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.
2009 Match Factory calendar
Lucy AitkenRead introduces key
Match Factory dates for 2009
At the beginning of 2008 we launched the Match Factory Social Action Calendar. The list of dates, which represent some of the world’s most pressing social justice issues, and the resources provided around each date, aim to inspire faith-based groups to action.
The calendar can fit into one of two images: on one end of the spectrum it might provide some content that we top-up our church/ personal/ youth group lives with. This image might resonate with those of you who want to engage with the issues but are perhaps just beginning on the journey. Hopefully the Match Factory can provide you with the perfect prayer for Human Rights Day or the perfect list of facts about World AIDS Day for the youth group newsletter.
Free Christmas!
by Lucy AitkenRead
Liberating our festivities from the
chains of consumerism
Yesterday I picked up a newspaper and out slipped the typical bundle of flyers. Amongst the adverts for double glazing and sponsor children, 
a Christmas appeal for a homeless charity caught my eye. It featured a young man’s story of how he experiences the festive season. He described the feeling of catching a glimpse through a window into a warm and snug home, a family gathered to feast, while standing in a cold and dark street on his own.
His experience of Christmas was almost the exact opposite of the experience of many others. Christmas has long been a season filled with great contrasts. Dickens explored these in A Christmas Carol through interactions between the miserly Scrooge and the warm hearted Cratchits, the jovial Ghost of Christmas present and the grim Ghost of Christmas future. More recently, Dr. Seuss did the same in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, putting the Grinch with his heart ‘two sizes too small’ up against the Christmas-loving village of Whoville.
The Match Factory | Nov-Dec, 2008
Ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next two months
by Lucy AitkenRead
Welcome to another installment of ideas to help you engage with some of the international commemorative dates throughout November and December. This is just a few of the dates taken from the longer list that can be found here.
November 19 | World Toilet Day
There is a public toilet in New Zealand that is regularly voted as the country’s most beautiful loo (yes, they have beautiful loo awards.) There is a public toilet outside of my university that has a plaque letting users know that it is officially London’s best toilet and, indeed, 
there are wonderful historical mosaics on the wall and relaxing panpipe tunes to enhance the experience. Fortunately World Toilet Day is a day devoted to something more worthwhile that the world’s most pleasant bathrooms. It is a day to recognise the lack of toilets around the world. It is estimated that 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation causing millions of deaths every year. It is easy to overlook the role effective plumbing systems had in the progress of countries such as the UK. Toilets are vital to development!
Promote it: Use the week leading up to World Toilet Day to get the message out there. Print this image out and stick it on the lids of toilets, on the flush handles or the roll dispensers.
Raise it: World Toilet Day is surely a day that begs youth groups to host a variety of gross events! I won’t go there but will suggest that youth workers use it for all it’s worth and hold some fundraising activities that can help organisations build toilets and plumbing systems in the world’s poorest countries. See Worldtoilet.org for an easy way to contribute funds.
Change it: For you radical readers, how about attempting a Grey Water Waste System for your home? Adjusting the way your plumbing works can greatly reduce the amount of wasted water and serve as a reminder of the millions that don’t have such a luxury as a flushing toilet.
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!
The Match Factory | June - Aug, 2008
Ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next three months
by Lucy AitkenRead
J
une to August is full of days to cause us to reflect and act on some significant global issues. Here is a small selection of just a few of the dates taken from the longer list that can be found here.
June 1 | International Children’s Day
Spending time with my one year old nephew gives me huge amounts of joy. Through observing Hudson I have noticed two characteristics that seem to be innate - sharing and dancing! Hudson can’t seem to let a tune go by, be it a sombre brass band piece or a nursery rhyme, without clapping and bouncing. He also struggles to eat even his favourite treats without pushing a little into someone else’s mouth. Sharing and dancing… we have so much to learn from kids!
Unicef’s latest flagship report The State of the World’s Children 2008 is a sad read. Despite the publication’s attempts to celebrate the progress that has been made across the globe for the well being of children, the absolute figures are still quite shocking. It is fairly clear that despite unprecedented economic growth across the nations, millions of children are being completely left behind. Everyday 26,000 children under the age of five die from mostly preventable diseases and up to 50% of the causes of this mortality are related to undernourishment. Put starkly, while many of us revel in the fruits of prosperity, poverty is quietly killing the precious ones that Jesus not only delighted in but pointed to as signs of his kingdom.
So, the challenge for International Children’s Day is: how do we celebrate the laughter and lessons kids bring yet also reflect and act on the dire experience of many of them?
May at the Match Factory
May 3 | World Press Freedom Day
May 10 | World Fair Trade Day
Ideas | Site
May 15 | International Day of Families
May 19-25 | National Vegetarian Week
May 21 | World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
Ideas | Site
April at the Match Factory
April 4 | Refugee Rights Day (Canada)
April 7 | World Health Day
Ideas | Site
April 21-27 | Global Campaign for Education Week
Ideas | Site
March at the Match Factory
March 1-30 | Veggie Month
March 2 | National Children’s Day (New Zealand)
March 8 | International Women’s Day
Ideas | Site
March 20 | Earth Day
March 21 | World Poetry Day
March 21 | International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
The Match Factory | March-May, 2008
Introduction and ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next three months
by Lucy AitkenRead
F
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.
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