This is the third post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millennium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework, and this week, we’re looking at the rights of women.

Millennium Development Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

In Malawi, Albeta Chilombo deposits income from her small business into the Kasungu Community Savings and Credit Cooperative, a bank supported by ELCA World Hunger.

The inequality women have faced throughout history is well known. What may be less well known is how much a society benefits when women share equal status and rights with men. Here are a few statistics from The Girl Effect website: 

• “When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has .2 fewer children.”
• “When girls and women can earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for men.” 
• “An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ future wages by 10 to 20 percent.”
• “An extra year of secondary school boosts girls’ future wages by 15 to 25 percent.”

This means that as educated girls grow up to lead productive and successful lives, every one around them tends to benefit from their success. They raise healthier and better educated children, enhancing the opportunities for future generations. In addition, educated women, if given the opportunity, are better able to participate in the workforce. This means both income for themselves AND increasing a country’s capacity for economic growth and poverty reduction. Ensuring access to education for girls and women is a critical first step toward empowering them, their children, and their communities.

Traditional laws related to property and assets also create impediments for women. Despite the fact that in many countries women are responsible for the majority of agricultural labor and household management, they often own none of the land, buildings, or businesses, and may have very little to say about how household assets are used. What’s more, they often have no ability to obtain credit. As a result, should they become widowed or abandoned by their husbands, women can be left with no money, no house, no land, and no way of growing food. Worse still, they may be ostracized by their communities, leaving them with no where to go. Yet they frequently retain responsibility for feeding and caring for their children. In such cases, women and their children have little hope of escaping poverty and hunger. Until women achieve the ability and right to support themselves, hunger and poverty are likely to persist.

-Nancy Michaelis

This is the second post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millenium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework, and this week, we’re looking at education.

Millenium Development Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education

In Cusco, Peru, an ELCA World Hunger-supported ministry called Huchuy Runa teaches kids about human rights.

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of education in social and economic development. Both marginalized people in developed nations and many people in developing nations lack access to basic education. In a developed nation, lack of education can doom a person to a life of unskilled, low-paying work that makes it nearly impossible to avoid poverty. Minimum wage – or worse – just doesn’t buy a lot of food or shelter. In developing nations, where even primary education is often unavailable or inaccessible, the results range from continued impoverishment to death.

The need for universal primary education includes matters well beyond reading and writing. Knowledge of basic sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and health are essential to improving people’s lives. For example, health education decreases maternal and infant mortality rates, and slows the rate of contagious diseases as people learn how illnesses spread and are able to improve their response to outbreaks. Healthy, energetic people are productive workers who will have better chances of economic success and reduced risk of hunger.

Literacy is another goal of universal primary education. Without the ability to read and write, people are more vulnerable to a life of poverty and hunger. Even marginally skilled work requires literacy. Without the ability to read pamphlets, packaging, or instructions, people miss opportunities to learn about resources available to them. Without the ability to read newspapers it is more difficult to participate in local political or developmental processes which might improve one’s economic situation. Literacy opens many avenues to improve lives, and widespread literacy opens new avenues for whole communities to pursue more ambitious opportunities together. Universal primary education is an essential tool for giving people the knowledge they need to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.

-Nancy Michaelis

When you think of hunger, what images come to mind? A line of people waiting for a meal at a soup kitchen? A bony African child pounding grain near a cook-fire? A man standing in a dry, cracked field? Something else entirely?

When we see such images, we naturally want to help. One important way to do so is to provide desperately needed relief: food, water, shelter, etc. Such immediate assistance is critical. Another important way to help is to ask how we got here and what can we do about it. Why are so many people waiting for a hot meal? How much will the dangerously thin child get to eat after spending precious energy pounding grain? What happened to destroy the man’s field and what are his options now?

There are many contributors to hunger, and they often interact in complex ways. But addressing the root causes is critical to ending hunger. My posts over the next several weeks are adapted from something I wrote a few years ago. They will introduce some of the reasons that hunger is such a tenacious problem. This first post is the longest; thanks in advance for your patience!

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The Millennium Development Goals
In September of 2000, the 189 member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted eight goals that would, if accomplished, dramatically improve the lives of poor and hungry people throughout the world. To get 189 politicians to agree indicates the importance of these goals! Each one addresses an issue that affects hunger in the world. So for the purpose of this series of posts, the Millennium Development Goals provide a useful framework for considering many of the primary causes of world hunger.

 Millennium Development Goal 1:  Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

It doesn’t really get more direct than this! If someone pressed you against a wall and demanded to know the one cause of hunger, “poverty” would be an excellent answer. Obviously, people have to eat to live. So people with means will gladly buy or grow food. Meanwhile, people lacking means either can’t get food, or find that skipping food is a lesser problem than skipping something else – such as paying rent to retain shelter, paying for fuel to stay warm, or paying for child care to retain a job. In developed countries like the United States, where food is generally plentiful, hunger is frequently experienced as food insecurity. Food insecurity is “the limited or uncertain availability or ability to acquire safe, nutritious food in a socially acceptable way.” For people with inadequate income, food may be the necessity most easily skipped near the end of a pay period. That leaves people unsure how they will eat for a few days each month or periodically between jobs. In other words, they experience hunger. But as bad as it is, it could be worse. Because food is available in developed countries (there are farms, gardens, grocery stores, restaurants, etc.) and social support programs often exist, debilitating hunger and starvation are not widespread.

The same cannot be said everywhere. Poor individuals in many developing countries have it even worse. They suffer from chronic food insecurity, meaning they lack adequate food supplies not just periodically, but most of the time. Imagine this: you live in a developing country, you have very little income, and so you want a job. The thing is, there aren’t any. There’s very little infrastructure and even less industry. With almost no industry, no one is hiring and unemployment rates are very high. Besides, you are illiterate. The nearest school is miles from your village, and you were not able to go as a child. Your labor was needed on your family’s small farm. What’s more, you have periodic bouts of malaria that leave you bedridden and weak. There is no health clinic nearby or medicine to help. So even if there were jobs, you’d have a hard time getting or keeping one. When you’re well and strong enough, you still work on the farm, but the nutrients in the soil have been depleted and it produces less food each year, and you have no money to buy fertilizer. Or crop yields are low or fail altogether. Or stored food has run out and new crops are not yet ready for harvest. Most of your neighbors live under similar circumstances. All of these obstacles contribute to your poverty, and consequently, your hunger.

On an individual level, food may be unavailable or unaffordable. But widespread poverty is usually the result of systemic national problems.  On a national level, such issues as unstable or corrupt governments, insurmountable national debt, trade barriers, war, disease, insufficient infrastructure, and detrimental environmental practices all contribute to poverty and food availability with a country. (Several of these will be topics of later posts in this series.) In countries lacking the resources to address national problems, poverty and hunger persist. At both an individual and national level, hunger cannot be stopped without also addressing poverty.

-Nancy Michaelis

Over the weekend, I saw the movie Up. In it, the boy, Russell, is telling the old man about times spent sitting on a curb, counting cars with his father. He says, “It might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.”

It’s not a bad message with which to end a year and start another. Many of us will look back at 2009 and say, “good riddance!” After all, it has not been an easy year. And many will look forward with grand resolutions and hopes for big changes in 2010. But despite the upheavals, surprises, and proclamations that generally attend life, looking back, it may well be the daily routines and simple times that mean the most. So, what boring things marked your life and were memorable to you in 2009? Please leave a comment and share! Here are few of mine:

– walking my daughter to and from school (until it got too cold)
– curling up in our big chair with a hot cup of tea and a good book
– sitting in that same big chair with my daughter, making up stories
– cooking the vegetables from our CSA box each week (and I’m still cooking them, truth be told…)
– watching the local news on TV with my husband at the end of the day

I recently read a book by Forrest Church, who said something like, “If you pray for what you already have, your prayers will be answered.” Indeed, I will pray for these happy, boring routines! Respite, renewal, and meaning are available in small snippets every week if we only remember to notice and embrace them.  They give balance and perspective to the more exciting parts of life, which may be what it takes to get us through.

Wishing you a new year filled with “boring,”
Nancy Michaelis

I was listening to Christmas carols the other day when I reached three conclusions: I would NOT want to be Mary, I don’t particularly like the song “Mary Did You Know,” and it’s probably a good thing most of us don’t know.  In case you’re not familiar with the song, here are a few lines of the lyrics:

“Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?
This sleeping child you’re holding is the great I am.”

First, I’m guessing Mary had a clue something was up, what with the virgin pregnancy and all. So she probably did know – or at least suspected. But secondly, what horrible things to say to a new parent! As if you’re not worried enough about your new, helpless baby and the tremendous responsibility of caring for him. You wouldn’t relax for a second if you thought your baby boy was Lord of all creation! What if you made a mistake? What if you *gasp* dropped the sleeping child, the Great I Am?! As he gets older, do you try to teach him right and wrong, mold his values? Or do you assume that, as heaven’s perfect Lamb, he already knows better than you and you should just try to stay out of the way? How would you begin to raise such a critically important person?

I wouldn’t want to be Mary because I don’t think I could handle the stress of the job. There’s an Amy Grant song that includes a line where Mary questions whether God wishes He had picked someone more worthy. I think I would feel that way every day. I find parenting hard enough with just a regular kid. Which is why I don’t really like the song “Mary Did You Know.” Maybe her baby boy “will one day walk on water,” but is it necessary to keep to harping on it to poor Mary, who is probably worried enough already? Why not just tell her she has a beautiful, exceptional child and leave it at that? Let her carry on with the hope that not knowing allows…

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Working to end world hunger can be difficult and disheartening. There is always a need, and most root causes are systemic and interconnected, and therefore slow to change. Even when everyone agrees there’s a problem, opinions about priorities and approaches can vary broadly, making meaningful change difficult to even start, let alone achieve. Health care reform in the U.S. is a current case in point.

And then there’s my own participation in some of those systems, and the weariness I sometimes feel as I try to make the “best” decisions. Is it better for the environment to repair the old, less efficient dishwasher, or buy a new one that’s more efficient, but that required additional raw materials to make? How were the raw materials acquired? How do the various manufacturers treat their employees? Arguably I shouldn’t have a dishwaher at all. But I want one. When is it okay to buy what you want, even if you don’t need it? Weary, I tell you.

But then other times, we see how the work ELCA World Hunger is funding has made a significant difference in a community, or in shaping legislation, or building understanding and fostering a passion for change. And then I feel the satisfaction and hope of knowing that we have changed things for the better. And I have faith that we can continue to change things if we keep working at it.

But the same way I think Mary is better off not knowing exactly what her child will be, I think we’re better off not knowing exactly when or how things will change. In not knowing, there is neither complacency nor helplessness. There are not expectations that scare into paralysis. Instead, there is room for hope. There is room for faith and the motivation to keep trying, because the breakthroughs – small or large – could happen anytime.  There is the understanding that ending hunger for even one person is an improvement worth striving for.

Christmas is a time of hope and anticipation. May we feel these great gifts woven throughout our lives: in our parenting, in our faith, in our work, and in our fight against hunger.

Have a very merry Christmas,
Nancy Michaelis

Someone recently asked me why, working in the field of world hunger, I was going to a conference on environmental justice. It’s not always an obvious connection, that between hunger and climate change. But a main reason ELCA World Hunger is concerned about climate change is that the poorest have the fewest resources to adapt and cope. The most vulnerable are at the greatest risk of suffering and hunger. If the rains don’t come as often anymore and your crop doesn’t grow, how will you eat? If the strangely frequent and severe storms damage your house, do you spend your small income on shelter or food?

But a picture is worth a thousand words, right? So check out this site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8390366.stm  It’s from the BBC and includes a picture of the globe with video clips from different countries, each one showing an impact of environmental strain and change. In particular, I found the clips from Bolivia, Egypt, and Iraq especially useful for clarifying how changing water supplies impact human life. The clips don’t directly connect the environmental issues to hunger, but they take you close enough to make the final hop an easy one.

In recognition of what’s happening in Copenhagen right now, watch some of the clips. And then, with your new-found inspiration, hold a workshop in your congregation or community to spread the word about how climate and hunger are related. The workshop materials and instructions are ready and waiting for you at www.elca.org/hunger/toolkits  We invite and welcome your voice in the fight against hunger!

-Nancy Michaelis

I’ve been thinking recently about how important it is to have a place to be. I mean this on several levels. The first is the smallest and most personal –  a physical house. A place to go to after work or school. Shelter versus homelessness. I’ve been thinking about this because I have a friend who has recently taken her child and left a destructive relationship. Thank goodness for that, but because she has been a stay-at-home mom, she doesn’t have a job or income, which is making the move difficult. Fortunately, she has supportive friends, a really great church community, and she is receiving child support. She’s got more options than many women in her position, but her situation is still tenuous. She managed to get a short-term lease on a small apartment, but has little money left over for food. She’s relying on friends and the food pantry to help out. She figures it’s easier to get help with food then shelter, and it seems to me that there’s great comfort in having a place to be.

A second level of having a place to be is in liking where you live, fitting in there, and having a sense of belonging. I’ve been thinking about this as a relative who was recently laid off considers having to move his family to wherever he can find a job. They don’t want to move. They are very connected to their current community. But ultimately, they have to have income. There’s a difference between having a place to be and having a place you want to be, and, I’d guess, a corresponding difference in the degree to which you thrive.

Which is not so different from some of what I heard in Mexico City a little over a month ago when I was there with the ELCA World Hunger Leadership Gathering. For all the controversy immigration causes in this country, it’s not exactly a first choice option for many immigrants, either. But like my laid-off relative, you go where you can make a living. My relative may have to change states, but at least he’ll still be in a familiar culture, he’ll be able to speak the language, and he’ll be able to provide food and shelter for his family legally. How much more difficult for the Mexican whose choices are living in poverty at home, or as an outlaw in the U.S.? Neither is a very good or fulfilling place to be.

And then there’s the Maldives. Anne Basye mentioned the country in her blog last week. They face the possibility of their entire country being submerged by rising sea levels due to climate change. Where can one bein that situation, when your country no longer exists? I read that their president is talking to other countries about buying land onto which they might relocate should theirs go under water. How does that work?! Do they just move the whole country? Do they become part of the country into which they move, or is, say, Australia willing to sell off part of it’s land so they can create a new Maldives? What happens when a whole country of people has no where in the world to legally be?

The causes of hunger and the interconnections of those causes is complex, and it seems to be that this question of where a person can be ties so many of them together. Employment, economics, land rights, land availability, governance, identity. No big insights here today; just respect for the complexity.

-Nancy Michaelis

The following was written by Dr. Warren Chain, who recently led a trip during which participants learned about and reflected on ethical aspects of our food production systems and food choices.

From Thursday October 22 through Sunday, October 25 in Waco, TX, ELCA World Hunger gathered 20 campus and congregational leaders from Region 4 for a Leadership Training on the Ethics of Eating. The event was held at World Hunger Relief, a Christian organization which trains individuals in sustainable farming practices that are useful both in the United States and abroad. This event focused on three issues at the intersection of food and faith: justice issues affecting workers in food production, the intersection between agriculture and climate change, and hunger.

We engaged with a wide variety of speakers – Food Worker Activists Anita Grabowski and Sean Sellers, Theologian Shannon Jung, Waco Hunger Activists Shirley Langston and Kenneth Moerbe, and Climate Change speakers Dr. Travis Miller and Dr. Benjamin Champion. We also engaged in a number of activities. On Friday, we prepared one of our meals from live chickens and vegetables that we gleaned. On Saturday, we visited Farmer James Nors of Nors Dairy, a raw milk dairy farm. Through these speakers and activities, I gained a good deal of new information and had a number of personal revelations; I will share two of them.

On Saturday morning, Dr. Benjamin Champion provided an overview of some of the challenges associated with eating ethically, with a focus upon the impact of our food choices upon climate change. His research examined local food systems in the state of Kansas. There are a variety of ethical concerns to think about as one eats. For example, were the workers who produced and distributed this food paid a living wage? Was the food produced locally and sustainably, and with the intent to minimize its carbon impact? I was struck, in particular, by his data which examined the carbon impact of various aspects of the food system. Among those who are concerned about the carbon impact of their activity, much discussion has focused on eating locally. But, Ben’s data suggests that our own local transporation to and from the store where we buy our food, combined with the carbon impact of our food storage, can actually have a higher carbon impact than the carbon impact that stems from tranporting industrial food to our local store. This finding complicates the idea that eating locally is always better for the environment. If you would like to learn more, see Ben’s presentation (particularly slides 60 – 63) which is posted on the The Table, the World Hunger social networking site: http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/group/region4ethicsofeating/forum/topics/benjamin-champions.

On Saturday evening, we screened the documentary film Mississippi Chicken, and afterwards had a dicussion with the producer Anita Grabowski and her husband, John Fiege, who was the film’s director. The movie chronicles Anita’s work to create a worker justice center in Mississippi to organize undocumented poultry workers in the summer of 2004. We began to hear about her work on Friday, as Anita participated on a panel that dealt with the justice issues faced by poultry workers and farm workers. We continued our learning with Mississippi Chicken, which highlights the multiples barriers poultry workers face as they seek to feed their families. While working in these poultry plants, workers face terrible conditions. Futhermore, workers are vulnerable to exploitation by plant managers while on the job, and by local police and criminals outside of work. These workers are vulnerable to exploitation because they often are either unclear about their rights, or are reticent to engage with the police due to their undocumented status. At the end of the documentary, our group was subdued and stunned by what we saw – it was not a graphic movie, but the social injustices faced by these workers are heartbreaking. Afterwards, John and Anita led a discussion about the film and how the individuals we met through the film have fared since it was produced. This film can be borrowed from ELCA World Hunger or it can be purchased from Amazon. I recommend it highly.

These are just two of the experiences that impacted me over the weekend. If you are interested in working on issues of food and faith, a number of ways to engage emerge from this event. I invite you to join our discussion on The Table (http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/ & http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/group/region4ethicsofeating). In addition, all of the participants will host an activity in their sending campus or congregation. So, if you see an activity on The Table that you would like to participate in or would like to sponsor in your area, feel free to connect with one of us to participate or to gain assistance.

Warren Chain, Ph.D.
ELCA World Hunger

Elena (seated) with Stephanie (Amextra staff)

One of the people we met in Lomas de San Isidro was a woman named Elena. Through a translator, she explained to us that during the spring swine flu outbreak, she and a group of women hand-sewed 5000 face masks in the space of a few days. Then they went door to door through the community handing them out, and providing information about the flu and how to prevent it. Collectively, it required hundreds of hours of work for which she and the other women received no pay. But in Lomas, no one got sick with the flu.

When asked why she did it, Elena said she wanted to help her neighbors. And she understood that success takes teamwork, and she wanted to be a model of how to do that. She wanted to encourage others to work for the community, too. She said the women’s strategy is to work together, even though it is not always easy, and some have to be convinced that it’s worth their time. But Elena believes that, together, they can improve life for everyone.

We visited Lomas because it is a community supported by Amextra, one of ELCA World Hunger’s long-standing partner organizations. It was ELCA World Hunger funds that provided the materials for the masks that Elena and her neighbors sewed, and that support the Amextra-sponsored community center where classes on health and disease prevention are taught. It was gratifying to see a first-hand example of the impact my donations are having, the good ways the money is being used, and to recognize my part in that greater whole.

But for me, far more profound was the example being set by Elena and the others we met. Relative to those living in Lomas, I am rich beyond imagination. I have lots of comforts and plenty to eat. But unlike Elena, I can’t tell you the names of the people who live three houses away from me. I’d like to say I’d stay up all night to make them face masks, but if the flu hits my neighborhood, I’m not so sure I’ll see those nameless, unknown people as my priority. Elena and the residents of Lomas de San Isidro have very little money, but they have a wealth of human connection and support that many of us Americans, for all our money, can’t buy and desperately want. In the community that the residents of Lomas de San Isidro have created, I saw God. And I felt hope.

There are lots of places in the world like Lomas de San Isidro (including here in the U.S.!), where people struggle daily to eat. To acquire needed healthcare services. To obtain information. To offer their children a hopeful future. And there are lots of places where people accomplish amazing things in the face of adversity every day. Our trip to Mexico gave a small group of us a renewed sense of hope and urgency in the fight to end hunger. May we find ways to sustain that sense of urgency and pass it on to others!

-Nancy Michaelis

The staff at Crossways Camping Ministries in Wisconsin spent a lot of time this summer helping kids deepen their understanding of hunger and it’s causes. Below is a follow-up to their original post. It is written by Ben Koehler.

Every week we talked with campers about how to help solve hunger problems. In these discussions staff members were encouraged by how responsive the campers can be.  The catch is that most leave and quickly forget what they have discovered. We were awestruck in hearing about two campers who went home to their congregation and asked for the loose offering to go to the Crossways Mission Project, which in turn goes to Hunger Relief and Disaster Response in Zimbabwe. Of all of the voices calling their attention inside and outside of camp, the lessons of hunger stuck.

Some of our highlights this summer were…

Fresh Veggies from the Garden

Working in the Garden

Weighing Food Waste After Meals

 Teaming up on Hunger Issues

 And, of course, learning as much as we could.

Changes at Crossway’s Waypost on Mission Lake are making for a more environmentally friendly and sustainable camp community. To learn more, check out this video:

http://www.godsworkourhands.org/v/445,summer-of-hope-crossways-waypost-camp.html

Joyfully,

Ben Koehler