Bread Blog

What's art got to do with poverty?

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.

Hope Grounded in Action

This post is by Bread activist Elaine VanCleave from Birmingham, AL.

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” - St. Augustine

This ancient quote from Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo emerged as the overriding theme as I attended global poverty events over the course of two days last week in New York City.

On Sept 22 and 25, the General Assembly of the United Nations conducted two high level meetings to discuss Africa’s Development Needs and, more generally, the Millennium Development Goals.  During the week, NGO’s, philanthropists, business, faith and civil society leaders, scientists, campaigners, and activists met in dozens of complementary events to coincide with this annual meeting of world leaders.  From the Clinton Global Initiative that drew over 1,000 high profile participants, including both presidential candidates, to the outdoor celebrity launch of Will.i.am’s In My Name YouTube project, the Millennium Development Goals, hunger, extreme poverty, and global disease took center stage.

For the previous 51 weeks of the past year, however, extreme poverty, hunger, and global disease remained silent killers with very little press and public attention.  It was UNICEF’s James Grant who, in the 1980’s, first used the image of jumbo jets filled with children crashing repeatedly throughout the day to illustrate how complacently we accept the quiet deaths of, what was then, 40,000 children per day of hunger and related preventable diseases.  In the last 20+ years, that astounding figure has dropped but we still live in a world where a child dies every 3 seconds from hunger and poverty-related causes.

Faced with such a grim statistic as 1 child death every 3 seconds, one could easily feel angry, hopeless, and, in turn, helpless.

$700 billion for the U.S. economy? How about $72 billion for efforts to end global poverty?

The US Congress was debating the $700 billion rescue package last week at about the same time that world leaders were meeting at the United Nations in New York to track progress on the Millennium Development Goals.   

An article recently published by CommonDreams.org, reprinted from Inter Press Service, draws a contrast between the amount of money that some experts say is needed to save the U.S. economy and the amount that is recommended for world leaders to allocate in order for us to achieve the MDGs by 2015.  The price tag for the U.S. rescue is $700 billion; the amount needed to achieve the MDGs is only about one-tenth that amount: $72 billion.

The article does not criticize the amount spent on rescuing the U.S. economy.  In fact, it suggests that the problem must be fixed because a broken U.S. and global economic system could make the situation worse for poor people around the world.  "This only compounds the damage [already] being caused by much higher prices for food and fuel", the article quoted U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as saying.

The point is, that if the U.S. can come up with $700 billion to save the U.S. economy, the wealthy nations of the world can come up $72 billion to help reduce global poverty.

Click here to read the full article, which is entitled No Bailout for the World's Poorest.

Hunger Crisis and the need for a religious response

While Nation's leaders were meeting in New York for the U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals, religious leaders gathered at the Interfaith Consultation on the Global Hunger Crisis where more than 50 leaders gathered for prayer and discernment of the role of religious communities in responding to the crisis, which threatens to reverse the progress made toward the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)  "Heads of Communion," and President/CEO's of relief and development organizations, from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions attended.

photo Robin Holland

On Wednesday, September 24, 2008, David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, delivered the following speech on the hunger crisis and the response needed by the religious community.

I am grateful to all of each of you for your leadership and for taking time out of your busy schedule to reflect together on the global hunger crisis.

I am honored to have this opportunity to introduce the problem and some ideas about how we should respond.

Let me begin with the good news.  We are meeting in conjunction with the U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals.  The first goal is to cut poverty and hunger in half between 1990 and 2015.

The United Nations thinks we are still on track to cut in half the number of people living in absolute poverty.

The proportion of children under five who are undernourished dropped from 33 percent in 1990 to 26 percent in 2006.

Most developing countries are not on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, but most countries have made real progress on some of the goals.

In this country, we have not made sustained progress against poverty and hunger.  We have reduced poverty at a couple times in our recent history and neglected poverty in other periods.  So most Americans have come to believe that substantially and permanently reducing poverty is impossible. 

But in fact, our period of history is a time of extraordinary progress against hunger, poverty, and disease.

Right now, we are in the midst of a major setback.  In our own country, unemployment is 6% and rising, and food banks across the country are besieged with requests for emergency help.

But the global hunger crisis is even more severe, because the poverty is much more severe to start with, and because poor people in developing countries typically spend two-thirds of their total income on some basic commodity – rice, wheat, corn or sorghum.  The prices for those commodities have doubled over the last two years.

 

Letter to the Church

Micah Challenge posted a letter to the church from leaders in the Global South.  It is very powerful.  You can download a copy here.

August, 2008

TO THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES

As the Church of the Lord in what is known as the "Southern" part of the world, moved by the Holy Spirit to fight for the abundant life that Jesus Christ offers, we address our Christian family in the United States, a Church of the same covenant, faith and love. Grace and Peace to all of our brothers and sisters.

We know your works of love; these works have allowed millions of human beings for many generations in our countries in the South to receive the gospel, the Grace of Jesus Christ and the power of His Salvation. The U.S. church's untiring missionary effort planted in our lands Hope in Him who came to reconcile EVERYTHING.

Nevertheless, the political, social and economic situation in the places where this hope has been announced is increasingly distressing. Millions of people in the global South are dying of hunger, violence and injustice. These situations of poverty and pain are not simply the product of the internal functions of our countries; rather they are the results of the international policies of the governments that wield global power.

Therefore, we have this against you, brothers and sisters, that along with this powerful announcing of the Gospel, the Church from the United States has not also raised its voice in protest against the injustices that powerful governments and institutions are inflicting on the global South - injustices that afflict the lives and ecosystems of millions of people who, centuries after the proclamation of the Gospel, still have not seen the sweat of their brow turned into bread.

The worsening inequality and poverty in the South is alarming. Seven years since the United States and 191 other nations publicly promised to cut extreme global poverty in half by the year 2015 through the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), your country has made only a little progress towards fulfilling its commitments.

The MDGs should stir us to action because they echo the calls of the biblical prophets for justice and equity. Further, they are achievable and measurable markers on the roadmap to end extreme global poverty.

And so we ask you as sisters and brothers, citizens of the wealthiest most powerful nation on earth, to publicly challenge your candidates and political leaders - now and after the elections are over - to lead the world in the struggle to cut global poverty in half by 2015. If you who know the Truth will not speak for us who will?

The Church in the United States has the opportunity today to be faithful to the Hope that it preaches. We urge you to remember that the Hope to which you were called as a messenger demands that you seek first the Kingdom of God and God's justice.

Out of love for us, the global Church, in holiness, use your citizenship responsibly for the benefit of the entire world; it is for this very reason that the Lord poured out His life on the Cross.

All who have ears, let them hear what the Lord says to His Church.

Ndaba Mazabane
President
Association of Evangelicals in Southern Africa

Bishop Gerry Seale
General Secretary/CEO
Evangelical Association of the Caribbean

Dr. Richard Howell
General Secretary
Evangelical Fellowship of India

Rev Moss Ntlha
General Secretary
Evangelical Alliance of South Africa

C. Rene Padilla
President
Kairos (Peru)

Pastor Owen Isaacs
General Secretary
Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana

Bishop Efraim Tendero
President
Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches

Rev Heng Cheng
General Secretary/CEO
Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia

Bishop Paul Mususu
Executive Director/CEO
Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia

Rev Bambang Semedi
General Secretary
Southern Part Sumatera Christian Church

Dr. Reynaldo R. Avante
National Coordinator
Micah Challenge Philippines

Bishop Mano Rumalshah
Bishop
Diocese of Peshawar (Pakistan)

Alfonso Weiland
Co-founder
Paz y Esperanza (Peru)

Erika Izquierdo
Paz y Esperanza (Peru)

Lawrence Tempfwe
National Facilitator
Micah Challenge Zambia

Rev Joe Simfukwe
Principal
Bible College of Central Africa

João Pedro Martins
National Coordinator
Micah Challenge Portugal

Rev Soleman Batti
Chairman
The Toraja Church (Indonesia)

Rev Untung S.K. Wijayaputra
President
The Toraja Mamasa Church (Indonesia)

d'Karlo Pyrba
Director
YABIMA Foundation (Indonesia)

Semuel Takajanji
Director
Kuda Putih Sejahtera Foundation (Indonesia)

Rev Iskandar Saher
Executive Director
Center for the Development of Holistic Ministry (Indonesia)

Gahungu Bunini*
General Secretary
Evangelical Alliance of Rwanda

            *Signed on with the names of 16 pastors in the Evangelical Alliance of Rwanda

Bishop Mano Rumalshah
Bishop
Diocese of Peshawar (Pakistan)

Rev Michael Dasey
Rector
Gungahlin Anglican Church (Australia)

Rev Geoffrey Taylor
Director
SoulSupply (Australia)

Rev. Paul Craig
Senior Pastor
Diamond Valley Baptist Church (Australia)

Rev Greg Templeton
Pastor
Sydenham Baptist Church (Australia)

Morris Alex
Pastor
Souls Outreach Church

Captain Robert Casburn,   
Commanding Officer
The salvation Army Northern Waves Fellowship (Australia)

Time is running out on the Global Poverty Act

We sent out an action alert today to our networks about the Global Poverty Act.  Congress is quickly approaching the end of its congressional session.  We'd like to see the Global Poverty Act reach the senate floor for a vote.  If it doesn't go to the floor, we'll need to start all over next year with the new congress.  Your voice is important.  Here are a few easy steps for taking action:

1) PRAY: Please pray that God will work in the hearts and minds of all U.S. senators. Pray that God moves them to understand that taking actions like passing the Global Poverty Act helps our nation keep the promises it has made to the world's poorest people.  Pray that the senators will be motivated by a deep concern for justice for all God's people.

2) ACT: Before you make your call, check to see if your member of congress is a cosponsor of the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433).  If so, read a list of talking points for existing cosponsors.

If your senator is not listed as a cosponsor, ask them to cosponsor the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) and pass the legislation before the end of this congressional session.   Call 1-800-826-3688 as soon as possible but no later than July 25. 

[Note:  This toll-free number will connect you to the Capitol switchboard, where you will ask to be connected to your senator's office in order to leave your message. Find out who your senators are.]

Key points to make when you call:

• Please cosponsor the Global Poverty Act. (If your senator is already a cosponsor--click here for the list--your talking points will be different. Read the list of talking points for senators who have signed on as cosponsors.)
• With time running out on the legislative calendar, Senate leadership needs to see a robust list of cosponsors to move this important bill to the floor.
• The Global Poverty Act seeks to bring clarity, coordination, and accountability to our foreign assistance programs has already passed through the House and has bipartisan support in the Senate.
• The act would require the president to develop and implement a coordinated strategy of U.S. aid, debt relief, and trade policies to meet the goal of cutting by half the number of people who live on less than $1 a day by 2015.

Visit this page for background information.

Post in the comments section to let us know how it goes!

Recipe for Hope: Respond to the Hunger Crisis

You can make a difference in the global hunger crisis.

It's in the news nearly every day: Food prices are soaring worldwide. More low-income people in the United States are making trips to food banks, whose stocks are quickly depleting. In developing countries, for the world's poorest people—who spend up to 80 percent of their income to buy food—the situation is even more devastating. 

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But you have the power to be part of the solution.  JOIN THE CAMPAIGN

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For six weeks, from Mother's Day through Father's Day, Bread for the World will conduct an online campaign to help hunger activists raise awareness and take action. Each week, an email from Bread will offer the ingredients for:

• Recipe for Despair
  More information on the causes of this crisis; and a


• Recipe for Hope
  Specific actions you can take to help end it. You can also invite your friends to join the campaign.

It's easy to feel helpless when you watch people around the world suffering for lack of food. Be part of the Recipe for Hope, and be part of the solution.

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JOIN THE CAMPAIGN 

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Learn more about rising food prices and the hunger crisis.

Read Bread's press release on the Recipe for Hope and invite your friends to join on Facebook.

We'll also be updating the blog during the six-week campaign with the actions we'll be urging folks to take - thank you in advance for joining!  It's quick and free to sign up, and it matters - right now.

Clap Your Hands Say YEAH!

Last week, many of you probably received action alerts from us and/or the ONE Campaign asking you to call your senators (If you don't get the alerts, sign up here!).  The ask was to urge them to save vital foreign assistance funding that was in danger of being dramatically cut and in case you didn't hear already, the results of your calls and the Senate vote are in and I'm here to report:

Very, Very Good News!

Early Friday morning of last week, the Senate decided overwhelmingly to restore the $4.1 Billion shortfall in the International Affairs Budget - which recommends funding levels for federal programs including effective anti-poverty efforts. The "Biden-Lugar Amendment" (S. Amdt 4245) passed 73-23 with overwhelming bipartisan support! (See how your senators voted here)

So here's what happened... Earlier last week, we asked you to called to support the Feinstein (D-CA) - Smith (R-OR) amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the International Affairs function of the FY09 budget resolution. Shortly after calls started to flood in (there were nearly a thousand calls from Bread supporters alone), we learned that Senators Biden (D-DE) and Lugar (R-IN) had decided to do even better and sponsor an amendment that brought the International Affairs back to the level of the president's request of $39.8 billion - a $4.1 Billion increase. So we turned our attention to the Biden-Lugar amendment which contained this bigger increase--and that amendment passed.

Bottom line: we couldn't have done this without you. This victory signals the power of grassroots demands for building a more just world. Moreover, this is an important first step in Bread for the World's campaign to increase poverty-focused development assistance by $5 billion next year.

Yet our work is not done. The budget resolution is just a spending blueprint and does not dictate the details of how this money should be spent. However the budget does send an important signal to appropriators who will be making these final decisions, and last Friday's vote shows the broad support these programs have.

Let's build on this momentum. Can you write a letter to the editor? Over the next few days, your local papers may run stories about the federal budget. We need to make sure the story focuses on what the budget resolution could mean for reducing poverty and giving hope to millions of our brothers and sisters around the world.

We also want to thank the senators that voted in favor of the amendment, and call those into account who did not. We have sample talking points if you need help getting started (see the 'comment' under this post), but your letter is always more likely to get published if it is original and comes from the heart. Please consider writing one, and if you have any questions, you can e-mail or call Shawnda Hines, Grassroots Media Associate at Bread, at shines@bread.org or at 888-752-7323 x2.

Thank you again for your passion for working to end hunger in our time.

This is Your Brain on Mud...Any Questions?

Ok, maybe not 'brain' per se, but there's something undeniably "internal organ-ish" about the continents and countries in that picture, courtesy of World Mapper, a really neat website that (fake word alert) mishes and mashes the globe as we know it to illustrate a certain subject of interest. 

This particular map is "The Wretched Dollar", which "shows the proportion of all people living on less than or equal to US $1 in purchasing power parity a day." (try saying that last bit 5 times fast)

And why that particular map for today's post? (One could lose a whole afternoon checking out different categories/maps.  I did.  For example, compare the 'Physicians Working' map to the 'Malaria Deaths' map.  But wait 'til you've finished this post)

Because Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General for the United Nations, has a profoundly relevant (i.e. required reading) Op-Ed in today's Washington Post: The New Face of Hunger

In it, he takes an urgent topic that we've covered some the past couple weeks - the rising price of food globally and subsequent increase in shortages (a rather oxymoronic phrase, I admit) - and ties that in to the continued need and challenge to achieve Millennium Development Goal #1 (halving the amount of people living on less than $1/day by 2015).  He also stresses that even more people are at risk of or already falling into this kind of hunger/poverty, given the new dynamics of the world food economy.

"When people are that poor, and inflation erodes their meager earnings, they generally do one of two things: They buy less food, or they buy cheaper, less nutritious food. The result is the same -- more hunger and less chance of a healthy future."

Nowhere is that as true right now as it is in Haiti, one of the poorest countries on earth.  For some there, 'cheaper, less nutritious food' isn't a selection - it's cheaper, less nutritious...MUD.  That link will bring you to a story flaring up around areas of the blogosphere and various news outlets recently that details exactly what it sounds like.  The Haitian poor are resorting to mud pies to fill their stomachs with something...anything.  It's a devastating, direct result of rising food prices and food shortages for those living on less than $1/day.

What can you do? There are a lot of options out there.  One of the most viable is making sure that The Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) passes in the Senate and is signed into law.  It would make commitment to achieving the first MDG a matter of U.S. policy.  Find out how you can take action here to make sure that your senator is a cosponsor (and also pushing for full and increased poverty focused development assistance).

The Congressional Easter Recess is also coming up.  Having a Letter to the Editor published or scheduling a visit to your Representative/Senator's office during that time will have a potent effect in helping them see that these are much more than just statistics and impersonal dollar amounts.  Contact us if you'd like help/talking points for doing either of those things. Your personal interactions and words show that real people care and are affected.

And that mud is not an option.

 

U.S. Soccer League and WNBA Help with Anti-Malaria Efforts in Africa

Major League Soccer (MLS), the US based soccer league, and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) do not get the same exposure with the U.S. public as the big four sports leagues: the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association or the National Hockey League.   

But the MLS and the WNBA have been growing in popularity in recent years.  The two leagues are using this newly found exposure for a good purpose.

I happened on a great story involving the MLS and the WNBA the other day about the involvement of athletes from the two leagues with the United Nations Foundation with a campaign called Nothing But Nets.  This is a grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Through the campaign, many families in poor countries in the region receive insectide-treated bed nets.  This helps reduce mosquito bites, which is the most common way in which malaria is transmitted.  This ties in very closely to the Sixth Millennium Development Goal to combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases as part of the effort to address global poverty.

The symbolism of nets is important in other ways for the players of the MLS (or any soccer player for that matter).  Whenever the ball touches the net (on the inside), someone has scored a GOOOL.  By participating in this program, MLS players like Dwayne de Rosario of the Houston Dynamo, Diego Gutierrez of the Chicago Fire and the league itself have scored a different kind of GOOOL.  Both recently players traveled to Mali as part of the program,  Here is a great article in ESPN.com.

"One of the reasons that we get involved in things like this is to make a difference," said Gutierrez.  "We fully realize that sometimes people listen to professional athletes a little more than they would anyone else. We have an ability and a platform to get a word out there."

Ruth Riley of the San Antonio Silver Stars of the WNBA, who has also become very involved with the program, also went on this trip to Mali. She talked about her experiences to students at Brown Elementary  School in San Antonio.

They have been working hard to raise money for the Campaign, and the students are extremely enthusiastic about saving the lives of children an ocean away!"

Read her full blog post

So there are many ways in which all of us, famous or not famous, can do our part to promoting the MDGs.  Some of us do it by organizing a letter-writing campaign as part of Bread for the World's 2008 Offering of Letters to increase poverty-focused development assistance by $5 billion..  Others do it by joining other campaigns involving direct service. Many people do both. Ultimately, we all have the same goal: to greatly reduce global poverty by 2015 and beyond.