Check out these new resources:

ELCA World Hunger just released a hunger education resource for congregations. The Hunger Education tool kits will help you design, host, and lead a learning experience on hunger or hunger-related topics. It is adaptable to your audience, including participant activity level (low, medium, and high) and your time frame. The resource is practical, easy-to-use, and intergenerational. At present we have two kits: one introducing the work of ELCA World Hunger and another exploring the connections between climate change and hunger. Visit www.elca.org/hunger/toolkits and see how you can use them!

We also just released a new hunger education curriculum, Taking Root. The curriculum is divided into five two to three hour sessions that can be easily broken up into shorter lessons. The curriculum is designed for three different age groups: grades 3–6, grades 7–9 (junior high), and grades 10–12 (senior high). Taking Root helps students explore biblical texts that envision a world without hunger, discover steps that can transform that image into reality, and challenges them to imagine a better world. For more information, visit the Taking Root Web site, www.elca.org/hunger/takingroot. For a free sample of the curriculum, visit the Augsburg Fortress website.

As I noted in a previous post, I am now on Twitter, with the user name hungerbites. I am posting two to three times a day with articles I’m reading or thoughts I’m having on hunger. I do not always have the time to pass along all that I get to read on the blog so Twitter opens up new avenues for information sharing. A little plug to join Twitter: not only can you follow me, you can follow other aid organizations (such as Oxfam) and concerned citizens (like Bono). It is a great tool.

In April, PBS will air a new documentary on the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai. The documentary, entitled Taking Root (not to be confused with our new curriculum!), explores interconnections between climate change, human rights, and democracy. The show premiers on Tuesday, April 14. For more details about the show and its premier, visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/takingroot/.

Finally, the American Bible Society has put out a great new resource entitled, Poverty and the Poor in the Bible, available free at http://www.bibles.com/products/ABS_NEW/121715.aspx. The short booklet is a collection of biblical texts that deal with poverty. It also has three appendices–letters that have been written by various Christian groups (one of which that was signed by our own Bishop Hanson) that speak to the injustice and scandal of modern poverty. I am excited to use this resource. I think it highlights well the way in which our foundational document calls us to be on the side of those who are poor and to walk with them in their struggle for justice.

David Creech

I was on the Green Festival web site today (looking up the dates that it will be in Chicago – May 16-17) when I discovered Green Festival TV. In browsing the video clips, I ran across the following interview with Lester Brown. In 15 minutes, he does a nice job of explaining how things like climate change, food production, economics, and poverty are related, and why everyone’s urgent action is needed. I encourage you to take the time to watch the clip:

And if you happen to live in Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Washington DC, or San Francisco, you might also want to attend the Green Festival in your city. Seattle’s is this weekend! If you don’t live in those places, some of the highlights and lots of information are still available at the Green Festival web site, as well as the sites of Global Exchange and Green America (formerly Co-op America), who put on the festivals.

If you happen to be a person who plans events of any size, the video clip called “Greening the Green Festival” about how they minimize landfill garbage at the Green Festivals is pretty interesting and inspiring, too.

An interesting piece that was emailed to me:

March 23, 2009
Migrant or refugee — what’s in a name?
By LISA FRIEDMAN, ClimateWire

HARINAGAR, Bangladesh — Environmentalists call the two young men who sneaked into India from this coastal village “climate refugees.” Government officials call them “migrants.”
Shumitra calls them her sons.

Squatting on the porch of her mud and thatch home, Shumitra clutches a photograph of 15-year-old Topon and 27-year-old Jogodish and wonders if she will ever see them again. Unselfconsciously, she lets her orange headscarf fall away as she describes how her eldest left two years ago as work in the rice fields dried up. The other boy followed after a devastating flood in July drowned the year’s crops.

She is not aware that her sons and others like them are subjects of a fierce war of words. At issue is not whether climate change will be responsible for displacing millions of people this century. It’s what to call the victims.

The distinction is not just academic. Experts say it can have real-life implications for national budgets, international law and immigration policies of nations from America to India.
“What do you call these people? Are they refugees? That’s a very sticky issue,” said Koko Warner, who heads the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability, and Adaptation Section at the U.N. University in Bonn, Germany.

‘There’s a lot of defensiveness’
“Other countries don’t want to be responsible for more people. There’s a lot of defensiveness,” she said. “It can be a very contentious, threatening political topic.”

Environmental and aid organizations prefer “refugee,” evoking powerful images of men and women driven from their homes with only the clothes on their back. Activists and government leaders in vulnerable countries also insist it is accurate.

“If a family lost his house or capital, if he doesn’t have any place to get housing or buy food, he should go some other place. He’s a refugee. If it happened because of climate impact, then he’s a climate refugee,” said Sarder Shafiqul Alam, a research fellow at the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies in Dhaka.

“It’s not war with a gun. It’s war against climate calamity by local communities, so it’s a fight,” he said.

Opponents of “refugee” come from several corners. Western governments have shied away from the phrase for fear they will be called upon to pay a hefty price for the impact of decades of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The moment you say there are ‘climate refugees,’ a set of obligations come up, and that, I think, is a problem,” said Rabab Fatima, regional representative for South Asia at the International Organization for Migration in Dhaka.

“Some countries would like to push it. But then, the international community is still not in a position to address those politics,” she said.

‘Refugee’ puts the burden on developed nations
Human rights leaders also bristle at the term “refugee.” They argue that the word has a precise legal definition under the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees as someone who must flee because of persecution or a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

Cécile Pouilly, a spokeswoman at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, said that convention was hard-fought. She argued that any attempt to play fast and loose with linguistics, no matter how sympathetic the victims of climate change, would do a disservice to the world’s 11 million refugees fleeing brutal dictatorships, violence, repression and civil wars.

“What we fear is that by misusing the term, we will weaken the definition of ‘refugee,'” Pouilly said. “We’re already struggling.”

Pouilly and several researchers said they understand the desire to use vivid language rather than colder, more academic terms like “migrant” and “climate-induced migration” to describe the wrenching specter of 200 million people being forced from their homes by midcentury. Besides, they acknowledged, it’s hard to get politicians to act on intractable issues like reducing emissions until they are confronted with the stark human implications of ignoring the issue.
“Refugee” puts the onus for reducing emissions — and the responsibility for compensating the millions displaced by climate change — squarely on the shoulders of developed nations like the United States and members of the European Union. Ultimately, activists said, it challenges them to act.

“The idea that [other countries] would have a legal obligation to admit 150 million Bangladeshis or migrants from other nations … I don’t think that is fruitful. I think that will scare governments that are capable of responding,” said Kathleen Newland, who directs refugee policy at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C.

Added Pouilly, “The word is used by environmentalists to push rich countries to do something on climate change, to use this ghost of millions of refugees on rickety boats arriving on the shores of their country. But there are others who say this is backfiring, that it is causing countries to build walls,” Pouilly said.

In India, which is busy constructing a fence along its porous, 2,500-mile border with Bangladesh, that is already happening.

Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

For more news on energy and the environment, visit www.climatewire.net.

David Creech

I just learned that today is the 29th anniversary of Oscar Romero’s assassination. Here is an excerpt from one of his sermons that resonates with what I was trying to say earlier (though he is far more eloquent).

“It helps, now and then to step back and take the long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts. It is even beyond our vision… No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection… No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

“This is what we are about: One person plants a seed in the soil. Another waters it. We plant seeds that will one day grow. We water seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing it.

“This enables us to do something and do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

“We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Amen.

David Creech

For those of you who have been reading my posts for awhile, you probably are well aware of my proclivity towards idealism. Working for ELCA World Hunger has tempered that tendency a bit but I still find myself drifting too frequently towards the ideal (fortunately my colleague Nancy Michaelis balances me out a bit!).

At Ecumenical Advocacy Days I realized how the ideal could be a real hindrance to addressing hunger and poverty. Our ask to Congress was threefold: 1) To follow the recommendations of the scientific community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (20-40% by 2020 and 80% by 2050); 2) To protect those who are living in poverty, here and abroad, from the impacts of climate change; and 3) To consider the impacts of climate change on migration when drafting the legislation.

In all of these requests, idealism can be hindrance to movement forward. For example, if I understand correctly, cap and trade legislation is not the ideal solution to climate change. Europe has had a cap and trade system in place for a number of years and it has not yielded the results promised. One of my companions from the Nicaragua study trip, Peter Metcalf (who is studying the environment in a graduate program at the University of Montana), suggested that a carbon tax would be more effective. In the U.S., however, cap and trade has some political legs, and if anything is going to get done, it will probably be cap and trade. So do we aim for the ideal or do we just try to get something (anything!) done?

When I met with my congressman’s staffer, I could tell that she was not interested in the last two components of the ask. I know that climate change legislation will help those who are vulnerable, but I would like to see more efforts to help them. So do I support my congressman who will get something (anything!) done or do I pressure for more?

At Senator Durbin’s office, his legislative director was very amenable to our ask. “But,” he said, “you know we’ll need to get at least five or six Republicans on board with us?” Compromise. Bleck.

Now, I realize that I have very limited power when it comes to the workings of Congress. In reality, my opinion about things matters very little when it comes to decisions our government makes. I can support my congressman or not, he will still make his vote that does not take into account those who are poor and vulnerable. My senator, who is the number two man in the Senate, is subject to forces beyond his control. The ideal must be sacrificed for something (anything!) to be enacted.

I think this can happen in our attempts to be responsible citizens and compassionate people as well. I know it happens in my life all the time (I just had a great discussion with my wife about how we could conserve more water–strangely, I was all about the little things and she was pushing for drastic changes).

The real question I’m learning to ask is what is the balance between the ideal and what already is. What can a realistically seek to accomplish without setting the bar too low? How can I make sure that the ideal does not keep me from being an advocate with and on behalf of those who are poor and vulnerable? Any thoughts?

David Creech

So it’s been awhile since my last post. Last weekend I was in Washington D.C. participating in Ecumenical Advocacy Days. From their Web site,

“Ecumenical Advocacy Days is a movement of the ecumenical Christian community, and its recognized partners and allies, grounded in biblical witness and our shared traditions of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Our goal, through worship, theological reflection and opportunities for learning and witness, is to strengthen our Christian voice and to mobilize for advocacy on a wide variety of U.S. domestic and international policy issues.”

The theme this year centered on issues of climate change and poverty. Many of us who went to Nicaragua back in January reunited to give a presentation on what we saw on our visit. I also had the chance to meet with some of the folks from the Advocacy office in D.C. and see how they do their work. They are such valuable partners. While our individual decisions matter (yes, I’m still not eating meat), public policy is a key component to addressing global justice issues. Our Advocacy folks in D.C. and New York (as well as those in Pittsburgh and numerous State Public Policy Offices) are essential allies in our struggle against global and domestic hunger.

On the last day of the conference, I got to meet with the legislative assistant to my congressman (Mark Kirk) and the legislative director to Senator Dick Durbin. I told both of them that climate change is a pressing issue and that we need to start acting now. I expressed that my hope is that whatever legislation is proposed takes into account those who are most vulnerable, both here and abroad. I was told that both the House and the Senate aim to have a bill this year. Here’s hoping!

It was good for me to see how the process works and to better understand my role in advocating on behalf of those who are poor and vulnerable. On Monday I will have more to say on the specific lessons (I think) I learned.

On a totally unrelated note, for those of you who missed me or wish in general that you heard more from me, I am now on Twitter with the user name “hungerbites” (yes, the name is intended to have multiple meanings; three, to be exact). I will be updating my status 2-3 times a day, letting people who are passionate about working against hunger know what I am reading and writing. Feel free to follow!

David Creech

Have you heard of jatropha? I admit it: I hadn’t. But I read something recently about how jotropha was the hot new biofuel. So I did a little googling today and discovered I must be living under a rock because jotropha is everywhere.

In case you’re like me and not so current on hip biofuels, jatropha is a tree that produces seeds that are packed with oil and are potentially very efficient sources of diesel fuel. Here are some of the reasons it’s attracting so much interest:

• It grows well in marginal soil
• It can survive for months without water
• It burns quite cleanly and the jatropha trees capture carbon, so it’s comparatively good for the environment
• It can potentially produce a lot more fuel per acre than other biofuels like corn and soy
• It is a perennial tree and therefore doesn’t have to be replanted each year
• The seed pulp left after the oil has been pressed can be used for fertilzer and formed into briquettes for other uses
• Unlike corn, jatropha is not edible and therefore is not diverting the food supply into fuel
• It can grow in places like Africa, India, Mexico, and Central America, creating a possible industry for places that badly need it and allowing diverse fuel suppliers

Sounds fantastic, right? But there are some downsides:

• While it can live in marginal soil and without water, it won’t necessarily produce well in those conditions
• Parts of the plant are highly toxic and there is concern over harvesting and processing it safely
• Currently, harvesting would have to be done by hand, making it a labor-intensive fuel.
• While it doesn’t directly divert a food crop, if it proves profitable, people might replace crops with jatropha (see Burma)

So, nothing is certain, but it appears jatropha is well worth more study, and investors are on board. Especially since Air New Zealand used a blend of jatropha and diesel to fly a Boeing 747 jet last year. In my mind, even if jatropha doesn’t turn out to be the best new fuel source on the planet, the research and experimenting that’s going on is really encouraging. It take us farther along the path of finding fuel sources that are relatively inexpensive, clean, renewable, and accessible for some of the poorest places on Earth. What can be more hopeful than that?

If you’d like to know more, here are some of the places where I learned about jatropha today:

Reuters
Reuters UK
ChemicallyGreen.com
BBC

This recipe comes from page 35 of the Food for Life cookbook. It is a recipe from Northern Uganda, and it is often eaten in times of food shortages. If you try this recipe, take a moment to learn about the conflict in Northern Uganda and how Lutherans are accompanying families displaced by violence and those beginning to return home.

When you sit down to eat, pray this Ugandan table blessing: Bless you, O Lord, as we sit together. Bless the food we eat this day. Bless the hands that made the food. Bless us o Lord. Amen.

Malakwang in Peanut Sauce

(you may want to try cutting the recipe in half)

1-2 lb sweet potatoes
1-2 lb leafy greens (try kale, collard greens, spinach, or chard)
1 tomato, chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cups cold water
1 1/2 cups natural peanut butter (no sugar or oil added)
salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

Peel and cook the sweet potatoes (steam, bake, or boil) until they are soft.

Meanwhile, remove any tough stems from the greens, chop the leaves coarsely, wash the leaves, and throw them into a large pot while still wet. Cover the pot and turn on the heat. Cook until the leaves are wilted, stirring occasionally. (If you use frozen greens, cook them until thawed.) Add the cold water, tomato, and onion and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir some of the hot vegetable cooking water into the peanut butter and then add the resulting peanut butter sauce in with the vegetables. Add salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste.

Serve with the cooked sweet potatoes.

I continued cooking until the dish was ready. I served with rice as suggested and attempted to eat in solidarity with the Sudanese. The dish was rather bland (and, in case you forgot, slimy). I choked down as many bites as I could, all the while trying to remember those who have fewer food choices (or no choices at all). Which leads me to problem four: I could not eat all the food that I had prepared.

Women’s rights are always of concern to ELCA World Hunger. Education, land ownership, access to credit – all of these things provide the means to make a living, and all of these things are often denied to women. Unsurprisingly, women suffer a disproportionate amount of hunger and poverty compared to men.

As a white woman living in the United States, I’ve always recognized that an accident of birth has allowed me access to power structures that many women in the world don’t have. Such luck to be born here and now! But two things I’ve read in the past week have alerted me to just how much the “now” matters.
The first comes from Dreamers of the Day, an historical novel by Mary Doria Russell. She describes an unmarried schoolteacher living in Ohio in 1920:

“Well, at the end of the war, women had achieved the suffrage, but the Nineteenth Amendment didn’t carry with it the right to make a living. There were so many demobilized soldiers needing work that we ladies were often summarily dismissed from employment.”

Can you imagine the lawsuits that would occur now? Yet that was the state of the country within the lifetime of people I have known. It really was not that long ago.

The second item comes from a blurb about Women’s History Month (which is now, in March):

“1974’s Equal Credit Opportunity Act gave married women the right to have credit cards and bank loans in their own name. Prior to that, in many states, wives had to defer to their husbands for credit card use, and women had to have a male cosigner to get a loan.”

1974!! That’s within my lifetime! I had no idea that, at the time I was born, my mother could not have her own credit card! One could look at these things and despair at how long it has taken for women’s rights to get to where they are, and how far they have to go. But I take heart on the flip side. Look how deeply embedded these rights have become in our society in such a relatively short time, and what a wonderfully important difference they have made.

And the fight for women’s rights goes on! To read more about VERY current affairs and ongoing work on the topic, I encourage you to read the Ecumenical Women blog. Emily Davila, the Assistant Director at the Lutheran Office for World Community in New York, says there’s a lot of interesting posting going on right now from the Commission on the Status of Women. Learn more and lend your voice so that opportunity for women doesn’t depend on birth place and time.