The following is excerpted from an interview with Ruth Padilla Deborst in the August 2007 issue of Christianity Today. Padilla Deborst is a distinguished theologian and educator and current president of the Latin American Theological Fellowship. She will be a featured presenter at the 2007 OTM conference Hear. Listen. Connect.
What good, if any, can come from North American Christians having such a concentration of wealth and power?
I don’t think it’s very useful to say, I’m sorry I have so much power. I wish I didn’t have it. Or for individual North Americans to try to erase that inequality personally. You could step out of the grid, but the grid still exists. Rather, I think you need to say, I do have power. Whom is it supposed to serve?
The free-trade agreements between our countries are supposedly about giving people opportunity. There’s something to that: Part of human dignity is the capacity to work. But people need to be granted that option. How can free-trade agreements really be free when this country subsidizes its agriculture and other industries in order to favor its own interests? North American Christians can do something about this with their own political power - by calling for trade agreements that are both free and fair.
Posted in Poverty, Power | 3 Comments »
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Personalizing Microfinance
Monday, July 16th, 2007This article was originally posted on Dave Richard’s blog in February 2006 and he has graciously given his permission for us to repost it here. Dave is a co-founder of Off The Map and a microfinance expert. Dave cares passionately about economic empowerment and you can learn more about innovative solutions for ending global poverty on his blog.
I discovered a new microfinance service called Kiva which is attempting to truly enable person-to-person loans between a loan provider in developed countries and a low-income borrower in developing country.
I am very interested in these kind of innovations because there are currently very few options for middle-class North Americans to invest (not donate) their money in helping very low-income microentrepreneurs start or expand their microbusinesses in order to grow their income and break cycles of generational poverty.
Kiva is using technology to keep the costs of this kind of personalized service to a minimum. Here’s how it works. You go to the Kiva web site and browse through a selection of pre-reviewed loan applications. You get to read an overview of the borrower (including photo), what business they want to invest money in, what size of loan they are requesting and how much they have raised so far. Once you’ve found someone you’d like to make a loan to, you can instantly (using Paypal) make a loan for a portion (minimum $25) or all of the remaining loan ask size. All of the money is managed by Kiva’s web service with human intervention so it is very cost efficient and scalable.
Posted in Economics, Poverty | 4 Comments »
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Jesus Said…
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Here is the final installment in our series of posters from artist-provocateur Tim Nyberg
In his book God’s Politics, Jim Wallis shares this anecdote:
I often do a little Bible quiz for audiences I’m speaking to. I ask this question: “What is the most famous biblical text in America about the poor?” Every time, I mean every single time, I receive the same answer. “The poor you will always have with you!” they shout out…
How do modern Americans interpret this text? We simply use it as an excuse. “The poor you will always have with you” gets translated into “There is nothing we can do about poverty, and the poor will always be there, so why bother?”
Posted in Poverty | 5 Comments »
- Have you encountered this attitude in church or society?
- What do you think are the root causes of indifference toward the poor?
- What will it take to change people’s attitudes?
The world I would like to leave our children, grandchildren, and for 7 generations beyond
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007You 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.
Posted in Activism, Environmentalism, HIV/AIDS, Health Care, Peace, Poverty, What can we do? | 5 Comments »Read the rest of this news item »
Letter from My Congressman
Monday, April 2nd, 2007The 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.
Posted in HIV/AIDS, Politics, Poverty | 3 Comments »
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Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
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?
Posted in HIV/AIDS, Poverty | 5 Comments »
