You know how you can start searching for something on the internet and then wind up someplace else? Recently, I discovered this video of Bill Clinton annoucing his “wish” at the TED awards. It was on someone’s blog (http://www.matchmine.com/blog/2007/05/03/the-ted-prize).
From the blog,
Bill Clinton won the prize this year, and elected to speak about his attempts to right the non-deeds of his administration in Rwanda.
I was so moved by that statement and Bill’s speech, I had to share it wth others. I ask as you listen and watch the video that you set aside any of your preconceived notions of who Bill Clinton is.
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The following is part of a letter I recently received from my Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR).
Dear Ms. Stanton:
Thanks for your message expressing concerns about funding for international HIV/AIDS and anti-poverty programs in 2007. I appreciate hearing from you…
Regarding funding for international HIV/AIDS programs, I have tried for years to redirect U.S. foreign assistance away from military aid and toward humanitarian assistance. As you know, many nations are witnessing the destruction of entire generations of their citizens through disease epidemics, poverty, famine, and poor education. The U.S. should assist in combating such problems.
Currently, our foreign aid priorities are awful. Around one-quarter to one-third of the money the U.S. will spend on foreign aid this year will go toward military, not humanitarian, assistance. It’s hard to see how selling an F-16 fighter aircraft to an impoverished nation will assist in treating one AIDS victim, providing a single meal, or educating one child. Read the rest of this news item »
She was seven – about the age of my daughter Eowyn. Her brown eyes were gentle and shy. Her bare feet crushed dry earth and rotting banana leaves as she led us along a little path to two mounds. “Daddy,” she said, pointing at the first, “Mummy,” indicating the second.
She looked down, ashamed, as she showed us her wet, raggedy bedding inside the mud hut.
“Why don’t you put it out to dry in the sun now it’s stopped raining?”
“The other children would laugh at me…”
Reports about Africa’s HIV-AIDS crisis and ‘child-led households’ can be abstract and removed. Visiting Uganda left indelible sadness in my heart. Returning to the West brings with it an ongoing tension between slipping back into the guilt of a comparatively luxurious lifestyle, and being painfully, helplessly aware of the injustice.
What struggles do you have regarding your lifestyle and the injustice many in our world experience? What creates despair for you? Hope?
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