Barefoot College

This is awesome as it challenges our understanding of what education is all about. It seems that ultimately life is about living and things pertaining to living. And living deals with the every day thing of sustenance. However we have transformed this world through global economy into a world of dependency that takes advantages of our earth and all the resources in order to feed a reality that we build for ourselves. Local economy through local resources seems an option that we have not quite explored enough. This TED talk on an innovative form of education is something to ponder.

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Hunger in Our World

I do not recall the last time I felt hungry and if I did it was not because I did not have access to food. It was because my work kept me busy or I was busy doing other things. I could not imagine what it is like to feel the hunger and not knowing when the next meal may arrive or to live with hunger over extended period of time. I used to make it a requirement for my class for students to fast a meal and give that amout of money to a needy person. And while the students were all so willing to give, they would complain of how hard it was to go without a meal, to be hungry. My complaint has only been overeating. And we are spending our time trying to loose weight. Yet there is another reality out there. Check out this link. Hunger

 

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Another Encouraging Story

Last night I met with two of the students that received scholarship from our program. These two sisters came from a Hmong village way up on the hill with no public transportation and no electricity.  Actually this scholarship program sponsored three of the sisters.  The first graduated three years ago and is now working with an insurance company doing well. The second sister will graduate with a bachelor degree in tourism and the youngest will graduate with this February as well. These sisters are really hard working and are performing well academically. While in Chiang Rai they used to work at times till 5 in the morning, came home, and got ready to go to school again in the morning. I asked how many young people in the village get to go to college. Their response was, about 5%.  Not only are they hard working and determined to help support their families, they are concern for their village as well. I had a long conversation about the struggle of the villagers and learned that most villagers do not have sufficient connection. They grow crops yearly and make approximately 500 to 1,000 dollars a year if they were able to sell their crops. They do not have knowledge in terms of outlet for their products. When the price is bad, they suffer. Some years, their entire year labor reaps nothing due to external circumstances and the cycle of debt continues. Their are young people with dreams and vision and courage. They are the minority but through determination, they make a difference for themselves and for their families and hopefully for their village as well.

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Gospel According to Skid Row: Benefit Concert

Gospel According to Skid Row: Benefit Concert

Chen Fong Auditorium, Fourth Floor, Centennial Complex, Loma Linda University

April 16, 2011  from 3:00 – 5:00 pm

Poster

This benefit concert will be performed by members of Skid Row, Los Angeles. We invite you to come and be a witness to lives touched by the gospel and expressed through gospel music. Enjoy narrations of existential struggles, of hope in the midst of lost and grace at the center of life’s predicament. The funds raised during this concert will be used to support the ministry of LA Central City Community Church in providing care and services to the homeless residing in Skid Row.

Some Facts

“According to this recent study, the number of homeless on any given night in Los Angeles County has reached 90,000, up 8.4 percent from 83,000 in 2003. Ito noted that “the County of Los Angeles is now the homeless capital of the United States,” surpassing by far New York City’s 40,000, Chicago’s 9,600 and San Francisco’s 9,600 homeless populations. “To put it in perspective,” noted Ito, “the homeless population of Los Angeles County is larger than the entire population of the city of Santa Monica [a beach community that abuts Los Angeles]. It is truly an appalling situation.”

The bulk of the LA county homeless—82,291 out of the 90,000—are found in the City of Los Angeles—South Central (which includes Watts, Downtown, Pico Union, Boyle Heights, Hollywood—and in the City of Compton and in some of the smaller cities within the county. The industrial city of Long Beach, to the south (California’s sixth largest), Pasadena and Glendale to the north conduct their own count and provide their own services. They have 6,000, 1,200, and 400 homeless, respectively.

Out of the city’s 82,291 homeless, 34,518 (42 percent) are considered chronically homeless; that is, they have been “on the streets for more a year or more, or have had four episodes of homelessness in the last three years” and “have one or more disabilities, including mental illness, substance abuse and health conditions.” Approximately 55 percent of this population suffers from three or more disabilities.

–Ramón Valle, 17 October 2005, wsws.org

According to official U.S. government statistics issued in November of 2007, more than 1 in 10 people in the United States go hungry. More than 35 million people went hungry in 2006 according to the same report; almost 13 million of them were children and many of the rest were impoverished senior citizens.

www.freedomtracks.com/statistics

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World Hunger

I noticed numerous inquiries through my search engine on the issue of hunger.  As I was browsing through various websites I came across some very helpful information from the UN World Food Program.  Here are some facts that you may find beneficial as you seek to understand the issue of hunger in the world.  

1. Malnutrition prevents children from reaching their full development and cognitive potential.

2. Almost one billion people regularly suffer from hunger; most are women and children.

3. One child dies every six seconds from hunger-related causes.

4. More people die of hunger every year than from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. 

I gathered information from this website:  http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/liaison_offices/wfp185786.jpg

You can find more helpful information from WFP website.

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Eco-Feminism and Poverty

I received an invitation from Trisha Famisaran to attend a conference on Feminism and Ecology and had the privilege of listening to a presentation by Rosemary Radford Ruether.  It made a profound impact on me as I ponder the meaning of eco-feminism.  I do not know if I got it right but it does not seem to matter at this point because the concept has allowed me to draw some meaningful conclusion about life.  It makes me think that perhaps we got it all wrong.  All these things about going out and helping the poor because we have all the knowledge and wisdom and technology.  But isn’t all these technical knowledge and the colonial logic destroying us and our world?  Aren’t we not suffering now because of our advancement and the pursuit of the rational in manipulating the world that we live in?  We have caused more damage to the world and our environment than the poor.  We have created more conflicts and caused more depression among our generation.  The poor did not cause environmental damage.  They were using buffalos and planting rice in the field and live with what they have.  They were simple.  They did not have to consume products that have to be recycled.  They were contented with their buffalos until our technology tells them that there’s something better and that they could earn more money to buy more products.  I wonder if it is the poor that we have to look up to to relearn to live our lives.  And who’s to say that they are poor if it is not our very own need to create categories.  They just live a simple life.  Because we are not simple or cannot live simple, we call them poor.  My professor, Dr. William Clement once said to me, “People like to talk about helping the poor.  For me, they poor have already helped me so much.”  What a profound wisdom.  We always think of someone like Donald Trump as a successful person.  But is this really success?  What if success is defined as a person who has the ability to live simple and live within the limit of what he or she has?

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Wat Sa Keow Orphanage

A number of years ago I went with my colleagues (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) to a small remote Hmong village in Tak Province to build toilets and provide medial care for the villagers.  Before we returned a villager brought his 6 year old son and asked if we could take him to Wat Sa Keow in Ang Thong, central Thailand.  I did not know anything about Wat Sa Keow at the time.  A couple of Hmong kids jumped into the back of the pickup truck.  The little boy was all by himself.  I noticed how sad it was for him to leave his family.  His parent informed me that this was his only chance for education.  If he were to stay back, it would be much harder for him to obtain his education.  We left the village and about 6 hours later we arrived at Wat Sa Keow.  I got down from the car.  A few Hmong kids that came with us ran to meet their friends since there were here before.  This little boy did not know any one.  He was all alone by himself in this orphanage with thousands of kids.  I watched him walked by himself with a few tear drops in his eyes toward the main building with a little bag in his hand.  It was hard to explain the emotion, but I was deeply moved with grief for this little boy.  I just came across a reference to Wat Sa Keow again not too long ago and thought, it will be nice to visit and do some volunteer work at this place during my next visit to Thailand.

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Violence Escalates in Congo, Displaced Receive Emergency Aid

News from ADRA International

Camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) near the town of Goma continue to hold thousands of people fleeing the ongoing violence in war torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is responding, distributing emergency supplies and assisting more than 6,000 people who remain displaced from their homes. This assistance is helping 3,578 families in the affected North Kivu Province. The distribution of non-food items includes 2,800 wool blankets, 850 school kits, and 4,000 multi-purpose fabrics that can be worn by women to protect them from the cold or to carry their babies. The school kits, which include book bags, notebooks, pens and pencils, are being given to elementary and secondary school-age students. The $64,000 project is implemented with funding from ADRA Norway, ADRA Canada, ADRA International, ADRA Sweden, the ADRA Africa Regional office in Kenya, ADRA Australia, ADRA United Kingdom, and ADRA France. The situation in the region remains tense following weeks of violence. Fighting between the Congolese army and the rebel group National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) surged in late October 2008 forcing more than 250,000 people into makeshift camps. Nearly one million are presently displaced in eastern Congo, or 20 per cent of the population of the entire North Kivu Province, according to the United Nations. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) in DRC has reported that IDPs have become the target of serious human rights violations from all sides of the conflict, including abuses by civilians. In a separate conflict in DRC’s northeastern Oriental Province, the Uganda-based Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group has recently killed some 534 people and kidnapped more than 400 others in ongoing raids, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. On December 14, Congolese, Ugandan, and Sudanese forces launched a joint military operation to repel the LRA. “We remain extremely concerned about the fate of residents who are now increasingly caught in a conflict zone near the borders of the DRC, the Central African Republic and Sudan,” said UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond in statement issued on January 13. Since 1996, more than 4 million people are believed to have died in the Congolese conflict, according to UN estimates, mostly due to preventable diseases and starvation. To assist ADRA’s emergency response to the growing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, contributions can be donated to ADRA’s Refugee and Displaced Persons Fund, by phone at 1.800.424.ADRA (2372) or online at http://www.adra.org. ADRA is a non-governmental organization present in 125 countries providing sustainable community development and disaster relief without regard to political or religious association, age, gender, race, or ethnicity. Additional information about ADRA can be found at http://www.adra.org. Author: Nadia McGill

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Prayer for the People of Myanmar

Facts

A military official in the delta township of Labutta estimated 80,000 dead there alone, and many families there told an AFP reporter most of their relatives had been killed. “Houses collapsed, buildings collapsed, and people were swept away,” one man said. “I only survived by hanging on to a big tree.”

Around 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 square miles) remain underwater, and more than a million homeless need emergency relief, a UN spokesman said.

Shari Villarosa, US charge d’affaires in Myanmar’s main city Yangon, said there could be more than 100,000 dead in the Irrawaddy delta, where 95 percent of buildings were reported to have disappeared. Food prices in Myanmar, already one of the world’s most impoverished nations, have soared. A bag of rice now costs 40,000 kyats (35 dollars) in the commercial hub Yangon, up from 25,000 last week.http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hab-iTARKHbjNiLxhHLBSaK9dOLg

 

Prayer

Dear God, please help me find the words that my heart would like to express.

Receive the souls of those who have passed on.  

Help these people who have lost their homes from storms. 

Guide the survivors with your light to a better day.

Give them patience and hope to endure the lonely and difficult times.  

May peace become yours soon after this terrible disaster.  

Help us to trust that you provide.  Amen.

http://www.sunsetparkcc.org/wp/?p=10

 

Action

For those who wish to help, please go to www.adra.org

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Children, Sex Trafficking, Simplicity

I have been reflecting on the issue of human trafficking, particularly the stories of children involved in the sex industry in Thailand, for more than a decade.  When I hear their stories, I feel that pain.  The more I explore this issue the more I come to realize that while we need all the policies and projects and funding to really help these young women, there is an area we often over look.  We often fight poverty by looking at monetary increment which is very important and explore job opportunities.  Sometime we fail to realize that poverty is also a concept, an idea, a very powerful idea carefully constructed for the purpose of control and profits.  While I certainly hope that we can plan more programs, provide more funds, write better policies to help ease the pain I certainly hope that we will also address the core value that fuels the ideas behind prosperity and poverty.  I hope that at some level we can also realize that importance of simplicity as key to reframing how we understand the meaning of being poor.  In some way we need to disengage ourselves from paternalistic masculinity that defines  success through capitalistic economy.

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