stopover.ca

AIDS is not your responsibility
The scope of the HIV/AIDS issue is so massive that numbers become meaningless.  We have heard them hundreds of times, and yet at this moment as you read – can you remember how many zeros to put at the end? Is it another 10 million orphans by 2020, or 100 000 a month? If you did a quick Google search you could certainly discover the most recent UN figures – but perhaps that is not the point. The numbers become the white noise of information, not as a way to possibly engage with the issue. The only way you can comprehend the situation is to see for yourself.

Hands at Work in Africa.
One day George Snyman decided to see for himself, and so this African IT worker left his computer and went for a walk – across the bottom of a continent. Over the next few weeks and months he visited the mud huts of hundreds of people. George was forced to face the realities of AIDS not as a concept, but as individual men and women with names and stories. Eventually he stopped in Masoyi and decided to take responsibility for what he was not responsible. He created Hands at Work in Africa

Hands at Work has developed an inspiring model of community development. Caring for 14,000 orphans: No orphanages. Children are directly cared for in their homes by mobilizing local volunteers and simple community resources where the pandemic has hit the hardest.

The incredible advantage to Home-Based Care is that it does not further split orphans from extended family members thereby increasing their orphan dislocation. Instead the children are supported in their childhood homes and remain close to their aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends. At present, Hands At Work is caring for over 14 000 children at a resource level that might not care for a tenth of that number in an orphanage.

Come with us
Who owns the orphans of Swaziland? Whose kids are they? Not mine of course!? I did nothing to create the problem, I do not live there!

We are right of course. They are not our responsibility. Still, Jesus invites us to takes responsibility for that which we are not responsible. As followers of the sacrificed king, we are given opportunity to make that most beautiful of choices, to answer as Jesus answered. We may step out and match his stride.

This spring the Short Term Missions Network is taking Canadian leaders to the front lines of the global AIDS pandemic. Stop feeling helpless. Grow your awareness and expertise with us. Join us to see how your short-term teams can participate in long-term results.

Details: As a Canadian leader you are invited to begin your participation at the 2009 Hands at Work International Conference. This conference is a chance for you to be inspired. Find out how you can bring a successful team to participate in solutions, and learn from the lavish mistakes of others. Leaders from around the world will gather with African leaders in order to dream possible dreams.

AIDS may be the defining social, justice and health issue of our generation, walk with those who have lived the solutions. Following the three-day conference, you will be immersed in the local community projects in order to discover what you can – and cannot – do to get involved. The remainder of the trip will find us in the community for:

• Orphan care training events
• Time spent in Child-Headed Households
• Feeding programs
• Walking the dusty roads to assist Community Volunteers
• Connecting with Schools and Churches
• HIV/AIDS relief
• Training from Hosts on Relief & Development best practices
• African Safari

Where: 15 days – 3 countries. South Africa – Zambia – Swaziland.

Dates: March 24 – April 8, 2009 (15 days)

Cost: $3850 per person includes all flights and transfers, ground transportation, accommodation, guides and meals. (prices may change according to Canadian city of departure)

Click here to request more information.

Feel free to forward this invitation to other leaders who could participate with us. If you would like a pdf file to print a poster, just ask.
Mark Crocker

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It was awesome.

If you have not already done so … you should too

Don Crawford is one of the first people I connected with in Victoria, a great thinker and encourager, I just added his link to my blogroll …
Check it out! (look on the right)

I was in Lacombe Alberta last night where I taught a group of about 20 people some thoughts on Mission partnership. This is a portion of one of my thoughts …

At times, as I have heard people attempt to teach the way of Christ they have faced into a depressing failure. In some cases I hear those same people justify their failure in this way “Scripture suggests that the Gospel is offensive. If I share my thoughts and it turns people off – the problem is their own. They are at fault.”

In some cases, the strange reality is this, the person who is assured that the Bible is what offended others, is often offensive in many other areas of life.

The offense of the gospel was never intended to be an offensive tactic or a way for us to release ourselves from our obligation to others. Even a cursory glace at Scripture will reveal who was offended by the Gospel.

It did not seem to offend Roman Centurians, and Samaritans (for a modern day comparison think of a business foreman, and a Mormon). It did not seem to offend the average guy or girl who spent their day at work, and came home to a drink and chat with friends. Really, the only record of offense we regularly find in Scripture is the offense of theologians and other community spiritual leaders.

The gospel is offensive, because it offends me.

• It offends what I wish to do, it offends my philosophy and pharisetical love for being right and instead thrusts me to the centre stage of life to relationship.
• It offends my notion in a territorial god, smaller than the God of all people, who blesses me and me alone.
• It disallows religious certitude and instead forces us to the higher standards of love

Perhaps the text of Galatians 5:11, “The offense of the cross” has too long been used as a club. Somehow the meaning has been transmogrified into a shortcut thought: if I simply provide the 4-spiritual laws, then I have done my duty. If it fails then this is simply because the gospel is offensive to some. We let ourselves off the hook because we proof text our way to righteous indignation – well, after all, this gospel is offensive.

Mark Crocker

This is a video I put together for Westside King’s Church in Calgary in order to help prepare the teams heading down to work with San Diego/Ensenada YWaM.

I used the video function on my 3 meg point and shoot camera for the images and audio.

It was helpful for teams as they prepared to go – sometimes something this simple, just a quick peek at what the destination and the work actually looks like, is helpful for participants as they ready themselves.

Click here to download the video at a higher resolution

Here is an series of emails that I sent home to Supriya a few years ago when I was in Sierra Leone. I like how they remind me of the realities of travel. The ebb and flow of strange customs and basic differences, the joys and frustrations. Makes me wish I was back there …

____________________________________________________________

Arrived, safe and almost sound.

My appreciation for air travel was again diminished as I traveled from Calgary to Toronto, beginning with the surly Customer ‘Service’ Agents shouting at people lining up in the too small waiting area. Although I arrived 2 hours before the flight and was the second person in the lounge, I still had a crappy seat near the back (although I was able to change for a window – being a night flight) soon after we took off, I began coughing as a very sharp odor came wafting forward, I thought it was the disinfectant or something, but was soon proved wrong.

My seat companion also began coughing, and after a couple more episodes, I turned backward, to the woman behind me, and asked if she was spraying something. She told me that she needed to use these essential oils, but it was okay, because they were natural. I tried to reason with her, my seat companion joining in – natural or not, they were causing respiration failure – but she would have none of our reason – not for her.

I am not sure how to describe the stench, somewhere between sandalwood and methane … with notes of cat pee, vinegar, and pepper thrown in for good measure.

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Often when we attempt to engage in International Relief and Development work, we cannot help but enter with our own unconscious cultural blinders and biases. Even with the absolute best of intentions, it is highly unlikely that an amateur STM participant can avoid some certain mindsets when it comes to personal participation.

I was a part of an ERDO seminar in Toronto a few weeks ago working to illustrate the above point through a fun interactive exercise I did with the group. Check it out!

 

 When Disaster Strikes [18:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

check out others at the podcast page.

My friend Lynn in South Africa just sent me this article from “the Globe and Mail” (I think). Very interesting development in the world of development …

For those who may be unfamiliar with Mohammed Yunus, he developed the Grameen (bank of the village) in Bangladesh in the 70’s. After obtaining his degree in Economics in a US university, he had moved back to his native Bangladesh to work with the government on billion dollar policy and five-year plans. Walking through a local village one day, he was struck by the discrepancy between his work and the realities of poverty in the community. After some investigation he realized the the grand total to relieve a couple of dozen people from an uneding cycle of poverty was about $40 … and that is when he made a chaoice that has made all of the difference. Rather than simple charity, he loaned the money out to this percieved ‘high-risk’ credit-starved group, at interest. They repaid.

Today, the bank that he began with that simple step, has billions of dollars in asset and has refused donations since the mid-90’s. Men and mostly women who take advantage of the loans have personally experienced a dramatic reduction in child mortality rates, improved housing as Grameen standard homes stand against huricanes, definite improvement due to personal economic choice and possibility. The rate of loan return is at 98.15%.

Yunus and the Grameen organization co-shared the Nobel prize a couple of years ago … evidentally they had their sights set on the poor in America as well …

here is the article …

Yunus sees big answers in microcredit

TAVIA GRANT
June 11, 2008

Muhammad Yunus, banker to the poor and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, believes the best way to bring microfinance to the developed world lies in the heart of the banking world – New York City.

Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank opened its doors in Queens six months ago, distributing start-up business loans of $500 (U.S.) to $3,500 to women, many of them low-income Latin American immigrants. It’s early days, but repayment rates so far are 100 per cent and the number of clients has grown to 225 from 165.

The concept is simple – give those who wouldn’t otherwise have access to affordable credit a chance to start small businesses such as, in New York, child care or beauty salons. Groups of borrowers meet weekly and make regular repayments. The concept has mushroomed throughout the developing world, but is relatively untried in richer nations.

“New York is the world capital of banking, but it doesn’t do banking for its nearest neighbours – those who live under the shadow of the skyscrapers,” Mr. Yunus said in a wide-ranging interview with The Globe and Mail.

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My friend Bob is back online, check out his blog in my blogroll on the right.

Master Theoloigan and great friend.

A while back I had posted on the sub-$100 laptop in development, the intention was to develop a technology that would be useful and cheap enough to provide computer resources throughout Africa, enabling development. Although I have not heard much about the machines in recent date … There are groups of people developing the free software to power the machines.

Ubuntu is one of these software groups.

The word Ubuntu comes from an Bantu (Southern African) language roughly meaning ‘belonging to the whole’. Nelson Mandella better explains the philosophy of the Ubuntu as follows;

A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you be able to improve?

Now, not quite as articulate as Mandella (but who is), the Ubuntu website says … Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need – a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more.

Now I am not sure what a Linux-based system is … although I think it has something to do with the stability of the background ’surface’ on which the programs are built … but the rest of the stuff makes sense. Free browsers, free software to write documents (IE Word), and figure out numbers (IE excel) … plus all the esoteric stuff like ftp clients and torrent downloaders …

Interesting how this material is being developed for free, with regular updates, and fixes … brilliant!

check out the Ubuntu site here