I have had writer’s block for the past two Thursdays. Really, really bad writer’s block.  Tonight, I finally figured out why. I’ve been taking in a lot of articles, blogs, videos, etc. for the past couple of weeks that have all slightly informed me while mostly resulting in my asking more questions. So at the moment, I feel about the furthest thing from an expert on just about any of the subjects that I have been pondering. None the less, I think they are fascinating. So, should you be interested, I am inviting you to join in my pondering. Below, I have provided passages from some of the most interesting pieces I have run across in the past few weeks. They are part of a larger story, so please feel free to click through in order to read or watch them in their full context. From portraits of US hunger to water conservation and African entrepreneurship, here they are:

(1)  A two part series from NPR highlighting a family in Pennsylvania’s struggle to make ends meet on the table. http://n.pr/dailyfighttofindfood

“For example, the Williamsons have a garden behind their apartment in downtown Carlisle. They grow lots of healthy food — zucchini, peppers and Brussels sprouts. But when Alex was thirsty after a walk, his mother gave him a plastic water bottle filled with orange soda.

Elaine Livas, who runs Project SHARE, the local food pantry, says she sees it all time.

‘A gallon of milk is $3-something. A bottle of orange soda is 89 cents,’ she says. ‘Do the math.’

Livas says low-income families might know milk is better for their kids, but when it comes to filling a hungry stomach, a cheaper high-calorie option can look pretty good.”

(2)  New York City gets smart with their water. http://bit.ly/smartwatertracking

“The smart water industry isn’t nearly as developed as the smart energy sector, where a slew of companies are scrambling to grab a piece of the market. Still, as anyone who has been stuck in an area without fresh water can tell you, water use is just as important as energy consumption. And eventually, startups and established companies alike will start paying attention.”

(3)  From a blog I stumbled across thanks to a colleague – thoughts on Africa, entrepreneurship and questions of how to better help our brothers and sisters abroad. http://bit.ly/entrepreneurshipinethiopia

“Outside of direct relief aid and some of the amazing health and education research and development, much (perhaps most) of what is done in the developing world through non-profits and NGO’s, could actually be accomplished through a business model, even if it would be harder to raise investment funding. Instead, someone begins selling tax subsidized and donor subsidized water pumps in Africa, because it is easier to raise the funding through tax deductible donations rather than through the rigors of proving out the business model for investment dollars, with the great result of increased deployment of inexpensive water moving technology in the developing world to aid rural farmers, but the negative results of (1) killing the market for future indigenous entrepreneurs attempting to sell water pumps at a profit and (2) locking a potentially valuable distribution channel in a non-profit, making it difficult for other for-profits to use.”

(4)  One billion people are obese or overweight and one billion people are hungry – so let’s look into the global food system. http://bit.ly/globalfoodsystem

I am a firm believer in ELCA World Hunger’s work both in the US and abroad. I also am a firm believer in learning from people in all sorts of organizations so that I can bring back a well-rounded understanding of hunger and poverty. I found this TED talk from Ellen Gustafson, co-creater of the “FEED bag” to be both informative and inspiring.

I hope you’ve found at least one of these stories interesting enough to keep reading beyond this post. Please feel free to comment below and share your opinions on the articles. Again, they are just for provoking your thoughts and interests (and are not meant to convey ELCA World Hunger policy on particular issues.) Thanks for reading, and for caring about issues of hunger and poverty.

Lana Lile

My mother loves to bake; from fruit pies to Swedish pastries her two ovens provide the best parts of Holiday meals. Ever since I can remember, one of my favorite recipes of hers has been Beech Bread. Until last week I always thought that this was another one of those recipes passed down from cookbook to cookbook, like the rye bread recipe my great grandfather brought over from the Åland Islands. It turns out, however, that this isn’t the case at all! After college one of my mom’s first jobs was at our local health department. One of her co-workers was a nutritionist who taught local women involved in the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) Program recipes for affordable nutritious foods, and this is where her recipe came from. So it turns out that my yummy, moist and rich childhood Beech Bread isn’t a family recipe at all!

As ELCA Advocacy urges support for a strong Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act in 2010 that increases access, expands participation and improves nutrition standards, I thought I would share a recipe that continues to be an important morsel of my life today. Admittedly, the recipe is nearly 30 years old, so I have no idea if it has recently been in use in health department classes or the WIC program, but I do know that it tastes just as good as ever…in fact, I just finished a slice!

BEECH BREAD (a “quick” bread)

3 cups buttermilk or sour milk*

3 cups whole wheat flour

3 cups enriched all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking soda

1 cup molasses

1 egg, beaten

*to make sour milk, add 1 Tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice per cup of regular milk. Let sit 5 minutes.

Directions – Combine flours, salt and soda. Mix well. Add buttermilk, molasses and beaten egg to the dry mixture. Blend together well. Let stand in bowl for 20 minutes. Pour batter into 2 greased and floured pans (about 9”x5”x3”). Bake at 375 degrees for 60 – 75 minutes.

Enjoy!

Lana

“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life, it’s so easy to make it complex. The solution may be for a lot of the world’s problems is to turn around and take a forward step, you can’t just keep trying to make a flawed system work .” – Yvon Chouinard

On Tuesday evening I was invited to watch the film 180 Degrees South. The film is a modern day reenactment of the epic 1968 journey of Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia) and Doug Tompkins (founder of The North Face and Conservacion Patagonica) from Ventura, California to the mountaintop of Patagonia, Chile. Although I expected and hoped for the surf movie feel of the film, I did not expect how it made me think further about the interconnections of the environment, hunger, poverty and advocacy.

The film follows writer and photographer Jeff Johnson as he reenacts his hero’s journey, but well, on his own terms. His epic adventure lands him on a sail boat headed south and takes him for a ride to beautiful Easter Island. Through his journey to Patagonia viewers are introduced to issues facing local industries in Chile who are suffering from the effects of urban sprawl, water privatization and industrial pollution. My heart went out to the fisherman who recalled how schools of fish used to practically swim to their shore and their emphasis on respecting the ocean. 180 Degrees South paints a passionate picture of the need for advocacy, the power of a few people and the deep cry of our environment.

It’s 85 minutes well worth your time.

Watch the trailer here.

~Lana

In anticipation of National HIV Testing Day this Sunday, an interview with Joseph Rower, a Lutheran PhD student currently conducting HIV and AIDS research…

What exactly are you studying right now and where?

I am a PhD student in the Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus…  The laboratory I work in, and thus my thesis work, focuses on understanding the pharmacology (essentially how the body acts on a drug and how a drug affects the body) of antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV and Hepatitis.

How did you end up working in an HIV and AIDS lab?

I chose this lab because of its emphasis on clinically relevant research.  We do a significant amount of work with humans-including those who are HIV infected and taking medications-and I enjoy being able to make a direct positive impact on someone’s life.  In fact, part of my research will focus on interacting with HIV patients and determining what life is like while taking these drugs, i.e. how their daily routine is affected, what drug-related side effects do they have to manage, and getting a patient’s opinion on what successful treatment or management of HIV truly is.

What are you currently researching?

My research revolves around two drugs-zidovudine (ZDV) and lamivudine (3TC) -which have historically been used here in the US as the backbone of HIV treatment, but due to troubling safety profiles (ZDV commonly causes nausea, and has been shown to contribute muscle degradation and AIDS related dementias) they have been phased out in favor of safer drugs. However, they are still utilized in special settings (i.e. pregnant women, infants, drug resistant patients in the US, and as the standard of care in resource poor countries) and so an understanding of how to best minimize the resulting toxicities while still maintaining efficacy is crucial.  As such, my project focuses on determining what concentrations of the drug are necessary in the body to maintain efficacy while minimizing if not eliminating serious toxicities.

I’m especially interested in these drugs because of their relevancy to the resource poor setting.  ZDV and 3TC are made available to poor patients in African countries at a cost of $1 a day, whereas the newer drugs have yet to be made affordable enough for this setting, and cost up to $1000 for a month’s supply. It is crucial that we fully understand these two drugs so as to benefit those who have no other choice but to be treated with these drugs.

How does your work/research relate to your sense of vocation?

I’ve always felt called to service, starting with volunteering in homeless shelters as a youth, traveling to Mexico with my church youth group to build a house for a family, to taking advantage of the many opportunities offered at CLU by the Community Service Center.  I’ve also always felt blessed to both enjoy and be skilled in the sciences (I can thank my dad for that one).  Growing up, I always knew God was saying, “here is this gift for you, use it well”, and then when my grandfather began suffering from a form of muscular dystrophy that lacks a treatment, I knew that He was saying, “here’s how”.  He made it pretty clear that He gave me the gift of science knowledge and passion to help His children that suffer from disease.  From there doors just kept opening, the latest being this lab…

What has been the most powerful thing you have learned through your research and classes?

Oh man, that is a tough one…I guess on the surface it’s been amazing to dive in and try to fully understand how complex and intricately built the human body is.  Everything has purpose, and is there for a reason, just like every person makes up the body of Christ for a reason and with purpose. It’s just amazing to think about how amazingly detailed and intricate and complicated our body is, and how good our body is at what it does, with so many places that errors and mistakes could be made.

Is there an interesting fact you would like to share?

One of the first lessons I learned when I started in the lab is that everything matters.  Everything.  My work involves quantifying miniscule amounts of drug that successfully stop HIV from replicating inside a human body.  To put that in perspective, it’s like one pebble, out of an entire beach of sand, stopping the ocean from flooding the shoreline.  It really illustrates one of my favorite stories of a man who stumbles upon an enormous stack of starfish left on the beach by a receding tide.  When asked why he was throwing the starfish back into the water, as he couldn’t possibly make a difference to the entire pile of starfish, the man responds that he made a difference to the one starfish he just threw back in.  Just so, every action we make makes a difference in someone’s life, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant.

What keeps you going?

As of December 2008, the World Health Organization reported that 33.4 million individuals were living with HIV.  It’s estimated that 80-90% would be considered resource poor and unable to afford top of the line treatments.  Need I say more?

Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview!

Joseph is a member of St. Philip Lutheran in Littleton, CO, and an alum of California Lutheran University where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Math.

~Lana Lile

It’s late and I just got home from a City Planning Commission meeting. Admittedly, I stayed late chatting with Commission members. I went as a member of the public as I was interested in their topic of the evening: housing. What I really got out of the meeting, however, had less to do with housing – although historic preservation and urban sprawl was rather intriguing – and more to do with the strategies of development. It made me think about advocacy, education, relief and development. Here’s why…

The town in which I currently reside is also the town that I grew up in. It was once a roaring 1920’s timber town and currently is in need of some development and economic upswing. Charmed by tall evergreens and a winding river, its environmental aspects keep your enjoyment, but it’s development is essential to the well being of its inhabitants. So there I sat, attending a government commission meeting (made up of volunteers) and thought: this, in a way, is like advocacy. This is where the public comes to voice their opinions and where the recommendations are made to generally plan the city. The Planning Commission affects things like housing, zoning, traffic and commercial/industrial/residential development to name a few. Then there was me. The local sitting in, fascinated, learning all about ordinances and stakeholders and all of the small things that go into making downtowns pretty and housing affordable that I would have never thought about. I was being educated. After the meeting we chatted about jobs, local skills and the economy. My town is on track for being awarded a large state project, but really, this project’s designated end (it is slated to last about five years) makes it more so a relief to the area than a true development. So that’s why we were at the Planning Commission meeting; to talk about the future, and ways that the area can develop in the long term while the relief strategies are aiding us in the mean time. The real kicker was realizing that none of this happens without money. Grants, developers willing to spend good amounts of hard-earned cash, city taxes and more are needed to revitalize a community. It’s the same idea in my community as it is in places around the world.

There, staring me in the face, were the four things that ELCA World Hunger also uses to make development happen at home and around the world. Sitting in that living example, it became very clear to me that each part of the process is key to the end goal. I will continue to learn more and more each day about the root causes of hunger and poverty, advocate on behalf of those who need my voice, help in necessary relief efforts and opt for sustainable development whenever possible. I’ve also realized just how vital any donation that I can give is to getting the job done.

So what’s the scoop on twenty-somethings and vegetable gardens? My brother and I were talking this afternoon about all the people we know of, our age, who are beginning to grow their own food. I think that this is very cool, and I too love a good fresh leaf of lettuce or handful of blueberries, but I also wonder…what’s the motivation for our age group? The friends we thought about ranged from Seminary students to general contractors and insurance agents; different people from different walks of life. As my brother and I are both in our twenties, I wonder if all those films we saw in school are finally settling in? We have grown up with the likes of Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me, forming an awareness and interest in more recent documentaries like Food, Inc. and The Cove. Could it be that our generation is finally putting their foot down on all those chemicals disguised as food? Is it that when we mix this media with the growing trend of rooftop and community gardens, then add in our recent independence and the financial crisis that we’re simply reaching critical mass? Or is everyone else just beginning to till up their grass for gardens as well, but they are simply a bit further from my radar?

Here are my questions:

To my fellow twenty-somethings – Do you grow your own food? If so, why…is it all those documentaries, are you trying to save a buck, is it the rooftop garden scene? Or did you grow up with it, so it just seems natural? Perhaps something else entirely?

To more seasoned adults – When did you find that you started to become interested in growing your own fruits or vegetables? Has it been in recent years; are you also enjoying the organic gardening trends and responding to the economy? Or is this just something that begins in your twenties?

Thanks for your thoughts, and thanks even more for your gardens!

~Lana

When I turned on my computer this afternoon I had an article link from Fast Company waiting for me in my inbox. The article is about cell phone charging via bicycles. My first response?…Cool! The phones which are optimally designed to go with these chargers have a range of basic attributes including:

• Standby battery time of six weeks
• Double SIM card capable – meaning two people can use one phone on different accounts
• Standard flashlight
• Where available, information covering healthcare, agriculture, education and entertainment

The phones were made public today at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya. I often hear about how cell phones and computers are leap-frogging land lines and print books in the developing world. This, however, means electricity is necessary. So enter the bicycle cell phone charger. According to Fast Company, “Hit 7.5mph and your bike will be charging your cell as quickly as a traditional charger would.” I’m about ready to switch out my touch screen and jump on a bike myself! While the article makes a great point that we can’t overlook the possible increased need for food intake inherent in bicycling to charge the phone, and of course no system is perfect, I can’t help but think that this little device is very handy. If a ten minute bike ride gives one nearly 30 minutes of talk time, then a bike ride to sell goat milk at the market in the next town could charge a cell for enough time to talk to a doctor about a health concern, enroll a child in a local school or let family in the capitol know that the caller survived the earthquake. Now that’s communication progress.

Check out the article and press release for yourself, what are your thoughts?

~Lana Lile

While I know that we often speak of reducing our need for “things” at ELCA World Hunger, I can’t help but get inspired by people and companies who are creating cool, socially conscious products. For me, it’s very hopeful to see businesses take the initiative to produce items with a positive purpose. So I am going to briefly highlight a few products that I’ve come across in recent months that have caught my attention. I hope that you find them inspiring as well, but as always, please only buy something if you need it!

Eco Design Bicycle – Trek:

While I already think that the idea of commuting via bike is very eco-&-health-friendly as reduced emissions, fattened wallets and physical health are all by-products, this bike goes one step further. It features sustainably harvested rubber tires and can be disassembled for your recycling bin.

Recycled Clothes – Patagonia:

The outdoor clothing company Patagonia produces recycled clothing through their Common Threads Recycling Program. Customers can drop-off worn out clothing items in a store or through the mail, these then get recycled into new clothes to be bought later! What a fabulous circle. Check out their site to learn which types of fabrics are currently being accepted for recycling.

Self-filtering “Water Bobble”:

This fresh twist on a reusable water bottle has a built-in carbon filter. Fill up its recycled plastic bottle with tap water and squeeze filtered water into your mouth! This is a great option for the person who is still leery of accepting the challenge of quitting their bottled water habits.

111 Navy Chair – Coca-Cola/Emeco/DWR:

How do you feel about sitting on Coke bottles? This plastic version of the classic 1006 Navy Chair is made with 111 recycled Coca-Cola bottles. If you’re an avid soda pop drinker, make sure to recycle those bottles, and consider these design chairs should your dining set head for the free-cycle.

Power of the Invisible Sun coffee table book:

When you buy this book – featuring photography from philanthropist Bobby Sager – you’re also giving life lessons and hope to children around the world. The book funds the Hope is a Game-Changer Project, which provides indestructible soccer balls to children in war-torn countries. There, sport is used to teach life skills while the balls provide a sense of hope for the future because no one can deflate them, they will always be there.

So why write about these products here on the hunger blog? Hunger’s root causes involve poverty, war, access to clean drinking water and climate change. Each of these products in one way or another addresses these issues. Also, they are a great example of the recycling circle: Reduce (Water Bobble, Eco Design Bicycle), Reuse (indestructible soccer balls) and Recycle (111 Navy Chair, Common Threads Recycling Program). When we make the choice to purchase an item it will have environmental and social consequences…so I think it’s very cool when I see people and companies aspiring to make those consequences a little more positive. Perhaps none of these examples are perfect, but I’m a firm believer that they are a step in the right direction.

Do you have any favorite eco-friendly or socially conscious examples of products that inspire or interest you? Please share!

~Lana Lile

I just got done reading Joel Makower’s book, Strategies for the Green Economy. I have to admit, I was very impressed with how many different perspectives Makower introduces to his readers. For instance, I was challenged to think not just about the negatives of big box stores, but also about their positives. Looking at the entire picture was enlightening. It turns out corporations that I had no idea had a green heart are making strides toward sustainability, zero waste production and eradicating toxic chemicals.

Much of the book focused on messaging from a business perspective. How and when should companies tell their green story? How good is good enough when it comes to a green initiative? I found it thought provoking to consider Makower’s points about companies who come out and say, “Hey, we’ve done this green thing!” and then getting called out by activists for every other thing that they haven’t done. A favorite quote from the book reads, “Consumers, even activists, can accept imperfection in incremental solutions when they know that the company understands the issue at hand, is sufficiently concerned, and is taking adequate steps to change things, including influencing others—suppliers, competitors, and legislators—to join them in becoming part of the solution.” I also found it interesting to learn more about how consumers view “green” products and the accompanying research which suggests a product’s effectiveness must be proved, not just proclaimed.

It’s more than just messaging and box stores though, Strategies for the Green Economy asks important questions that relate to everyday life such as, “What are the opportunities in the green economy for those at the lower end of the economic ladder? Where are the jobs, the access to renewable energy, the affordable organic produce, the availability of wellness programs?” In other words, how does the greening of business positively affect all people?

More than anything I was encouraged by the research, facts and outlook of a book that focused on the greening of the business world, and how it can continue its climb. Makower, in fact, believes that green is not going anywhere, and when it comes to sustainability suggests that this goal will be surpassed as real market leaders look toward being restorative. Restoring the earth, providing green jobs to the lower end of the economic ladder, and encouraging corporations large and small to “green-up” seems to me like a pretty decent way to begin to impact hunger—as companies take care of resources, the environment and people on a large scale.

There are so many thought provoking ideas, notions and facts between the covers of Strategies for the Green Economy that a blog cannot truly do it justice. Check it out for yourself at your local library or grab an e-book!

~Lana

~ Lana

Sources:

• FAO – www.fao.org
• WHO – www.who.int; www.wssinfo.org
• USDA – www.usda.gov
• World Food Program – www.wfp.org