millions of people worldwide. It is a mind untroubled by the plight and suffering of those who can offer no comfort, to us or themselves.

In the end, however, we soon discover that no amount of comfort can answer for the consequences.

Ethiopia: Going to ends of the earth for clean water - on foot, if necessary

In late spring, HOPE International Development Agency completed a memorable health and sanitation education series in six communities in Dereshe, the southern district where for the last decade we have focused our efforts to bring clean water and basic health to Ethiopia’s poorest villages.

As we approached full clean water coverage for Dereshe district this year, the communities we helped were increasingly remote. The poverty in these villages is exacerbated by their geographic isolation; inaccessible by roads, they are forgotten the rest of the population. Whatever political voice the rural poor might have does not carry over these distances, and so villages furthest from urban centers tend to be the most neglected, the most destitute.

HOPE exists for the sake of the poorest of the poor—an overused expression, but in the case of these villages, a very apt one. Because of this, our Ethiopian staff were more than willing to meet the challenges entailed in serving these far-flung villages of the south.

In order to provide the villagers with the health and sanitation training that is such a necessary component of the clean water program, our training officers walked long distances over all manner of terrain. There are no roads to make the trips by car, and the people in these villages live up on hills and farm in the valleys below. So, in the words of one Ethiopian staff member, “climbing up the hills for up to 10 kilometers round trip for a day’s teaching was a regular day at the office for our staff.”

He went on to remark that “It is a testament to their commitment that they were able to complete their work on time. The equally impressive commitment and hard work of the communities was essential to the success of the project. Each community brought out up to 50 volunteers daily to contribute their labour. This community participation and sense of ownership is the cornerstone of our project.”

He is correct: without this spirit of participation, of passion, of commitment, the task of providing the poorest of the poor with a measurably higher standard of life would founder. We see this spirit again and again in our staff members as well as in the families that actually benefit from the work. It is something that never fails to secure our admiration—and gratitude.

Sudan: Where Disease and Poverty Collide - and Collaborate

In a country where all pressing needs can really and truly be called ‘basic’, Southern Sudan’s health care system is still exceptional in its inadequacy. It is barely existent.

This stunningly poor nation is repeatedly singled out as having the worst health situation in the world. Here, one of out seven mothers will die giving birth. In some areas, there is one doctor for every 500,000 people.

Though throughout the developing world, scourges like malaria and diarrhea exact a huge toll, nowhere else on the planet do people contend with those threats in addition to a strange concentration of tropical diseases that have been eradicated in other nations.

Considering how profound this level of need is, HOPE International Development Agency’s medical supplies donation programme in Southern Sudan is a no-brainer. The relationship between health and poverty is obvious (how can you till your field if you are sick with dysentery?) but many do not realize how significantly the two are actually linked.

For example, we know that anaemia alone reduces Gross Domestic Product by as much as 7% in some countries (see the UN Millennium Project's Halving Hunger report). Imagine what the cumulative effect its myriad of health problems has on the economy of Sudan!

Sudan: “We will not let evil triumph”

An Ethiopian HOPE International Development Agency staff member recently visited our friends and colleagues in Sudan, Africa.

This, below, is his account of a trip to see the refugee families that HOPE has been assisting since the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attacked their villages on the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border for unknown reasons.

His experience is a plangent reminder of two things: the extraordinary stresses that our Sudanese colleagues endure in order to care for the poor and distressed, and just how profound the need for this care really is.

We had a flat tire and were late getting to the border town. About 9pm, as we approached the town, a guy jumped in front of our vehicle, pointing his AK 47 assault rifle at the head of the driver as he shouted something to us.

I was in the passenger seat next to the driver and was shocked and afraid. I did not want the armed guy to take my new NOKIA cell phone! I had only had it for one week and had used it as my camera, taking many pictures of the journey. I wanted to hide it somewhere before they came up to the car. The problem was it was in my shirt pocket. Moving my hand just then could be fatal. The guy still has his gun aimed right at us.

The gunman shouted something. The Bishop, who was driving, turned his headlights off. Then he turned on the light inside the vehicle. Now I could see nothing outside. Where was the gunman? Would he approach from my side? No, he would most probably approach from the driver's side. Surely he would not hurt a Bishop.

The gunman then appeared on the driver's side and said something loud and harsh. I heard the word “Bishop” in the driver’s answer. Suddenly the gunman says, “Hey Bishop!” He then smiles, taps on the vehicle’s roof and says something in a light voice and laughs, as if this was just a joke.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) sees the Bishop laughing as we resume driving. As if this was nothing but an introduction. I later realised it was just relief that had the Bishop laughing, not the LRA. I was quiet for the rest of the drive.

The next morning, I met and talked with victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Led by a possessed man named Joseph Kony, the LRA is a terrorist organization with no real political agenda. The LRA has been terrorizing people in Uganda, southern Sudan, and The Democratic Republic of Congo.

A Pastor that had been displaced along with his congregation described to me what happened in his village in February of this year.

“At midnight we heard gunfire. The LRA had killed 16 people. They took many children and looted everything we had. All we could do was run for our lives. Today, we have nothing left. We cannot go back. They can come back at any time. It is a chance we cannot take.” I could feel the terror in his voice as he told me the story. I could read the pain on his face.

This is pure evil. It displaces entire villages, enslaves children, and destroys lives. I hate it. That is why I am here. I want to do something good. I want to bring healing. I want to tell these people that there is some good in the world and that there are good people in the world – and that these good people will stand with them in this their darkest hour. They will help them pick up the pieces and stand on their own feet again.

I am here because HOPE International Development Agency is working with The Episcopal Church of Sudan to help these displaced people. I promised them we would not forget about them. We will not let evil triumph.

Then I quietly suggested to Bishop Kamani that we start the drive back early. Now that I have met its victims, I had no desire to meet the LRA.

It goes without saying that all of the people at HOPE International Development Agency feel the same way. Stories like these make us so grateful for our overseas colleagues. Their experiences feed into the heart of our endeavours, giving us the passion we need to sustain the work.

African Food Security: Obama’s Administration on Right Track

Just as the numbers of hungry people on the planet are reaching a historic high, we are seeing positive signs of change, at least so far as American policy is concerned.

In connection with his recent visit to Africa, Barack Obama released a statement indicating that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is preparing to significantly retool its approach to food aid.

Rather than continue to spend its aid dollars on food that is transported to hungry communities, his administration intends to invest into African agriculture, or more to the point, the ability of African farmers to feed themselves. So instead of receiving a sack of American-grown grain, a villager in Malawi might receive the tools and training to grow a better crop himself.

This reflects a growing sense - one that has always informed HOPE International Development Agency's approach - that self-reliance needs to be the end goal of all so-called ‘charity’. We, in our eagerness to help, must always be evaluating whether our aid leaves people truly better off. It is encouraging to see that the American government is taking up this theme and seemingly running with it.

Learn more about helping families in the developing world become self-reliant by visiting www.hope-international.com today.

Honduras: Perspective Beyond the Political Circus

Though Honduras was buffeted by natural disasters this past year, this small Central American nation has generated comparatively greater media coverage through its latest man-made debacle.

While HOPE International Development Agency’s Honduran partners were busy helping people to recover from severe flooding and a 7.1 earthquake, President Manuel Zelaya’s June 28th deposition suddenly became a colorful ringside attraction in the urban circus that the poor may not have the time to attend.

While expressions like ‘military coup’ might conjure stereotypes of dysfunctional Third World politics, the reality on the ground has been, according to our Honduran friends, much quieter than one might expect.

It is also worth noting that the ‘crisis’ of a deposed President has somewhat overshadowed the circumstances preceding Zelaya’s fall from grace. In fact, Zelaya had been about to hold a referendum on the constitution that would have potentially allowed him to extend his rule past the legal term limit.

Our friend and colleague in Tegucigalpa shared a few of his thoughts about this very complex situation, and they are worth reproducing here:

For the first time in Latin America, a country has rebelled , and without shedding any blood and without violence, against a constitutional and democratically elected President who has violated the constitution and legal orders from the Supreme Court, the Congress and the Attorney General of the country.

The international press had not understood this nor have they taken the time to study what has been happening in Honduras over the past year. They have simply taken a position saying that this has been a military overthrow of the government of Honduras - as something coming out of the cold war of twenty – thirty years ago.

However, the lesson coming out of this is that a President, who has been democratically elected by the people of this country, does not have the right to disobey the constitution and the laws of this country.

The message of Honduras is simple, if a president has received the popular vote of the country, this does not give him or her the license to break the laws, as all the effort going into governing a country for the common good should be done within the framework of the law.

The general public of democratic countries will be seeing these actions and will see that they no longer need to tolerate the abuses of power by constitutionally elected presidents who many times consider themselves untouchable because they were elected by the people. Big mistake….. ask Mel Zelaya!

While Hondurans living in severe poverty never have an easy row to hoe, we are relieved that, despite the political drama, conditions throughout the country are mostly very peaceful. Certainly, HOPE’s work has not experienced any disruptions whatsoever. It is our hope that this ‘crisis’ is resolved to the satisfaction of the majority of Hondurans. They, like all people, would prefer a government that respects the severity of their struggle as well as the importance of their institutions.

Self-indulgence - The new self-reliance

In the developed world, our aspirations appear to have evolved well beyond the notion of self-reliance.

You could not find fault with a person who observes that the definition of self-reliance has undergone a radical revision and now has more in common with self-indulgence than self-reliance.

This new definition is very alluring, as evidenced by the fact that many of us can no longer define, at least from a moral perspective, at what point we would have enough money, possessions, or status. The fact that it has taken a worldwide financial crisis to remind us that there is in fact something out there called “enough”, should be a warning to us all to revisit our moral compass.

Having enough used to be defined within the confines of an appropriate measure of self-reliance. More recently, however, having enough is defined as never having enough.

The tragedy of confusing self-indulgence with self-reliance is twofold.

Firstly, if you cannot define, from a moral perspective, what enough means for you, you are likely to never have enough.

Secondly, and most importantly for the poor of our world, if your definition of having enough does not include helping those who have nothing, they will continue to suffer and perish as they do now.

Never before has it been so important to so many that each of us define, from a moral perspective, what it means to have enough - this is the only way to ensure that we will all have enough.

To learn more about HOPE International Development Agency’s work among the poor, please visit www.hope-international.com

Hunger: Over One Billion Under-Served

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Association, we have reached a sad milestone. Over one billion people living on the planet are now hungry, a new record for the scourge of malnutrition. Due to the global economic crisis and persistently high food prices, one in six people are subsisting on less than 1,800 calories per day.

When we enter ‘1,800 calories’ into an internet search engine, we produce just under one million hits. However, it takes more patience than we have on supply to comb through the links in order to find just website referencing this threshold figure for inadequate diet - instead, these links appear to be mainly meal plans for dieting Westerners. As freedieting.com helpfully states: ‘1800 calories per day is about the lowest a man should go when aiming for fat loss.’

Presumably, in most of the developing world, there is not a lot of fat to spare. According to a study by a USDA economist, the average sub-Saharan African is consuming around 2,176 calories per day, compared to an average American’s 3,654. Whereas the typical Western diet showed a distribution of calories from varied food sources (18% of an American’s calories might come from sugar alone), the African derives 70% of his or her energy from grains and starchy root vegetables. More nutritious food is not available or is simply too expensive.

This study was based on 1995-97 statistics. Likely the data would be different today, reflecting an even more pronounced gap between developed and developing worlds. While body-conscious Westerners work on their self-control, over one billion people are already on the 1,800 calorie diet through no choice of their own.

Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Honduras: An Unprecedented Time of Disaster?

As we prepare to send a second shipment of emergency medications to the Swat Valley, Pakistan, we are asking ourselves whether we have ever received so many calls for help from so many quarters of the world in such a short period of time.

In Pakistan, an extraordinary refugee crisis (3 million displaced) in the troubled Swat Valley has compelled us to respond with emergency medical shipments. In Sri Lanka, the fallout from the Tamil-government conflagration is enormous; refugees there are in great need of supplies and shelters. In Bangladesh, we are helping to assist 4 million people who are injured or homeless in the wake of a cyclone and extensive flooding. In Honduras, an earthquake has destroyed homes, infrastructure, and livelihoods, and we are working with survivors to heal and rebuild.

Each one of these disasters is extreme in its own right, but taken together, they amount to an overwhelming constituency of sufferers. Our own capacity to respond is pushed to the utmost.

For an organization that is geared towards finding long-term solutions to poverty, this congestion of emergency-based, short-term assistance is difficult. However, it is because we have a long-term commitment in each of these countries that we must help when their fortunes take such a nightmarish turn. We, like they, have no choice.

Through us, right now, people in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Honduras are depending on people who so often choose to invest in long-term solutions, like clean water and food security. Will they be generous in these exception circumstances? Experience has shown us that they will be. Still, it is a test for our supporters - just as it is a test for us.

We have sent out an emergency appeal for donations to each of these countries. We truly hope that our friends will help them to survive this terrible chapter in their struggle for development.

Pakistan, the Swat Valley: 12 Medical Teams Equipped

The UN now reports that the mass exodus of people from Pakistan’s Swat valley is the largest refugee crisis since 1994’s Rwandan genocide. In three week’s time, almost 1.5 million people have fled the area, where government forces are fighting to eradicate Taliban strongholds.

Fortunately, we received word that our staff in Pakistan received our most recent medical shipment. We assembled this shipment specifically to equip the medical teams tending to the families stranded in camps across Mardan district. Twelve teams are treating refugees on a daily basis; they will ultimately administer life-saving medications to thousands. Special attention, as always, is given to expecting mothers and infants, who are very vulnerable to infections, especially in the severely hot weather that has made their displacement all the more terrible.