The Match Factory | Jan-Mar, 2009
Ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next three months
by Lucy AitkenRead
W
elcome to another installment of ideas to help you engage with some of the international commemorative dates in the first quarter of the new year. This is just a few highlights taken from the complete 2009 Match Factory calendar that can be found here.
January 20 | World Religion Day
Making headlines in the UK recently was the atheist bus campaign. In response to the seeming abundance of religious messages of hell and damnation, atheists across the country raised 50,000 GBP to place banners on seven London buses with the message There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
It is all too often that religion is associated with personal strife, violence and war rather than freedom, joy and social cohesion. In a New Kind of Christian Brian McLaren has one of his characters discuss the origins of the word religion, “The old Latin roots of the word simply mean ‘reconnecting,’ you know - broken ligaments being reconnected and defragmented. That sounds like exactly what we need, don’t you think? We’re ‘deligamented’, disconnected, fragmented people who need to be ‘religamented’, reconnected, put back together with God, with one another, reintegrated with ourselves, reconnected to the world we are a part of.”
World Religion Day provides an opportunity to reveal all the potential religion has to offer our broken and disconnected world and to allow positive rather than negative associations to be formed.
Join it: Most local communities have some kind of inter-faith network for leaders of different faith communities to share, pray together and work together. Get involved. If your community doesn’t have one, start one!
Host it: Host a faith dinner and invite people and leaders from the local churches, mosques and temples. Use it to celebrate the contribution of religion to society and to embark on a deeper journey with those with different faiths.
Do it: All the major religions have some form of ‘the golden rule’, in Christianity it is ‘do unto others as you would have others do unto you’. Why not get together with locals of other faiths and commission some form of mural or garden art for your community that promotes this golden rule?
January 27 | Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day provides the chance to not only remember the lives of the millions who suffered at the hands of an evil regime but also to give thanks for the million acts of sacrificial love that took place throughout those dark years. The example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian pastor executed for an assassination attempt on Hitler, also provides an intense topic for conversation and begs us to think about our response to equivalent situations of evil.
Pray it: Take time to remember those who suffered and those who fearlessly loved during the years of the holocaust. Pray for current situations of extreme oppression. There are some poignant prayers here.
Watch it: Show on big screen a film such as Schindler’s List or Life is Beautiful. Take time to reflect, pray and discuss at the end of it.
Discuss it: Take some time to look at Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s decision. It is an incredibly complex subject but why not spend some time discussing it: the motivation for such a decision, the implications and the sort of action we would consider in the face of such injustice.
26 January - 2 February | Poverty and Homelessness Action Week (UK)
As winter descended on London this year my usual bemoaning of summer past was muted. For this year my housemates and I have become increasingly involved in the lives of the rough sleepers in our neighbourhood and were all too aware through talking with them of the absolute dread with which they faced winter. For them, it wasn’t a case of finding it a challenge to climb out of bed in the dark, cold morning but rather a case of waking up in the morning to news that a friend had died of pneumonia. It was another situation where my whole life, thoughts and feelings were being harrowingly put into perspective by my friends who were homeless. Poverty and Homelessness Action Week - or your own country’s equivalent - asks us to get to grips with why so many across the world are homeless and asks for our own response. Check out these facts:
- estimates of the world’s homeless population, plus those living in poor housing, can reach a figure of 1 billion people
- the world’s cities are filled with up to 100 million street children and people living in sprawling slum settlements without water, sewage, garbage collection, heating/cooling or electricity
- the number of homeless people in Western Europe is at its highest level in 50 years, with homelessness levels not seen since the end of World War II. An estimated 3 million west Europeans were believed to be homeless during the winter of 2003
- in the United States, about 3.5 million people are homeless, including 0.9 to 1.4 million children. In Canada, the number of homeless people has steadily increased to a level now far beyond anything seen one generation ago.
- the real numbers of homeless people are very much higher than official statistics suggest; in Britain - for example - something like 2 million people are ‘unofficially’ homeless or ‘hidden’ - sleeping on friends’ floors or in overcrowded conditions
- the growth of mass homelessness is greatest in Africa, Asia and Latin America, since this is where the global population rate is growing the fastest. Case studies of cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America show that it is common for at least 30% of the population to live either in illegal settlements with little or no infrastructure or services, or in overcrowded and often deteriorating tenements and cheap boarding-houses. (These stats were sourced here.)
Feature it: Take five minutes in your church to listen to the powerful song, Gabriel and the Vagabond by Foy Vance. Spend some time praying for local homeless people and creative policy solutions.
Join it: Get involved in an existing initiative to help those who are homeless in your community - this may be a soup kitchen or drop in centre. It is almost guaranteed that they are looking for volunteers!
Raise it: The depth of winter are often the hardest time for people who are homeless and also homeless projects who run constantly short of much-needed items. Host a sponsored sport event such as “Jumping for Jumpers” or “Sweating for Sweaters” where you collect donations of clothes rather than money. Give these to your local homelessness charity.
February 23 - 09 March | Fair Trade fortnight
Fair trade has come along in leaps and bounds in recent years. It is possible to buy fair trade versions of almost everything online! Buying fair trade is a powerful way of influencing the lives of communities in developing nations and creating a robust alternative to the stark injustice of much of the global trade system. Fair Trade is an excellent example of how one creative idea can go on to spark a movement that can change the world. This Fair Trade fortnight choose to have a celebration and use these facts as inspiration:
- Flying off the shelves: we spent nearly half a billion (£493m) on products carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark in the UK in 2007.
- Fair cuppa: every day the British public drink more than 8 million Fairtrade hot drinks and this figure will jump. Sainsbury’s (a national grocery chain in the UK) is made its entire range of tea, roast and ground coffee, and hot chocolate Fairtrade products, including it’s best-selling and oldest brand ‘Red Label’ tea.
- Go bananas: 1 in every 4 bananas sold in UK supermarkets is now Fairtrade with sales topping £150m in 2007.
- Sweet success: Tate & Lyle are switching all their own label retail sugar to Fairtrade sugar. The move will benefit more than 6,000 farmers from Belize, who will receive Fairtrade premiums of around US $4 million (£2 million) for investment in their community, in the first year alone.
- Pick & choose: the first three Fairtrade products appeared on shop shelves in 1994, now more than 3,000 products have been licensed to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark.
- A fairer future: more than 7 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin America benefit from Fairtrade - farmers, farm workers, and their families.
- Cotton on: The number of people buying Fairtrade cotton is on the rise. Fairtrade cotton sales rose a whopping 660% in 2007, with sales reaching the £35m mark.
- Keeping it local: there are now more than 320 Fairtrade Towns across the UK, which alongside 4,000 Fairtrade Churches, 37 Fairtrade Synagogues, 60 Fairtrade Universities and a newly launched network of Fairtrade Schools, are all campaigning to support and promote Fairtrade in their local area.
Do it: If it isn’t already get your church certified as a Fair Trade church and join the growing movement that is voting for trade justice.
Pray it: Take five minutes in your service or youth group to highlight the importance of trade justice. Some inspiration can be found here.
Host it: Why not host a Fair Trade Fayre in your building on one of these weekends? Contact local or distant Fair Trade retailers and ask them to bring a stall to your fayre. The Regent Hall Salvation Army in London recently did this and had 1,000 shoppers come through and bought hundreds of products.
Do it: Feel a bit of frustration that there is not enough Fair Trade produce available in your town? Then launch a fair trade business! A Salvationist from New Zealand responded in this way and now has a fabulous Fair Trade clothing enterprise.
March 1-30 | Veggie Month
Vegetarianism is often thought to be the diet of tree-hugging hippies. Veggie month could be a little spark that makes you reconsider this assumption. You might want to explore a vegetarian diet for a few reasons; the health benefits of a low meat diet, the cruelty necessary in the meat industry to produce such volumes of meat efficiently and the low environmental impact of a vegetarian diet - 17% of the world’s carbon emissions are due to our meat consumption. I have been veggie for 16 years and do so largely out of environmental concerns. I think we should eat meat but more as an occasional treat not an every day necessity.
Try it: Give it a month and see how you feel! Try some creative recipes here.
Read it: Early Salvation Army leader Bramwell Booth’s argument for a vegetarian diet.
Host it: Get some friends round for a vegetarian feast. Over dinner ask questions about our meat consumption, the environmental impacts of it and the barriers to a vegetarian diet.
March 20 | Earth Day
A few weekends ago 10,000 people gathered in London to march, dance, cycle and even cartwheel through the streets calling for more serious action on climate change. Also taking place that weekend were the UN climate change talks in Poland and we wanted to get a message through to them that not only was serious action on climate change politically viable but politically necessary.
The same weekend the UK’s minister for the Environment, Ed Milliband, put out a challenge to the public, suggesting a mass mobilisation on climate change - such as the Make Poverty History movement - was needed. It is high time that The Salvation Army broke it’s silence on climate change and begins to mobilise Salvationists to engage with the climate change dialogue. It is not just an environmental issue but a social justice issue - 150,000 of the world’s most vulnerable are dying as a consequence of changing weather patterns and we must add our voice to the growing call for action. Earth Day gives us an opportunity to celebrate the majesty of the earth and to also think about our human impact on its beauty and ability to provide safety for its inhabitants.
Mobilise it: Join or begin a campaign asking for three things: more resources invested into developing nations so they can adapt to changing weather, more personal behaviour change to limit our carbon emissions, a global commitment to fight climate change.
Audit it: How is your church’s carbon footprint? Use the Anglican Church’s mini audit to see how you do. Get a team together to work out what changes you can make to lessen it.
Read it: Oxfam’s brief summary of climate change. Tearfund’s more robust publication, 2 degrees One Chance. The (fairly heavy!) fourth International Panel On Climate Change report Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.
March 21 | International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
On March 21, 1960, police in Sharpeville, South Africa, gunned down a group of young students peacefully protesting against the apartheid laws. Sixty-nine students were killed that day. Six years later the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed that date to be the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.”
We may feel distant from the extreme racism of apartheid both in years and geography but this would be a shallow interpretation of our times. Racism is common; glimpses of it were seen throughout the US election as a minority of people responded to Obama’s candidacy with disgust. It was also seen in recent local elections in the UK as the notoriously racist British National Party won it’s first seat in parliament. We must take this opportunity to explore the racism still evident in our communities, to tackle the fear that motivates it and question it’s foothold in society.
Host it: Talk with local artists about the possibility of hosting an art exhibition exploring issues of racial discrimination.
Pray it: Use this beautiful Four directions prayer for the people to pray against racial discrimination in our society.
Feature it: Ask a few people from your congregation, with different ethnicities, to spend five minutes in your service each talking about the importance of their race to their spirituality or the way they have experienced racism. A frank portrayal of this kind could serve as a celebration of diversity or a wake up call to those of us who feel racism has long passed.
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 regular Match Factory listing on theRubicon. Visit her blog which she updates periodically.
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С Новым Годом и Рождеством!
Поздравляю автора блога и читателей С Рождеством!
и тут я подумал, Организация Объединенных Наций запретили Рождество - и тем не менее, он живет!
It is a cold Martin Luther King Jr. Day here — a great day to sit in somewhere, dreaming big dreams of challenging evil and triumphing over hate. Or, that being a lot for many people, take the bus! Remember the day Rosa — tired, overworked, fed up — parks herself in a comfortable seat and refuses to move. Sometimes, all it takes is being firmly where you are to change the world. So register to vote, volunteer and don’t forget: March your local Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, before they rename it Barack Obama Way.