The Match Factory | Sept-Oct, 2008
Ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next two months
by Lucy AitkenRead
W
elcome to another installment of ideas for commemorating some important days and issues found in September and October. This is a small selection of a few of the dates taken from the longer list that can be found here.
September 12 | International Literacy Day
‘Literacy is the best remedy’ proclaims the slogan of the UN’s International Literacy Day, for there are robust links between literacy levels and health. Perhaps unsurprisingly the ability to read has a major effect on the contracting of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis in developing nations. In industrialised nations we are aware the impact literacy has on life chances, missing out on those key reading stages can have serious future implications such as joblessness, homelessness and poverty. Yet these are only the most severe consequences of illiteracy - consider at the other end of the scale the enlightenment and sheer pleasure of reading a great book! The thought that millions of people are deprived of even this can make the heart heavy. And, sadly, illiteracy is the case for far too many people:
- 774 million adults lack minimum literacy skills
- one in five adults is still not literate and two-thirds of them are women
Raise it: Hold a Read-a-thon to make some cash for a world literacy charity such as Room to Read. Add a twist by getting your entire church involved to read as many books as possible on one day or give it a theme and have people dress up and read material only in the area of…. Salvation Army heroes?!
Change it: Most local schools have a programme that needs volunteer readers to come in once a week and help those who struggle most with their reading. How about getting your home group involved in volunteering for this for a few months? There is a list of UK based programmes here and there is a similar US programme here, but a bit of googling should get you more specific results.
Do it: Begin a library in honour of world literacy day! With just a little time and effort you can set aside a little room in your church or community centre in order to 1) give access to books for a wider range of people in your area and 2) promote the beautiful mindset of sharing goods and resources. Gather books donated from church members, second hand stores and garage/car boot sales. There is a comprehensive guide to setting up a small library here and some free software for churches available here.
Promote it: There is a quirky trend at the moment in bookcrossing, where thousands across the world register their favourite books online and then leave them in public places for strangers to find and read. Because of the registration it is possible to track your books as they make their way across the globe. Celebrate literacy and create awareness of the illiterate one fifth of the world by doing some bookcrossing. As well as putting the website and registration number in the front cover, add a statistic from above and a little message about the need for change. You might just inspire a stranger!
September 21 | International Day of Peace
My little nephew has a bib that says “Give peas a chance”- a cute take on the well known catchphrase of pacifists worldwide. The idea of peace has become particular politically popular in the wake of Iraq, yet remains illusive. For Christians, we perhaps too easily prefer to talk of peace in terms of spiritual contentedness; discussing the implications of Jesus’ blessing on peacemakers in geopolitical terms is decidedly complicated. International Day of Peace offers us a chance to create an environment where we can tackle these difficulties both honestly and prayerfully. Take a look at this snapshot of War and Peace from New Internationalist.
- In recorded history since 3600 BC, over 14,500 major wars have killed close to four billion people - two-thirds of the current world population.
- In armed conflicts since 1945, 90 per cent of casualties have been civilians compared to 50 per cent in the second World War and 10 per cent in the first.
- Around 85 countries have undergone some sort of disarmament since the end of the Cold War in 1989, but 69 nations have been increasing their stock of weapons - mostly low income countries buying from the richer ones.
- The United States is the world’s biggest arms exporter - supplying around 40 per cent of the developing world’s arms.
- The U.S military budget is as large as the next ten, top-spending, countries combined.
- Britain is the world’s second-largest arms exporter with a 25 per cent share of the legal global market.
- Between 1990 and 1994 Britain supplied 13 per cent of total arms exports to sub-Saharan Africa - while at war from 1987 to 1994, Angola received $7.3 billion worth of British arms.
- There are at least 250,000 child soldiers fighting in armed conflict.
- Most countries consider young soldiers ‘volunteers’. But often coercion is involved - in Uganda around 8,000 children have been abducted for use as soldiers or prostitutes.
Pray it: Make a night of it with a peace vigil and invite neighbouring faith groups to get involved. Alternatively spend a few minutes in your weekly service praying for peace. This site has an order of service for a peace vigil and a collection of prayers from all over the world.
Discuss it: Possibly one of the most exciting moments of the UK Salvation Army conference, Roots, was the debate between a Peace Corps soldier and church leader Chick Yuill about pacifism. If you can find people with the passion and credentials then host a similar discussion or you could simply divide your home group into two and debate between yourselves how far Jesus’ call to peace is supposed to stretch.
Read it: Peacebuilding 101
March it: Organise a peace march in your community calling for an International Day of Ceasefire.
September 22 | World Car Free Day
Imagine a world free of cars… ideally this world would be one where communities come together as they bundle onto public transport and move in solidarity around pollution-free cities. However for many, a car free world would be a nightmare! Lots of people would be forced to chose between being house-bound, spending a good few hours more doing their daily tasks using poor public transport or taking to hazardous roads on bikes. Many of our cities are simply not cut-out for being car free and this annual World Car Free Day prompts us to ask why this is the case when the facts around the critical damage of Co2 are well known.
Change it: Do some researching into the current transport situation in your region and the proposed transport plans of your local governance and see if it aligns with the need for less car use. If not begin some campaigning by calling for better cycle paths or better bus routes. Some guides to campaigning on these issues can be found here.
Raise it: Celebrate the day with a sponsored cycle around your city with a two pronged motive, firstly to raise awareness of the need for safer bike routes and secondly, to fund some bikes for developing nations. For example, Re-cycle is a small UK charity that restores old bikes and ships them to African countries enabling thousands of people in small villages better mobility and access to the things they need.
Do it: Encourage members of your congregation to find a more sustainable way to get to church activities on this day. Give a prize (a one week bus pass?!) for the most creative modes.
October 6 | World Habitat Day
The house that a group of us are living in at the moment has been a work in progress for the last year or so. It has been agonisingly slow turning this long derelict shell into a cosy home. The memory of this hard work and the fact that many evenings we arrive home to find people sleeping in our doorway both serve to remind us of the privilege it is to have comfortable shelter. Here in London alone there are thousands who have no home, numbers that are mirrored and even intensified across cities all over the world. Yet housing issues reach far beyond homelessness, for millions more have homes but ones that leave them incredibly vulnerable. For example, the United Nations publication The Challenge Of Slums: Global Report On Human Settlements 2003 estimates that:
- 1/6 of the world’s population currently lives in a slum
- 31% of the world’s urban dwellers currently live in slums
- In the next 30 years it is estimated that these figures will double.
This World Habitat Day provides opportunity to discover the housing crisis both on our doorstep and across the world and gives us the chance to begin to dream of another way.
Read it: Enhancing Urban Safety and Security - Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 and
The Challenge Of Slums: Global Report On Human Settlements 2003.
Raise it: Hold a sponsored sleep in; give your young people a few materials and have them build a shelter to sleep in for one night. Give the money raised to a home building charity such as HopeBuilders.
Host it: Hold a myth-busting brunch: invite someone from a local homelessness organisation to do a presentation over some pancakes about some of the real issues surrounding local homelessness.
Change it: As a home group, a family or an individual begin to research the needs of your local area. Get talking to the experts in the field about ways you can both meet immediate need and challenge the structures that allow so many to experience such deep housing crisis.
Do it: Take a Global Village Challenge and go overseas to build some houses!
October 16 | World Food Day
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals state that every 3.6 seconds someone dies of starvation, the majority of those dying are under five. That this can occur in a world where 1.6 billion people are classified as overweight by the World Health Organisation starkly illustrates the inequality of our global order. While many low income nations are becoming wealthier in recent times there are poor countries who have been steadily becoming poorer over the years. In these countries there is a “silent tsunami”, as Unicef describes it, of hunger-related death. It is perhaps a natural, almost subconscious, reaction to harden our hearts against this reality but perhaps this day offers us a chance to become burdened by a desire for a more equal world. Take a look at these figures from the organisation Freedom from Hunger
- This year (as every year) 11 million children younger than 5 will die needlessly, more than half from hunger-related causes.
- Few of these deaths are related to outright starvation, but rather to common illnesses (like diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria and measles) that move in on vulnerable children whose bodies have been weakened by hunger.
- 815 million people in the developing world are undernourished.
- Undernourishment negatively affects people’s health, productivity, sense of hope and overall well-being. A lack of food can stunt growth, slow thinking, sap energy, hinder fetal development and contribute to poor mental health.
- Economically, the effort of constantly securing food consumes valuable time and energy, allowing poor people less time for work and earning income.
- Pregnant women, new mothers who breastfeed infants, and children are among the most at risk of undernourishment.
Feature it: Take a few moments in your church service to remind people that starvation and hunger remain prevalent. You could use the Litany for a Time of Hunger.
Read it: A recent interview with the Millennium Campaigns Director about the global food crisis.
Host it: Throw a party in your lounge or in your community hall to raise funds and awareness about global hunger. There are some templates here.
Click it: Use the Freedom from Hunger guide to becoming a virtual campaigner against hunger.
October 17 | International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
October 17th is a day dedicated to the eradication of poverty by a number of organisations. As well as the United Nation’s title, it also goes by the name of World Day to End Extreme Poverty, Stand Up and Take Action Against Poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals Day(!) or you may know it as the less lengthy title: White Band Day. Last year a Guinness World Record was broken when 43.7 million people in 127 countries stood up in one way or another against global poverty. That is a lot of people who are discontented with the level of poverty in our world. Consider these disturbing facts from Global Call for Action against Poverty:
- Over 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day with nearly half the world’s population (2.8 billion) living on less than $2 a day.
- From 1990 to 2002, in sub-Saharan Africa, although the poverty rate declined marginally, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased by 140 million.
- Every hour more than 1,200 children die away from the glare of media attention. This is equivalent to three tsunamis a month, every month. The overwhelming majority can be traced to a single pathology : poverty.
We must keep believing that we can live in a world free of the radical and extreme poverty reflected in these figures. As people of faith our concern for those in poverty and belief in change must translate into action. Christian martyr, Romero, once said,
“Praying and expecting everything to come from God and not doing anything yourself is not praying. This is laziness; this is alienation. This is passivity, conformity. This is not the time, dear brothers and sisters, to say: It is God’s will. Many things happen that are not God’s will. When people can contribute something of themselves to improve the situation and ask God for the courage to do so, then there is prayer.”
Get organised and get people mobilised on October 17th by doing one or more of these things…
Host it: You could perform a coup at a board meeting where you have attendees pledge to stand against poverty or you could host a conference with speakers from some of your local development agencies. Register your event here and it will count to break last years record.
Pray it: Take some time in your church service using any of this collection of wonderful prayers.
Screen it: Romero is a film based on the true story of South America’s brave priest, Oscar Romero, as he seeks to stand with the poor against tradition and exploitative societal structures. Alternatively take your pick from one of these films shown at the Poverty and Inequality Film Festival.
Read it: An interview with Christian leader Jim Wallis that ranges across subjects like global poverty, economic systems and injustice.
Feature it: Take a few minutes to show the Miniature Earth Video at youth group or in the service, available here. It attempts to portray what the world’s population would look like if it was reduced to 100 and illustrates in a tangible way some of the saddest statistics.
If you have come across or created any online resources it would be fantastic if you could share them here. You might be planning an event of some kind, if so, leave a comment and inspire us to action!
Please add your own ideas, plans and resources to this short list of thoughts. Contact theRubicon via a comment below or through our contact form.
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 monitors, expands and writes the quarterly Match Factory listing on theRubicon. Visit her blog which she updates periodically.
6 Comments to The Match Factory | Sept-Oct, 2008
Leave a comment
Upcoming Events
- No events.
Looks like you all are going to be pretty busy gearing up to teach folks to read, but if you get time tomorrow is a good chance to channel a little Alan Jackson and reflect a bit on why we’re here and how God wants us to spend our time. So many people would have loved one more day, one more hug from their kids, another sunset, another dinner with their wife. America hasn’t developed much of a tradition around 9/11; to me, it’s a good day to rededicate yourself to making every minute God gives you count for Him. And if you’re up my way, you can drop by:
http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/sep/09/0909-911event/
Hey Catherine,
thanks for the idea and leaving the link. It is too easy to miss those chances for moments of reflection.
Peace Sunday is coming round this Sunday and that too presents the opportunity to raise questions around conflict and terrorism.
I hope the event went well.
Oh how funny — that is not on my calendar. I will try to put the word out; although odds are someone will try to schedule a sale.
Well, I did try to talk up your Peace day, and while people were all for it, the gang I hung out with this weekend was pretty confident of their opinion: Some things are worth fighting for.
http://www.nps.gov/sara/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm
Well, thats the debate we need to be having so it’s good that you’re having it!
And I would agree that some things are worth fighting for, although I wouldn’t mean violently. Being a peacemaker involves a creative and active struggle against traditional forms of “solving problems”…
Peace as activism- I think that is Jesus’ kind of peace.
Stamp act, actually. And they weren’t too interested in creative problem solving — armed to the teeth, and really angry about details of tax policies promoted by some guy named George. I thought I had died and been transported to rural Idaho, circa 1991. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess. Anyway, I will keep in mind that “creative problem solving” bit next time I run into them. They all march out every couple of years to fire muskets around, but most days if you go it is just wraiths you may see, on fields soaked in blood, where a rag-tag bunch of true believers fought to end the era of kings. Wonder what Henry Paulson would think.