It’s a pleasure to talk with you today and share with you my thoughts on
responding to world hunger issues. For me, connection and response are at
the heart of Christ’s message and, in a broader sense, connection and
response is the heart of our heart. It is the essence of community and what
it means to be fully human.
My own fairly recent commitment to world hunger issues began just a few
years ago here at the Church when my local peace group, Sierra Interfaith
Action for Peace, made a commitment to join the predominantly Christian
advocacy group, Bread for the World and its support of Jubilee 2000, The
Jubilee 2000 campaign focused on gathering signatures in local churches to
support 3rd world debt relief debt. This would enable especially
African nations to have money for basic services, such as clean drinking
water and schools, instead of paying annual interest on international debts
that were often nearly equivalent to a country’s national budget. Sierra
Interfaith targeted local churches for signatures and I helped gather
signatures here at First Church.
More recently Bread for the World has joined with several other diverse
agencies and high profile personalities, including the Gates Foundation,
Save the Children, and Oxfam to create the ONE campaign. The focus of the
campaign is to raise international awareness concerning hunger and disease
issues, especially in Africa.
The ONE Campaign is also lobbying developed nations to increase their
current giving to the developing world to one more percent of their
respective national budgets. Thus if a country gives one percent of their
budget to world hunger they would now give 2 percent. The hopeful
projection is that if the developed world contributes one percent more of
its national budget w/in ten years poverty in African could be cut in half
and w/in 20 years, a generation, poverty could eliminated. I’m sad to say
that the US is at the bottom of the giving. It gives about 1/3 of 1% to
global poverty issues, while little Denmark, the biggest giver gives
approximately 8% of its national budget to world poverty issues.
This past May I urged people at First Church to write congress to
allocate more funding for world poverty issues. This was in conjunction with
the July G-8 conference in Scotland. Largely as a result of the ONE
campaign’s consciousness raising and push to increase funding the G-8 voted
for further debt relieve and President Bush pledged $28 b dollars to fight
poverty in the developing world. As hopeful as this pledge is,
unfortunately, the US would still be giving less than one half of one
percent of its budget to alleviate world poverty.
But the ONE Campaign is not a one shot deal. It is ongoing and continues
to address global poverty issues for the long haul. Currently the senate
has cut 60% of President Bush’s pledge.
Now is the time to keep abreast of congressional activity The ONE. Org
and Bread.Org web sites update me with petitions to sign, requests for calls
and letters to my congressmen, and letter writing campaigns to Pres. Bush.
(There’s a slip in your program detailing these web sites and phone
numbers—Bread Newsletter)
These less than five minute responses, thanks to the net, enable me to
feel connected to and responsive to world poverty issues. I then get an
e-mail update on the issue I’ve responsed to—Often I’ve felt that quiet
moment of satisfied connectedness as a result some legislative or
political victory that is slowly chipping away at world poverty.
Many would ask what about the one out of five children that grow up in
poverty in the US. Why aren’t we concentrating on them instead of going all
the way to Africa? Especially with Africa’s current trackrecord of what the
NY Times calls Kleptocracy instead of democracy.
Most of us feel compelled to respond to Homegrown poverty and I’m
grateful we have ready-made opportunities with the hospitality network,
special offerings and other church and community activities. Still, the web
of life does not stop with our community or our nation. It moves beyond, and
Africa is now at our door, thanks to global village consciousness raising.
To quote Marianne Williams: “Our function, our happiness and our purpose
all emanate from the same point of power: our capacity to embody love in any
given instant. And love is more than ‘being nice.’ It is the surrender of
a sense of separate self, and a claim to the totality of life as part of
ourselves. Knowing that we are a part of the whole, we shift our
perspective from a sense of individual identity to a sense of universal
connection. It becomes impossible to act only for yourself when your self
includes everyone.”
The ONE campaign symbolizes One person, one voice, one vote, ONE more
percent of our national budget to change the current course of world
poverty. The miracle of the loaves and fishes is the miracle of connection
in the deepest sense. First Jesus was moved with compassion and then,
without hesitation, he acted with complete faith that 5 loaves and two fish
would feed thousands of hunger people. Connecting in compassion and acting
in faith brought great forth abundance. Is it possible that it is just this
easy? How little, in our great abundance, is asked of us. The question is
not how much can we give, but how deeply are we connected. How big is our
web of life?
