DanSheffield

admitting failure -- international aid

Brilliant TED Talk from Calgary with David Damberger who worked with Canadian development agency Engineers without Borders...

Unfortunately the scenario he paints about non-faith-based development work is also true among the many 'novelty' Christian development projects that are popping up all over the world as North American Christians think they "solve the developing world's problems" with some donor aid and a couple short-term mission trips.

 

Cost-effective compassion

CT has a great article -- "Cost-effective compassion: the 10 most popular strategies for helping the poor." The author, Bruce Wydick is a professor of economics at U of San Francisco, and active in a micro-project in Guatemala (you have to read to the end of the article to hear what he is doing). He polled 16 development economists: "I asked them to rate, from 0 to 10, some of the most common poverty interventions to which ordinary people donate their money, in terms of impact and cost-effectiveness per donated dollar."

1. Get clean water to rural villages (8.3)

2. Fund de-worming treatments for children (7.8)

3. Provide mosquito nets (7.3)

4. Sponsor a child (6.9)

5. Give an efficient wood-burning stove (6.0)

6. Give a micro-finance loan (4.2)

7. Fund reparative surgeries (3.9)

8. Donate a farm animal (3.8)

9. Drink fair-trade coffee (1.9)

10. Give A Kid a Laptop (1.8)

For rest of article and commentary read here...

traditional western aid has had its day

Ben Knapen, the minister of international cooperation for the Kingdom of the Netherlands has an interesting perspective on international aid. The Netherlands has an excellent track record of insightful development practices around the world. Here are a couple thoughts from his article in DEVEX...

A third reason behind the disappearance of the old aid architecture is the change in global poverty patterns. To begin with, the number of poor countries is on the decline. The International Development Association, the division of the World Bank concerned with lending money to poor countries, is expected to lose more than half of its clients in the next 10 to 15 years. At present, 68 countries are categorized as “poor”; by around 2025 that number will have fallen to around 36. Most of them will be those tragic places we call “failing states”: Afghanistan, Yemen, Congo and the like.

The idea of spending a proportion of gross domestic product on development aid originated in a world that came in only two flavors: poor countries and rich countries. The aim of development aid was an international and more equitable redistribution of wealth. But the spectacular drop in the number of poor countries shows that the dominant practice of dividing the world into poor countries and rich countries is no longer accurate.

See the whole article here.

Kurelek Christmas - The Holy Family as [Inuit]

My favourite Christmas reflection -- artwork and narrative. Canadian artist William Kurelek's A Northern Nativity: christmas dreams of a prairie boy is a stunning collection of images and incarnational imaginings.  Kurelek (1927-1977) based this book on his own childhood dreams (in the Depression years) coupled with his adult life experience -- on the theme that Christ came to all people, everywhere. What would happen if He came now? He imagines that the nativity takes place in northern snows. He dreams that the Christ child is born to Eskimos, to Indians, to Blacks, that the Nativity takes place in a fisherman’s hut, a garage, a cowboy’s barn, that the holy family is given refuge in a city mission, a grain barn, and a country school. Try getting through one page without tears... that the God of the universe knows, recognizes, accepts and incarnates in all cultures, spaces and worldviews.

The Holy Family as [Eskimo]

Against a deep black sky, the northern lights play -- and the perpetual night of outer space is pricked with the sharp jabs of a million stars. Fluted snow fields stretch toward the horizon where hummocky crags of ice have been piled up by the crunch of the tide against the land. In a seal hunter's half-igloo shelter sit a woman and child. The child is fondling a roly-poly husky pup. Nearby, a fur-clad man is tending some sleigh dogs. Around his head, a strange light flickers. It also surrounds the faces of the mother and child.

A surge of excitement fills Willam as he recognizes the Holy Family -- the simple, saintly Joseph; the virgin Mary, gentlest of mothers; and the infant Jesus, the Son of God Himself.

William feels an urge to sing in celebration of the scene. But the words of the carol come out jumbled... "And Arctic nature sings, and Arctic nature sings..." He sees himself asleep at the edge of the dream, and he wants to wake himself up so that he will remember forever the picture and the joy it brought him.

[see last year's post, here]

Egypt -- alternative reflections

An estimated 70,000 Egyptian Christians gathered on November 11, 2011 for praise, worship, and prayer at St. Simon Church in Cairo while millions around the globe followed the event live on TV and the Internet. This was a significant event: It was the largest Christian gathering in the modern history of Egypt; it brought together, for the first time, all Christian denominations: Coptic Orthodox, Catholics, and all branches of Protestant and Evangelical Christians. The prayer meeting that started at 6:00 PM continued uninterrupted till 6:00 AM the following day!

Canadian evangelical leader, Brian Stiller comments here on this prayer event, as well as the current situation in Egypt.

Tyndale Seminary prof, Dr Wafik Wahba, offers this interpretation of life in Egypt since the "Arab Spring"

This historic day of prayer took place at a momentous juncture considering the current situation in Egypt. Nine months to the date, on February 11, 2011 the former President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, was forced out of office. The January 25th leaderless revolution, that surprised the world, seemed to have succeeded in putting an end to decades of oppression and corruption. However, the following nine months saw nothing but chaos, brutality, and frustration. More than 12,000 people have been detained and tortured by military tribunals mainly for speaking up against the injustices and lack of freedom. Hundreds of people have lost their lives due to the lack of security. Tourism and the economy in general are on a free fall since the revolution. A sense of despair and frustration is gripping the people, especially the younger generation, who stood up against the escalating injustices and paid with their lives demanding freedom and basic human rights. The culmination of this sense of despair reached an unprecedented level on October 9, 2011 when the army brutally massacred 27 Christians and injured more than 300 in downtown Cairo. The peaceful demonstrators, both Christians and Muslims, were demanding basic human rights respecting the establishment of places of worship that were previously destroyed by the government. They took their frustration to the streets in peaceful demonstrations after repeated attacks on churches, Christians, homes and businesses owned by Christians. The demonstrators were run over by military tanks that literally crushed them. This was seen around the globe and was condemned by international governments and human rights’ groups, however, no word of apology was offered by Egyptian officials.

see more of his commentary here

conscientious objection from FMs during WWI

Came across an interesting historical note in a book published just a couple years ago, Crisis of Conscience: conscientious objection in Canada during the First World War, by Amy Shaw.

It specifically references several Free Methodists who sought to register as conscientious objectors but instead were court-martialed and jailed.

The Toronto Globe reported that one 20-year-old from Housey's Rapids, Ontario, justified his behaviour by referring to the biblical injunction "Thou shalt not kill." Furthermore, "he had never seen anything in the Bible justifying revenge, and because he was a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus he refused to take up arms." His older brother also objected saying, "Because the Lord's word tells us to not take part in any of the things of this world, I object to perform any kind of military service."

Both were sentenced to life imprisonment in Kingston Penitentiary, but were discharged in Feb 1919, after the end of the war.

read the clip in google here.

the white poppy in Canada

foreign aid system needs reset

The humanitarian sector is out of balance and dominated by two extremes, Dr. Samantha Nutt,   co-founder and executive director of War Child Canada, argues. Large aid organizations, dominated by expatriate experts, occupy one end of the spectrum, while novelty startups, led by well-meaning but inexperienced celebrities or students and church groups, occupy the other end.

"The space between is rapidly evaporating," she says.

But it's that middle ground, where emergency relief shades into longterm development and where broad social challenges are addressed with respect and consideration for local needs, that real change is found.

"The ultimate goal of aid should be to make itself redundant," Dr. Nutt says. "We need to make an investment in development programming that gives local communities the tools and resources they need to be their own architects of change."

Nutt has just released a new book, Damned Nations

more of this article here...

the antidote to craving

When our happiness fails to appear -- when we are tired, weary, and spent -- we turn to the marketplace for help. There, we are offered something that looks very much like happiness -- a tantalizing substitute for happiness -- something more easily acquired, more quickly and conveniently bought and sold. We are offered the satisfaction of desire...

The more hurried and rushed we are, the more we are willing to trade happiness for desire -- and, over time, the less we are able to discern the difference between the two...

The antidote to craving is rest; we quench our thirst with sabbath tranquility. We invite a time in which we can taste what we have been given, take delight in what we have, and see that it is good. We focus less on our lack, and more on our abundance. As we do, our thirst and hunger for more than we need begins to fall away...

If we do not disengage, if we stay on the wheel of desire, if we do not stop and pray and walk, the pattern of our addictive craving is free to escalate without limit, until we inadvertently create a terrible suffering for ourselves and those we love.

Meister Eckhart, the medieval Christian mystic, asserted that if the only prayer we ever prayed our whole life was "thank you," that would be enough. Gratefulness cultivates a visceral experience of having enough.

from Wayne Muller's Sabbath.

Index of well-being says things aren't that great

This week, the Canadian Index of Well-being was released. This is a measure with a depth of research that looks at 8 broad domains of Canadian life: living standards, community vitality, democratic engagement, education, healthy populations, environment, time use (the impact, say, of 24/7 commercial operations and the workplace leash of new technology), leisure and culture.

These areas are then stacked up against the GDP, which is the typical measure of how well an economy is functioning. The GDP notion is that as productivity increases so standard of living increases -- or at least that's what economists, capitalists and conservative politicians want us to believe. In fact, the report says that while the GDP increased by 31 per cent from 1994 to 2008, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing rose just 11 per cent.

The report says quality of life actually decreased over the period measured — in the environment, leisure and culture, and time use. In health, there have been only modest gains.

Roy Romanow, the chair of the CIW project board, says most Canadians are “running so fast, and basically standing still, that we do not have the opportunity to enjoy things that really matter in life.

“As individuals, we're switching more of our time away from family life, away from community involvement, arts, political activity. We're being affected in our health.”

He called the report a “major wake-up call” to governments at all levels that “we've got to rebalance our social and economic programs in order to give more meaning to individual lives.”

[read the Star report on this research here]

A 'major wake-up call' to governments?! I think this should also be a major wake-up call to Christians and Christian congregations...

In what ways are we re-orienting our lives to live more abundantly, and less frantically? When a government tells us to spend more to 'bolster' the economy, as a means of boosting a lagging GDP, when we already live under a burden of consumer debt, do we speak out prophetically against such policies? Should we not be urging our people to spend less, slow down, care for the distressed, and live more fully? This is the 'counter-cultural' life we see urged on us by the whole of Christian scripture, not least by Jesus himself.

the future of Hamilton will not look more and more like me

read an article by yours truly on p.4 in this Hamilton monthly journal. hard copies available around the city.

http://issuu.com/urbanicityhamilton/docs/oct_2011