The Match Factory | March-May, 2008

Introduction and ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next three months
by Lucy AitkenRead

rom International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to International Day of Families, this quarter of The Match Factory calendar throws up some diverse and very topical issues. I have chosen a couple each month to focus on, but many of these ideas can be adapted and applied to some of the dates not featured here. Have a scan at the one-year calendar and see what dates better suit your diary.

March  8 | International Women’s Day 

International Women’s Day is gathering momentum each year. Agencies and individuals across the world are increasingly engaging with this date, as it is realised the extent to which gender plays a role in poverty and human rights. A few days before becoming the most recent General of The Salvation Army, Shaw Clifton outlined the significance of women’s current position across the globe, particularly focusing on the problem of gender stereotyping and exploitation. General Clifton suggested The Salvation Army was “beautifully poised” to address some of these issues. Here are some sobering statistics:

70 per cent of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty are female.
There are twice as many women as men among the world’s 900 million illiterates.
On average, women are paid 30-40 per cent less than men for comparable work.
Above 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women.
A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1-in-16 chance of dying in pregnancy. This compares with a 1-in-3,700 risk for a woman from North America.
Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day, an estimated 529,000 each year from pregnancy-related causes.

Screen it: There are plenty of hard-hitting films about the role of gender in the outplaying of human rights. India’s Missing Girls and Water are documentaries/films about very real situations. Here is a recent list of hard-hitting films about women.
Discuss it: Hold a discussion panel at your church about the situation of women in the church. Throw in some meaty questions about equality in the scriptures, the Booths’ stance on women in ministry and the current situation.
Feature it: Have a slot in your Sunday morning to talk about the issues affecting women across the world and highlight some of The Salvation Army’s developing nation work with women - the human trafficking work is particularly pertinent.
Host it: Host a dessert evening at your church to explore the situation of women around the world - get in touch with some local development agencies and see if they would be willing to come and do a presentation.

March 22 | World Water Day 

I wonder if when Jesus used the image of water so often he knew it would one day become such a symbol of the current world’s great inequality and injustice. While the wealthy have clean, pure water in abundance and use it to a wasteful degree, the poorer parts of the world have thousands of people dying every day because of lack of access to it.

50,000 people die each day from lack of access to clean water.
More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhoea.
More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 per cent of the world’s population - do not have basic sanitation.
More than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.
Four out of every ten people in the world don’t have access even to a simple latrine.
Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.

Change it: Do you supply bottled water in your community centre/cafe, or does your university or workplace provide it? If so, do a bit of research and find a supplier who gives some of the profit to water projects in the developing world. Visit this site as an example of what you can do.
Feature it: Use some of the facts listed above in your newsletter/church bulletin/personal blog, get some discussion going about water as a symbol of injustice. Point people to this site where they can buy bottles of water as presents, while really giving a gift towards sanitation in the developing world.
Raise it: Hold a “Swim for water” evening at your local pool. Have people sponsor every length done by some of your friends or church people. Send the funds to projects - like African Well Fund - that build wells in remote villages.

April  7 | World Health Day

When we need one, it is easy to take access to a doctor for granted… even if we have to pay. Access to some form of health care shouldn’t be a luxury, but in far too many circumstances it is. Poor people are vulnerable to ill health for many reasons, but this vulnerability is exacerbated by poor access to doctors, vaccines and medicines. Health care for all is a viable option and perhaps the church needs to be a loud voice in calling for it.  Think on these facts:

Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus.
Every 30 seconds an African child dies of malaria - more than one million child deaths a year.
Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
Each year, approximately 300 million to 500 million people are infected with malaria. Approximately three million people die as a result.
Tuberculosis is the leading AIDS-related killer and in some parts of Africa, 75 percent of people with HIV also have TB.

Read it: There is a wealth of information on health, particularly in reference to developing nations. What could be of particular interest is the controversy surrounding patents and trial testing. Here is some information on the topic from Oxfam.
Discuss it: At your home group, or with some friends watch The Constant Gardener and spare some time at the end to talk through some of the issues raised. While the film is fiction, it has been suggested by many that it is a tame portrayal of pharmaceutical company trial-testing in developing nations.

April 21-27 | Global Campaign for Education Week

In 1997, when Tony Blair* entered office as the UK’s prime minister, he announced a new policy focus in his first speech: “Education, Education, Education”. The only other quote as famous on this topic is Pink Floyds’ “We don’t need no education!” Education as a priority or education as unnecessary - millions of children across the world don’t get the choice. The international community has a role to play because currently many countries can’t put education on their agenda because so much money is being spent on servicing debt.

80 million children are currently out of school, the majority of whom are girls.
More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education.
If a girl is educated for six years or more, as an adult her prenatal care, postnatal care and childbirth survival rates will dramatically and consistently improve.
Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated.
AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling.
The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education.

Feature it: Get your church people thinking about the issues by doing a short drama or presentation in your meeting. Use the facts listed above and have them think about what can be done to change this.
Change it: As a church join the Global Campaign for Education. This will mean joining local coalitions, researching the issues and debates, putting pressure on government and generally campaigning for education for all.

21-27 April | Turn off TV week 

This date isn’t suggesting that the television is wholly bad. It simply points to the potential danger of too much TV. In a year, the average child spends 900 hours in school and nearly 1,023 hours in front of a TV - this is just a little scary. These teachers reinforce gender and racial stereotypes, focus far too much on violence and aggression and bombard children with advertisements.

Read it: Read How TV affects your child and  Average home has more TVs than people.
Host it: A week of after-school activities for kids that don’t involve movies or TV. Go on walks, play some card games, make some music.
Change it: If you think you might have too many TV’s in your house (the average home has more TV’s then people in it) give one away or make one into a flower pot!

May   10 | World Fair Trade Day

All over the world Salvation Army territories are creating Fair Trade policies and encouraging Fair Trade products to be served in centres and corps. Fair Trade is a fantastic example of what can happen when consumers demand better trade and labour rights in the developing world. Because of the increase in Fair Trade products such as coffee, tea and chocolate, many producers and their villages are experiencing more stable contracts, better pay and the development of social infrastructure such as schools and clinics.

In 2006, Fair Trade certified sales amounted to approximately $2.3 billion worldwide, a 41% year-to-year increase.
In October 2006, over 1.5 million disadvantaged producers worldwide were directly benefiting from Fair Trade, while an additional 5 million benefited from Fair Trade funded infrastructure and community development projects.

However:

Rigged trade rules cost the developing world $700 billion a year, according to the UN.
International trade is worth $10 million a minute. But poor countries only account for 0.4% of this trade. Indeed, their share is actually half of what it was in 1980.
Income per person in the poorest countries in Africa has fallen by a quarter in the past 20 years.
The average EU cow is subsidised to the tune of around $800. Ethiopia’s total national income, per person per year, is around $100.

Change it: Get your church/university/school/workplace using Fair Trade products. If you get this done you can go for “Fair Trade Certified” status which gets you kudos and a certificate! This could be a project for a home group or youth group. See here for more info on how to go about that.
Preach it: The stark warnings of Amos against unjust trade and corrupt practice is a great starting point for speaking on Fair Trade, or you might want to focus on Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor, or the ethical choice presented in 2 Samuel 23:13-17. For more ideas on this see this link.
Screen it: Blackgold is a fantastic film already doing the rounds of The Salvation Army. It is all about injustice and the coffee industry, a must-see documentary.
Discuss it: As you can see from the above statistics, Fair Trade is doing some great stuff. But international trade on the whole is leaving the developing nations desperate. Begin a conversation about how your church can become involved in the wider campaign for trade justice.

May 21 | World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development

Recently the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, caused an uproar when he suggested that some aspects of Muslim culture need to be explored in a British context. The Archbishop was simply calling for some dialogue about the way different cultures are experienced and excluded, yet he met great opposition. The Church has a critical role to play in building bridges across cultural and ethnic canyons and has the potential to be a beautiful model in a world that where lack of dialogue and too much discrimination lead to aggression.

Pray it: How about collecting newspapers for a few weeks and taking them along to youth group? Encourage people to scan them for articles relating to race/ethnicity/cultural practices. When you have found a few, pray through them - for healing, reconciliation and the desire to be an agent of peace in the situations.
Host it: Fly in the face of divisive boundaries and host a feast of nations. Ask people from your church and community to bring some dishes, instruments, CDs and have a party.
Discuss it: Charge your small groups with the question “How can our church better engage the many cultures represented in our community?”

This is only a small selection of The Match Factory dates and ideas. Please comment with more ideas for people and churches to engage with these dates. Click here to see the full list of days/weeks and actions planned for 2008.

Writer: Lucy AitkenRead lives in London, England where she is studying and working on the activist team of a development agency. Lucy enjoys ranting and raving and marching about various global issues. Lucy will continue to monitor, expand and write the quarterly Match Factory listing on theRubicon. Visit her blog which she updates periodically.

Thursday, February 21st, 2008 Match factory

2 Comments to The Match Factory | March-May, 2008

cool initiative, and super useful for child and youth workers who want to get their kids excited about social justice!

i really like the story behind the match factory–shows in a simple yet powerful way how mercy and justice (and politics!) are intertwined and the church is called to prophetically engage it all. (it also reminded me of the contemporary campaign for safe cosmetics–salon workers’ health is routinely compromised when breathing in toxic fumes like formaldehyde in nail polish, for example–though i suspect the salvation army might not be as compelled to lend its voice to this particular campaign.
april 6 is international day for landmine awareness. i led an awareness activity on this little-known but serious problem with my sunday school kids last year and it went over well, likely because they knew nothing about it. there are plenty of resources, info and advocacy suggestions on the web. (the landmines problem also makes a fitting conversation starter on the depths of human evil…)