Bread Blog

Day Four: “Retarded Nations”

2008-11-21T17:51:20-05:00

So my checked bag decided to spend an extra night in our connection city of Miami, but it finally arrived in Latin America! Can you really blame it. Miami is beautiful, even if only viewed through an airport window.

This morning we met up with the rest of crew for the week. Louis our mini-bus driver, Richard the still photographer, Marcos our translator and the three members of our American video team. They rented an SUV at the airport for remote filming and ended up wandering around for hours. Magellan only made it around the world because he never came through Nicaragua. Like the rest of country, our hotel doesn’t actually have addresses but rather an approximate description of it’s location. On the hotel’s website it actually lists that address as “30 meters south of La Marseillaise Restaurante.” Some directions are even based on landmarks that don’t even exist, “three blocks north of where the water tower used to be…”

Our first task of the day was meeting up with our guide from Accion Medica Christiana, a local partner organization of Church World Service. After a background briefing from Belinda Forbes (and project manager Dr Reyna) at AMC headquarters in the capitol, we were off.

Our trip got off to a rough start. While stopping to pick up water and supplies at a gas station, we discovered a slow leak in one of the rental car’s tires and in the chaos of changing it, some locals made off with our translator's travel bag. I’ve gotta say though, with multiple bags containing tens of thousands of dollars of video and audio gear, they probably picked the best bag. Since American Airlines lost my bag for a few days I had already replaced some essential undergarments and just passed them on to our translator Marcos.

We’re finally out in Matagalpa and I’m falling asleep while writing this blog post- with a dinner in my belly so fresh that I can imagine the chickens running around free just earlier today.

I cannot spend enough time talking about how terrible of the roads are here. No wonder everyone is always running late… Glad we chose to highlight road construction and infrastructure development as part of the video.

I’m also fascinated in the differences between our more “time oriented” culture in the U.S. and the more laid back “event oriented” culture of our neighbors to the south. It’s all relative though. When I was seven and my parents were working at a refugee camp in the Philippines and my dad used to joke with me that I ran on “third world time.” Back then that term wasn’t offensive- now we say “developing countries.” Once upon a time, developing countries used to be referred to as “retarded nations,” meaning literally, “slow to develop.” But develop in to what? In the U.S. we may all have two cars and high-speed wireless cable internet, but we don’t have very good health care and woman can’t afford to stay home with their kids for very long. Compared to Europe, we’re the ones who are “retarded.” With their healthcare, family leave and extended vacations- maybe they need to be doing development work in DC…

I’m missing the U.S., but I am pleasantly exhausted, remembering how much I liked being an expat NGO worker overseas. We might not be making cash hand over fist, but we have no problem sleeping at night; and speaking of which… zzzzz…

Day Three: Casa de los Artes

2008-11-20T10:00:00-05:00

I’m having trouble getting the stench of garbage out of my lungs and the sights of La Chureca out of my mind. It’s hard not to have your heart broken by places like that, and maybe mine should break a little bit.

But when despair hovered too close, I felt small arms thrown around my waist in joy. The children were wonderful. They greeted us not as strangers but as new friends. It was so clear that the children at the Los Quinchos center felt safe within its walls, even surrounded by 100 acres of garbage. Imagine how they could thrive if they didn't live in a landfill.

We saw for ourselves at the Los Quinchos project in San Marcos. It’s the next stage of the program, taking children from Managua away for the weekend to the farm and cultural center run by the organization in the hills 45 minutes outside the city. Here in the fresh mountain air, I could breathe, and the children can, too.

We stopped first at the music lessons. Six boys were learning to play marimba, a Nicaraguan xylophone. They performed a polka for us! Cesar was especially intense and looked the part of folk musician with his straw hat pulled down over the hood of his sweatshirt.

I love that, at Los Quinchos, music and art are central to the work they do with children. It’s so easy to focus on the material needs of these kids; those are enormous. But so is their need to be kids. Art and beauty should be a right, not a privilege, a sentiment fully embraced here.

At the Casa de los Artes, three 16-year-old boys are working quietly on their drawing skills in the small library. In Managua, these boys were street kids, addicted to sniffing glue (which at least took away their hunger pangs). They’ve worked with Los Quinchos for several years now, one of them since he was six. In the back courtyard, there’s a mural in progress on one wall: a gorgeous depiction of Frida Kahlo. Here I talk to Francisco, who’s been involved at Los Quinchos since he was 11; he’s now probably in his late 20s. He wants to practice his English, which is better than my Spanish is ever likely to be. He tells me he loves to paint, and hopes to do it in many places. That’s why he’s working on his English.

It’s amazing the connections you can make with people over a few understood words. To reach the farm where the boys live, we drove over dirt roads with potholes the size of small craters. Looking out the window at the lush jungle setting and nearly whacking my head at one bump, I called our driver, Rolando, Indiana Jones. He grinned.

We ended our day at San Marcos’s newest hot spot – Los Quinchos Pizza Parlor. Zelinda Roccia, founder of Los Quinchos, is from Italy, and she’s brought friends and volunteers over to train some older girls and boys in pizza-making. The kids learn a trade, Los Quinchos makes a bit of money, and the town gets a new restaurant. If you ever get to visit, I recommend the pepperoni, with a Coca-Cola Light.

Kimberly Burge is Bread for the World's senior writer/editor.

Day Two: Sex for Garbage

2008-11-19T13:19:09-05:00

You never know quite what to expect when heading to the second-poorest country in the hemisphere -- Nicaragua is a close second to Haiti. It’s frustrating to see that a country with such natural beauty and so many natural resources has so many problems.

I flew in yesterday afternoon and I feel like it’s been nonstop ever since. When I say “I,” I mean me and my carry-on bag, minus one piece of checked luggage. After receiving assurance from a Senor Brooks that my bag would eventually turn up, I took my newly purchased DVD burner, freshly exchanged cordobas, and only set of undergarments and haggled for the best price on a ride to Hotel Los Robles.

I've traveled to five continents and it never ceases to amaze me how far you can get with smiling and pointing. Since I'm 6’6” I always do my best to sit in the front seats of the developing world’s taxis. I can’t help but talk to strangers now that I’ve long outgrown the fear of being lured into the backseats of vans driven by caped evildoers.

“Pan para el mundo esta un organasation para los personas con no comida.” I felt like a three-year-old boy trying to explain to my taxi driver, Juan, that “bread for the world is an organization for the peoples with no food.” And just as I gave up on translating the word hunger with furious hand motions, his car radio mocked me when the 80's classic “Hungry Eyes” came on.

We came a few days ahead of the film crew for Kimberly to work on newsletter pieces while I try to shoot photos, record audio for podcasts, and hopefully do some last-minute logistics for our Offering of Letters video shoot next week.

This morning’s meeting with CEPAD (Consejo De Iglesias Evangelicas Pro-Alianza Denominacional) Executive Director Damaris Albuquerque was fascinating. I’m so glad we recorded it for an upcoming podcast. After Kimberly and I each had a chance to interview her, she took us around the corner to the community radio station where we picked up some local music and recorded station IDs for later broadcast. Kimberly wisely suggested that I not use my Sábado Gigante radio guy voice for my radio spot…

Have you ever heard of people trading sex for garbage? In the La Chureca landfill just outside of Managua, children scavenge 100 acres of garbage for anything that can be sold for pennies. Sometimes girls have sex with the truck drivers who dump refuse at the landfill in exchange for bottles or aluminum cans -- instead of the 20 cents they might otherwise get. What can you even do with information like that? Seriously. Well, a good first step would be to write your senators and representative in Congress and let them know that you want them to make foreign assistance a priority.

Lilian from Pronica showed us around Los Quinchos, an Italian-sponsored group that works with the children who live in the Managua landfill.

Children from Los Quichos.

Residents of La Chureca scramble for garbage as a dump truck delivers to the landfill.

For more photos from La Chureca, check out these Web sites: www.lucatronci.com, www.gerdakochanska.com.

Brian P. Duss is the multimedia associate at Bread for the World.

Day One: Bienvenidos a Managua

2008-11-18T14:54:13-05:00

And there, sadly, is where my español ends. I’m traveling through Nicaragua with my colleague, Brian Duss, in preparation for Bread's Offering of Letters 2009. We’re gathering stories and video footage of people who are being helped by development assistance from the United States. Bread members will spend the next year working to reform development assistance, making it better and more efficient.

I spend most of my days working in Bread’s DC office, writing from a cubicle that overlooks the Irish Times pub (and, currently, a noisy construction site). In my 11 years at Bread, I’ve had the privilege of taking a couple of trips like this, to write about people and development programs in the field. And the cliché is true: Travel changes you. My eyes are never more open than when I touch down in a place I’ve never been before. A place like Nicaragua.

In the taxi from the airport, my eyes are open and stinging as smoke from garbage fires and cooking fires drifts across the city and through the open car window. At stoplights, men and boys sell bottles of agua, mobile phones, watches. Women peddle fruit and empanadas (tasty turnovers). Many of the houses have corrugated tin roofs held down by strategically placed rocks. At noon, I see some children in school uniforms walking alongside the road. Girls arm in arm, giggling. I see many more children not dressed for school, some not dressed in much at all.

How to begin to take it all in? We start by having dinner with Sharon Hostetler, who’s based in Managua with Witness for Peace. WFP has worked in Central and South America since 1983. Sharon is originally from Ohio, but has lived in Nicaragua since 1982. She helps give us an overview of the country, or as much as you can get over dinner, which of course isn’t enough. I ask her what development assistance from the U.S. can do for Nicaragua.

“There’s been a tension between what’s development within a country and what’s development in U.S. government eyes. Sometimes U.S. interests are okay, and sometimes they’re at cross purposes with Nicaragua’s needs. Nicaraguans love their country. They need peace, prosperity, and development. But it has to be development that works for them.”

That’s hopeful to hear on our first day. One of the principles of foreign aid reform that Bread supports is that countries like Nicaragua must identify their own development needs and goals. I know it’s early in the trip, but I feel like we’re on the right track.

Kimberly Burge is Bread for the World's senior writer/editor.

The Disapppearing Wages

2008-11-15T11:09:21-05:00

In the midst of our U.S. (and global) economic crisis, much of the recent discussion in the media has focused on job losses and saving jobs and not as much on whether those who are employed are getting a fair wage. And in those instances where wages are mentioned, the discussion turns to asking workers to accept a pay cut in order to save jobs or save a company. While saving and creating jobs should certainly remain a priority for our country's leaders, the issue of just wages and a fair minimum wage should not be ignored.

And there are many good people who are not letting us forget about this issue of fair wages, including Kim Bobo, director of the Interfaith Worker Justice network. Kim, who served as Bread for the World's director of organizing from 1976 to 1986, recently published her new book Wage Theft In America: Why Millions in America Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It.

Here's is paragraph from the promo of the book:

In what has been described as "the crime wave that no one talks about," wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employees as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and to illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal 19 billion dollars in unpaid overtime.

Read the rest of the description of the book

If you want to learn more about this book, Kim has scheduled a book tour in the following cities:

Nov. 19-20 New York, NY
Nov. 21-23 Columbus, GA (SOA Vigil)
Nov. 25 Washington, DC
Dec. 1-3 New York, NY / Montclair, NJ
Jan. 21, 2009 Twin Cities, MN
Jan 28-29 Boston, MA
Jan 30-31 Phoenix, AZ
Feb 6 New York, NY

Click here for exact locations

Order a copy

Kim also authored another great book Lives Matter: A Handbook on Christian Organizing, which is based partly on her experiences at Bread for the World

And if you want to know about the great things she has accomplished since her days at Bread for the World, here is her bio on Wikipedia.

(And she is on Facebook, in case you want to befriend her).

How to B.E.A.T. hunger? Represent!

2008-10-29T15:15:19-04:00

On Oct 13th, I went to Castle Rock on my lunch hour for a blue meet & greet. I'm from the 6th district and had a chance to meet Hank Eng personally for a few minutes before Mark Udall arrived. Hank lived in Africa for 11 yrs as part of the Peace Corps and USAID. He’s seen hunger. And during our brief chat he told me that he knows hunger contributes to issues with national security. He also said that he knows that hunger is a problem that can be solved. I must admit, I was excited to hear this! Those who don't understand hunger & poverty don't realize they are solveable problems. If elected, Hank could be a great advocate for the hungry and impoverished.

I was able to ask the last question of Mark Udall during Q&A. I told him that before the recent increase in food prices, 1 in 8 Coloradans was considered food insecure. Given this, how would he ensure Coloradans have enough to eat? He responded by saying that hunger and poverty are demoralizing issues. He talked about what the 2008 version of the Farm Bill did right with regard to nutrition assistance/food stamps. He said his job would be to ensure the bill is adequately funded. I was told we could count on him to be a proponent of hunger issues!

On Oct 17th I attended a meet & greet and candidate forum for several districts and senatorial candidates. During the meet & greet, I talked to Hank Eng again, telling him more about who Bread is and how I would work with him, if elected, on legislative issues that pertain to hunger and poverty. He was warm and receptive and even talked about "fumigating" Congress so that critical issues could be considered and acted upon!

I was able to talk with Mike Coffman as well. I introduced myself and Bread. He was honest and said he isn’t up-to-speed on hunger/poverty issues and legislation, but is interested, and he suggested that we meet before the end of the year, if he is elected, so that he can understand more about who we are.

Don't underestimate the impact you can have by attending these events in the last few days! The only time the question is too late is if it isn't asked at all. Asking questions of these candidates in front of their constituents is a powerful way to let them know that their community cares about these issues and that we're holding them accountable. Hunger & poverty don't stop and neither can we!

FAST and PRAY

2008-10-16T13:40:13-04:00

Tamela Walhof is the Senior Regional Organizer based in Minneapolis, MN. This is her first post on Bread Blog. Welcome, Tamela!

Nearly every day brings dire news about the economy. The late night talk shows attempt jokes about bank collapses and deepening economic gloom. Maybe for relief we laugh with them, because it hurts to consider the consequences. But we know the economic crisis is no laughing matter, and we know that those who are hurt the most are those who are most vulnerable, both in our country and around the world.

Today is World Food Day. Many events and activities are planned across our nation and world today and this weekend. How do you plan to “celebrate”? Whether you have a lot planned or just a little, consider carving out some time to fast and pray.

Pray for families in this country who are struggling to make ends meet. Pray for our Haitian brothers and sisters who have been through four hurricanes in about as many weeks, and who may have been surviving on mud cookies to fill their stomachs even before the disasters. Pray for all those around the world impacted by rising food prices and the current hunger crisis.

As you fast, consider the place of food in your life and reflect on what it would be like to experience hunger on a regular basis. Think about the abundance of resources, including food, which God has provided. Examine the causes of the global food crisis, repent for ways in which you see that you personally or our country and government may have contributed to the problem, and plan ways to work at making things right, seeking God’s guidance for those plans.

If this weekend turns out not to be the right time for this action, plan to make space for fasting and prayer on another day or weekend soon. Or consider doing what the Presbyterian Church (USA) is doing, and fast each month, using each month to reflect on a different country or different cause related to the hunger crisis. Check out their plans and the story of its proposal by Iowa Hunger Action Enabler (and Bread for the World member), Nancy Lister-Settle.

If you are inclined to share your experience, send me a note. Thanks!

May God bless our fasts and hear our prayers!

Tamela K. Walhof
Email: breadmn@bread.org

photo by Arian Cubillos/AP

BLOG ACTION DAY 2008 - POVERTY

2008-10-15T13:15:13-04:00

Today is Blog Action Day - Poverty. Around the world, thousands of bloggers have united to discuss a single issue - poverty. Through this effort, event organizers aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!

There are hundreds of ways to play a personal role in ending poverty, from volunteering, to donating to charities, to supporting socially conscious businesses. Bread for the World encourages our members to engage in these kinds of activities, but also recognizes that ending hunger and poverty requires political engagement as well. By changing policies, programs and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, we provide help and opportunity far beyond the communities in which we live.

Every year, Bread for the World invites churches across the country to take up a nationwide Offering of Letters to Congress on an issue that is important to hungry people. Year after year, Bread members have won far-reaching changes for hungry and poor people.

Bread for the World Institute provides policy analysis on hunger and strategies to end it. The Institute educates its advocacy network, opinion leaders, policy makers and the public about hunger in the United States and abroad. In recognition of Blog Action Day, Bread for the World Institute has posted a basic primer on domestic and international hunger and poverty issues.

What's art got to do with poverty?

2008-10-14T19:01:45-04:00

Thursday, October 16 is World Food Day and this weekend many groups around the world are putting together events as part of the international campaign Stand Up Against Poverty (October 17-19).

Stand Up is a global mobilization to end poverty and inequality and to raise awareness for the Millennium Development Goals. The ongoing hunger crisis and economic downturn brings new challenges to progress on achieving these goals. Every day, 50,000 people die as a result of extreme poverty and the gap between rich and poor people is increasing. Nearly half the world’s population live in poverty, 70% are women. We have the power to change this.

Here in Portland, Oregon we are using art as a form of advocacy to mobilize and educate our community about the realities of hunger in the developing world. Portland State University students have been rallied together by one passionate student, Carrie Stiles, who believes people can and must make a difference. The event she is directing has pulled together politicians, anti-hunger advocates, global poverty experts and artists. Artists are not usually the main attraction at a hunger awareness event, but Carrie is one of those people who can think outside the box.

Who better can tell a visual or auditory story through pictures, dance or music that connects us to our compassion but artists? Artists live in the heart often more than the mind. Art is a compelling form of advocacy that has been used throughout the ages. Think of the wood engravings of Fritz Eichenberg during the depression that portrayed the long soup lines (see above image). Eichenberg used his gift to call for peace and justice in this world throughout his life.

Last Friday, the PSU Stand Up artists gathered together in a local studio and created a web of advocacy by passing around a ball of yarn. We looked at how advocating for one issue is connected to another. For example advocating for orphans was connected to nearly every MDG. Without help to care for themselves, orphans are connected to extreme poverty and often malnourished. Further, lack of a proper education for an orphan in the developing world (where few get an education with meager government funds to invest in schools) limits their resources later in life. Many orphans also find themselves in their precarious situation in areas like Sub-Sahara Africa because they lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. The list can go on and on.

As we have lately seen, our world economies are interconnected. Our world food system is also interconnected. Our simple exercise in passing a ball of yarn showed us the connections between each of the Millennium Development Goals. The root causes of global poverty are complex, but the MDGs are a comprehensive road map to at least cut extreme hunger in half by the year 2015. We just need the political will to follow the path. I’m excited to see what our artists will come up with outside the usual box of advocacy on Friday.

Live Blogging from the Idaho Hunger Summit: Closing session

2008-10-10T18:44:14-04:00

Each breakout session came up with a list of their top three priorities of what they’d like to work on in the upcoming year. The Idaho Hunger Relief Task Force and IIRAH will take these recommendations and turn them into advocacy priorities for next year. Here were the top two (there were 5 but they advanced the PowerPoint faster than I could type. Sorry):

1) Remove asset tests for food stamp eligibility (would require a statewide fix)
2) Reauthorization of Child Nutrition Programs

Why do I love being around anti-hunger advocates? Because no where else in the world can the announcer say “eliminate the asset test for ~~Food Stamps~~ SNAP” and have the crowd go absolutely bonkers wild. The “woot” quote was deafening.

Today was a great day. Lots of positive energy and a lot of good momentum as we approach the 2009 sessions in Congress and the Idaho legislature. Lots of folks affiliated with churches told me they plan to deepen their own church’s commitment to educate their congregations and to advocate.

Of course, making progress on these issues next year will not be without resistance. As Jim reminded us at lunch, the economic situation will undoubtedly be a strain on federal and state budgets next year. No one would dispute the political reality that new investments for anti-hunger programs (or any programs for that matter) will be easy to come by. But it’s also true that when Congress needs to find money, they do. If we can find dollars measured in trillions for wars or bailout packages, why not a few billion to make sure that kids don’t go hungry. There’s simply no reason we can’t do it, and we look forward to making this case to legislators next year.

Way too many people to recognize for the success of this conference, but a particular shout out to Kathy Gardner from the Idaho Hunger Relief Task Force and Vivian Parrish from IIRAH. Y'all are the best!

Well, I’m signing off and headed back to Portland tonight to see my beautiful wife and chickens. Thanks for reading, and Go Broncos!