Poverty Perspective http://www.wrcanada.org en-us Copyright 2010 World Relief Canada. All rights reserved Rolling Over To 2010 Laurie Cook Jan. 5, 2010 The introduction of a new calendar to the desk, or the recognition of a new number at the end of the date on a computer or cell phone seems to signal the possibility of change or hope for many. There seems to be a connection with the term “new year” that carries the inference that the old year with all of its tragedies, difficulties or at least boredom is past and there is possibility and hope for the next year.

Personally, I don’t believe I’m that affected by this. I suppose it’s because I am a more visual or experiential person. For me to be refreshed the sun needs to shine or spring needs to arrive. I can be driving in a snowstorm, have the sun break through and find not only my mood change but even my outlook on life will turn more hopeful and optimistic.

The changing of the date for me is simply technical and provides no real evidence of change, whereas the sun and changing seasons provide some physical evidence to my sensory perception that somehow my feeble brain interprets as hope or at least the possibility of positive change to come.

For those of you who find the rolling over to a new year a stimulus for hope it probably is largely due to fundamentals of western society that form a backdrop to our lives. Education, assistance programs, mobility, rest and relaxation, employment opportunities (yes even in challenging times), financial assistance, health programs etc. etc. all are foundational to the hope that comes from the new year.      

However, a significant number of people in our world have no such resources. There is nothing available in any of their senses or knowledge that gives rise to hope for the coming new year. If anything the heartbreaks and challenges of 2010 will drive them deeper towards despair.

As I write this, my hope arising for 2010 comes from my belief that more of us are forming a better perspective on poverty with a new level of responsibility and that our priorities are slowly changing.


Laurie Cook,
C.E.O., World Relief Canada


 

]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/poverty-perspective/rolling-over-to-2010 The Love We Write Across the Lives of Others Laurie Cook Aug. 21, 2009 There are days when the struggles against poverty, injustice and disasters can weigh heavy on those who have chosen to work in organizations dedicated to these causes.

I have recently been reading a book by Ed Walker who has worked in the Disaster Management Team for one of our partners, Tearfund UK. In “Scorched Earth” he gives a first hand account of the human tragedies that his team faces on a daily basis. Stories of families affected by the conflict in Sudan where our organization works with Tearfund are disturbing to say the least.

I have a great deal of respect for these workers, their dedication and their resiliency. As an aside, organizations such as Tearfund UK and others watch carefully for signs of the affects this work has on their employees and are to be admired for the care and support that they give.

If there is credibility to the term “weary in well doing” it must surely apply to those who daily give wholeheartedly the best of themselves. At times you feel the weariness in Walker’s words. Other times you recognize the internal torture that comes from facing unspeakable human tragedy. But there are also exhilarating descriptions of the celebration and even euphoria that is unique to being a first hand witness to transformation and hope rising from the ashes of extreme poverty and suffering.

Observing the lives and work of so many workers such as Ed Walker and more well-known ones such as Henri Nouwen, we sense that there is something much more enduring than compassion. There is a deep rooted love. And this love endures not only in their own lives but in the transformed lives of those they have reached; individuals, families and entire communities.

Jill Carratini for Ravi Zacharias’ “Slice of Infinity” wrote about “the love we write across the lives of others”.

Paul reminds us that love is the greatest mark our lives can leave behind because it belongs as much to eternity as it does to this moment.  Even after our faith becomes sight and our hope is fulfilled, love endures, continuing on from the present and into days long after us.  In love, as in worship, the present touches eternity, and what is seen in part whispers of the promise that it will one day be even more fully known.

It is a conviction to live with, and for Christians, it is one we are called to live. “My command is this,” says Jesus. “Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13-14). In the lives we reach out to, the hands we hold in times of despair, and in the hearts we vow to love, we leave the indelible marks of eternity. As we would respond to pangs of hunger with food and water, we are called to respond to the cries of a broken world with the love of God, made known at the Cross. Greater love has no one than this. Like a postcard circulating long after our days, the love we write across the lives of others will continue to speak, whispering that God is among us, crying out beyond the grave that could neither silence nor contain Him.

Laurie Cook,
C.E.O., World Relief Canada

 

]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/poverty-perspective/the-love-we-write-across-the-lives-of-others When All Else Fails, Worry! Laurie Cook Jul. 15, 2009
Laurie


When All Else Fails, Worry!

Sometimes I get the feeling from our media that there is a serious effort underway to keep us all anxious, in a state of informed concern, and always on the alert against—well, everything. Rather than a balanced, more general, and necessary exhortation to be cautious, we seem to manufacture fear. We take the advent of 24/7 news, a proliferation of “experts,” and a deluge of “the latest studies,” and out comes an overdose of worry or outright fear.

Everyday I am told that education standards are falling, the economy is in shambles, crime is rising, my food is dangerous, predators are on the prowl in neighborhoods, my body is under assault from saturated fats, and I can’t trust my bankers, accountants, or politicians. There are religious fanatics on the loose and weapons of mass destruction waiting to get me. Gas prices are rising, work seems hard to get, and on top of it all, the poisoned environment is gearing up to offer a big time payback.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the constant immersion in such things, the saturation of space, and the occupation of time by these ideas, does not add to the balance of hope, expectation, joy, or comfort. Could it be that into this culture framed narrative, we can listen to a word from another century? Jesus, speaking to his disciples, once said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear” (Matthew 6:25). How on earth can we not worry?

Is this possible, is it practical, is it even real? We have whole industries, massive budgets, and multitudes of people, all whose business is marketing worry. Now I’m not exactly suggesting that there is some large scale conspiracy effort to manipulate us all—although I do suspect an agency involved in all this, which is a bit more sinister than any corporation (cf. Ephesians 6:10-12, 1 Peter 5:8). What I do mean, however, is that many of us live unreflective lives. We don’t pay much (or any) attention to the things that may deeply influence or affect us. For example, it is a necessary condition of a modern economy to keep us restless, dissatisfied, and always seeking, wanting, striving for things, experiences, stuff, education, honors, fun, or whatever. Yet, this perpetual stimulus, as Kenneth Gergen writes in The Saturated Self, indeed has fallout. It leads, he proposes, to a condition of “multiphrenia.”

We are all used to terms like ADD and many similar symptoms to describe our age. We are distracted, busy, under demand, and more often than not worn out or beaten down. So what can we do to combat these forces that deeply affect us? When I was a child in Scotland, I was taught a basic discipline essential to all children in areas where walking to school by busy roads was the norm. Where crossing roads and moving through traffic was inevitable, the key was learning to do it safely. Hence, we were taught: Stop! Look! Listen! These three words and practices were drummed into us. Let me draw on this.

Learning to stop is often the beginning point in our harassed lives. Simply stop and be still. Then, look. Look around, look within, evaluate, and discern. Next, listen. What do you hear, see, sense? Culture’s invasive power may be resisted by a simple set of steps that break the hold of intrusion and allow us to reestablish our focus (see Matthew 6:33).

With a fresh resolve to live differently, listen carefully, and act intentionally, new life and will to live is unleashed. Socrates is identified as having observed that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think for many of us, this is the problem. We simply let life take over, circumstances dominate, and pressures define us. But a spirituality of resistance learns to say no. Writing in a time of great pressure, real danger, and many struggles, Paul said to the Philippians: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, and with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6). What can we expect as the outcome? God’s peace will guard our hearts and minds (Philippians 4:7).
 
There are indeed vested interests in the promotion of worry and the amplification of anxiety. But the Lord of history offers an alternative: trust in Christ and be anxious for nothing!

Stuart McAllister
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/poverty-perspective/when-all-else-fails--worry- Poverty is Major Factor in Pandemic Laurie Cook May. 15, 2009

Panic sells newspapers. It keeps our televisions on. It is exhilarating in its way. Even addictive.  And it has consequences. People, places and behaviors are stigmatized. Panic affects economies. Travelers cancel trips to Mexico, California and New York. Movies, concerts and sports events are postponed.

In the midst of a threat of pandemic, the media does not remind us of the national health insurance crisis or of the lack of access to health care that is truly a global disaster. Mid-crisis, the problem of global poverty seems too large to address or even comprehend. We have more immediate concerns.

Yet, the threat of a pandemic is precisely the moment for such reminders — that access to health care should not be a luxury, but a basic human right and a priority, at home and abroad. In 1978, representatives of 134 nations meeting in Alma-Ata, now Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, declared access to health care to be a basic human right. They signed an agreement to work toward a goal of universal access to health care by the year 2000. We are currently farther from that goal than ever — more people live in poverty, and there’s no greater access to health care.

Pandemics are fueled by poverty more than any other factor. That’s not to say that quarantine and vaccine are not very important in responding to a pandemic, but we should not lose focus on the fact that nothing will go farther to contain the spread of disease than a healthy population with access to health care.

The outbreak story is a familiar one, seen in fiction, film and the news. It goes like this: A new microbe surfaces, and people begin to get sick. The illness is mysterious and doesn’t respond to treatment. Some people die. Then the illness begins to spread. Quickly. Microbes know no boundaries. The world is shrinking. No one is more than a plane ride away from “ground zero” of the pandemic.

Then, medical experts race to identify the microbe. They prescribe treatments. They work to make a vaccine. They advise hand washing and avoidance of crowds. Images of people in surgical masks mark the danger. Those are the actions that we can take as we wait for the experts, the quarantines, the vaccines and tamiflu to solve the problem.

In the telling of the outbreak story, the media present the pandemic as solely a medical problem. But it is a social problem as well. Poverty and inadequate health care are the most effective vectors for the spread of disease. Malnourished people are more likely to get sick; overcrowded living quarters are a microbe’s haven.

The World Bank estimates the number of people in developing countries living in extreme poverty in 2005 to be 1.4 billion. The U.N. says the goal of cutting in half the number of people living on less than $1 per day is reachable by 2015.

World Bank estimates put the cost of a worst-case pandemic as high as $3 trillion. More staggering are the estimated costs in human lives, which would exceed 70 million deaths during the course of the pandemic. Those lives are, of course, not measurable in economic terms, but there is little doubt that a devastating economic crisis would follow any worst-case scenario.

To be fair to the media, some journalists work hard to inform the public without fueling panic. Their reports on the pandemic mention poverty and lack of access to health care as factors that explain why the illness is worse in some places than others. However, these are almost never flagged as the factors that explain the pandemic itself.

The problems of poverty and inadequate health care are overwhelming. There’s nothing we can do. So we wait for the experts. And we wash our hands. I am grateful for the experts. And I wash my hands. But I also marvel at the lack of discussion of health care spending, especially when facing the threat of a pandemic.

There is no better time than a moment of heightened awareness and fear to be mindful of the social causes and consequences of pandemics, and of the responsibility that belongs to all of us to work to address them. As human beings, we cannot afford to wait for the experts. The media has a responsibility to remind us of that fact.

By Priscilla Wald, English professor at Duke University.
Priscilla is the author of the book “Contagious.”  From News Services Friday, May 1.09
 
]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/poverty-perspective/poverty-is-major-factor-in-pandemic A Time to *Hunker Down Laurie Cook Mar. 25, 2009
And lest we forget, there are many who were already poor, especially in other countries who have even less in the way of options and social nets to help them in difficult times. As individuals and organizations we must look carefully at what we are responsible for and attempt to do the right thing. But in difficult times we know that it's even more important for us to look at what we can do for the vulnerable. I was so challenged by the following story found in an article written by Sarah Boesveld in the Globe and Mail's Life Section January 26, 2009 that I thought I would share it with you.

When the mass layoffs started at Chrysler last November, Myra Sawicki didn't like the look of her colleague. Normally chatty and engaging, information technology analyst Brian Barlow was sickly pale and silent. It's no wonder. He'd received his layoff notice a few days before, and his wife lost her job the day after. "How could he pay the mortgage for their two-storey home in Tecumseh, Ont.?" he wondered. "How could he keep the kids in hockey and art classes, never mind keep them fed?"

Ms. Sawicki had an idea. She's 52, her kids are grown, her truck-driver husband, Peter, has good health insurance and her mother is battling dementia and will soon forget who she is. After getting a surprised management's approval, Ms. Sawicki took her friend aside and offered to take his layoff so he could keep his job. "I said,'Brian, I'm willing to take the layoff because I'm in a better position to handle it than I think you are,'"she recalled from her home in Macomb Michigan. His first response was, 'Absolutely not.'"But after some gentle urging, he accepted."

Workplace experts told of the situation all agreed it's rare. But, they acknowledged, this sour economy is forging a brand of altruism in workplaces across North America, however quietly (Ms. Sawicki originally asked to remain anonymous for this story). It's not just among individuals, either. Even businesses are trying to make layoffs a last resort. And more and more employees would rather make personal sacrifices than see their colleagues go.

Should we be surprised that these kind, and at times heroic, gestures are cropping up during a raging economic storm? No, says Kevin Kelloway, professor of organizational behaviour at St. Mary's University in Halifax, because colleague bolstering happens more than we may realize. "Almost every organization survives off acts of altruism," he says.

"Nurses will wake up at 4 a.m. on their day off and go in to work because they know it's their friends who will suffer if they don't pitch in," he says. Mr. Barlow says his former colleague's generous act didn't just save him his job, it also dissipated the dark clouds that hovered in his IT department in recent months. "Morale is up now. (Co-workers) told me, "That was a great thing that Myra did," he says. "It made everyone feel warm and fuzzy." And Mr. Barlow himself got an extra jolt of faith from the whole experience. “It brings back your belief in man and what's right.

I trust we don't just "hunker down" but rather be watchful of the vulnerable in our neighbourhood our town and our world.

Laurie Cook
C.E.O.World Relief Canada

*Hunker Down: to take shelter, literally or figuratively; to assume a defensive position to resist difficulties.]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/poverty-perspective/a-time-to--hunker-down