Sunday, July 17, 2005
Forgotten Emergencies
I broke the piggy bank the other day -- actually, I emptied the coffee can where we put our found change at our house. In deciding what to do with all this emptied-pocket/bottom-of-purse/under-the-sofa-cushion treasure, I checked out the Lutheran World Relief website. Lots of good stuff. If you follow the link above, check out the "Forgotten Emergencies" in places like Darfur, Colombia and Haiti, see what LWR is doing there, and maybe direct some of your bottle-deposit/sub-sofa-cushion money their way (or the way of your equivalent relief organization, if your church is down the street from mine). You will also discover that LWR is starting a virtual "university," with regular online classes and an interactive book club, to help educate people about poverty and development issues, and about the theological underpinnings of the Christian response to human suffering and need. (The book club starts in September with a discussion of Jeffrey Sach's The End of Poverty.) And...Fair Trade coffee tends to be scoffed at as a feel-good but essentially meaningless guilty-suburban-liberal response to poverty issues in coffee-growing countries; but if you're a small-scale farmer in one of those places, I'd bet a tall cappucino that you'd be really, really happy if more people bought your coffee beans. Now LWR has a special "signature" Fair Trade Coffee. Try a bag or two; if you're personing the parish coffee pot, brew some up some Sunday for the gang.
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2 comments:
Thanks for posting about "Forgotten Emergencies." This is what we Westerners have to fight from now on, I'd say: our tendency to be sleepy lotus-eaters and just forget about the rest of the world. It's very noisy here, and our media is completely inward-turned. Sounds, interesting, too, the virtual U. I want to take some theology classes, actually.
(Whew! Did I just say that? I guess I did.)
I buy Fair Trade. I adore coffee but want to do my part, too.
Uh-oh...you're on record now, B.;-) And (at least for me) classes are like potato chips; you have one and pretty soon you want another.
Here's a website you might find useful: Faith and Wisdom ...links to all sorts of theology classes, (brick-and-mortar and online), seminars and retreat opportunities for lifelong learners.
Yes, we are a pretty inward-turned people here in the U.S. But I think part of it is less self-absorption and more escape from the discomfort of confronting what seem to be insurmountable social problems. Keeping things in perspective, I think, is key -- no, I am singlehandedly unable to solve the problem of, say, girls' lack of access to education in Afghanistan, but I know that $20 to the Central Asia Institute, one of the charities I really admire and support, will help buy enough school supplies to keep one or two girls in one of the schools they've built. $25 to Heifer Project buys a poor family in Haiti a batch of chicks to start a flock and become protein self-sufficient as a household, with maybe some extra eggs to sell. The Grameen Bank leverages what are really tiny amounts of money for us into loans that help poor women start small home-based businesses and become self-sufficient. I think if people broke down scary geopolitical issues into smaller, graspable, relational pieces, and had access to information about organizations that deliver what they promise to needy people and are good stewards of donor money -- transparent finances, independent audits, low overhead costs -- folks would feel more empowered to be able to make a difference even with small donations.
I love Green Mountain Coffee -- they have a big selection of Fair Trade coffees, and they arrive at my doorstep absolutely fresh (I can be a fussbudget about this...I keep my coffee beans in the freezer until I need some) -- but since I hooked up with my food co-op I've been buying coffee from them. Right now I am brewing a pot of Ethiopian coffee from Just Coffee. It's okay, but not quite as good as Green Mountain.
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