Last week I had the good fortune to attend the Bread for the World National Gathering in Washington, D.C. If you’ve never gone, I highly recommend it. Generally speaking, you spend a few days learning about hunger issues and current, related legislation, and then you spend a day visiting your elected officials on Capitol Hill. It was a wonderful event, the content of which was inspiring, thought-provoking, troubling, challenging, and hopeful. 

But tucked into the thoughtfully-planned agenda, I glimpsed a telltale problem. It was not a problem with the event itself, but rather something less tangible…

Two incidents drew my attention to the problem. In the first, a group of maybe 25 or 30 people were going around a circle introducing themselves. As you might expect, many who attended the Gathering represented church groups, worked in food pantries, or had other non-profit work backgrounds. Then we reached a man who gave his name and said, “I’m from the dark side. I’m an engineer in the private sector.”

What does it mean when a person feels compelled to introduce himself as being from “the dark side” simply because he works for a corporation?

The second incident that gave me pause was at dinner Monday night. Sitting next to me was a scientist who works for a not-for-profit on improving the nutritional quality of seed, fertilizers, and food storage. She explained that her organization works with the private sector to get these higher-nutrient inputs into the food system. Then our keynote speaker took the stage: Mark Bittman, the New York Times food columnist. He spoke with passion about the problems with industrial food production systems and the way they harm our health. At the end, the woman next to me turned to me and said angrily, “He’s not a nutritionist or an agronomist, and he just dismissed everything we do.”

These incidents got my attention because here were two people committed to fighting hunger, attending an anti-hunger event, and both felt marginalized because they are associated with for-profit industries. And therein lies the problem. How many caring, interested, capable people never get involved because they feel insulted or excluded by a culture that vilifies the private sector? 

It’s a human tendency to simplify and generalize  complex issues to make them more manageable. But as we engage in this work, it’s important to remember that things are rarely black and white. We only make ending hunger harder if we don’t welcome diversity and seriously consider how people and institutions with a variety of viewpoints, motivators, and gifts can help.

-Nancy Michaelis

How much time would you spend to effectively help end world hunger and poverty? How much time do you think we as Christians are called by God to commit? How much educational time do you think it even takes before proper action can be taken? Hours? Weeks? Months? Years? A life-time? Christians span the gambit of this commitment from briefly handing money to an un-researched charity to committing their lives to understanding and ending world hunger and all of its intricacies.
For the past two weeks I have been reading The Bottom Billion by the director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, Paul Collier. I am not suggesting that I am now an expert on all things world hunger and poverty related after two short weeks. However, this book, along with working for ELCA World Hunger have made me realize it takes a lot more than just giving to charities to end the suffering of millions of people around the world. Collier advocates that we must also look at trade policies, security strategies, changes in our laws and new international charters. For the average Christian this means spending time researching these topics to get a basic understanding of each. That is definitely where I am at!
So my question to all of you readers out there is this: How much time and energy do you feel God is calling Christians to commit? The second greatest commandment from Jesus is to love our neighbors. I think we can all agree that knowingly letting nearly 1 billion people struggle to fill basic needs such as food, water, shelter and health care while so many of us take for granted all the blessings God has given us is not too loving. What about all the passages in the Bible that call us to serve the least, the lost and the forgotten? Clearly these elements are crucial to living out a Christ-like life. But what form do you see that taking in your life as a believer?
I am not suggesting that everyone has to drop what they are doing and devote their life to serving these issues. I believe that God calls all of us to a different vocation. However, I do think that the gifts God gives us and the blessings that come from our vocations are also meant to serve those suffering from poverty.
Maybe you are at a place where you feel that you are serving out your call to serve people in poverty. I would LOVE to hear about what you are doing and where your passions are! Or maybe you have realized that you might not be fulfilling your call as fully as you could be. I would LOVE to hear from you, too! What are your concerns and ambitions?
A very important part of filling the call to effectively care for our neighbors is to educate ourselves about issues pertaining to poverty and hunger. ELCA World Hunger provides a helpful suggested reading list that I hope to take a bite out of this summer here along with other useful resources for hunger education. While The Bottom Billion might not be the best book to start your hunger education with, it is one I highly suggest at some point. Its foundation is quantitative research but it is an entertaining read full of useful information. Hope to hear from you!
God Bless!
Karen

Never mind “City of the big shoulders.” Chicago is the City of the Big Garbage Cans. Behind my old four-occupant, two-unit apartment building stood four 96-gallon supercart containers: two black ones for garbage, and two blue ones for recycling. Together, these monstrosities could have held 384 gallons of garbage and recycling, and the City of Chicago was prepared to empty all of them every single week!

In spite of our big garbage cans, I’m starting to see a shift in the way the world thinks about garbage. Outside of Chicago, garbage can sizes are shrinking as cities offer larger containers for recycling and yard waste/compost material. Collection calendars are shrinking, too. Skagit County tackles the waste-generating, big-container-frequent-pickup mindset by offering weekly, twice-monthly, or monthly collection. Every two weeks I set out a few ounces of plastic packaging and bottle caps in a 32-gallon can. Monthly pickup—or no pickup at all—is in my future.

Garbage is disappearing. It’s becoming a resource. “There is no garbage, only fuel we haven’t converted yet,” says one energy expert. In Denmark, garbage burned in very clean incinerators is an alternative energy source. In Washington and other states, methane from landfills is captured and converted into electricity.

“Urban mining” is gaining traction. Mining companies in Japan and China (and soon, the U.S.) are extracting rare-earth elements and minerals from cellphones, computers, and other electronics in landfills. Peninsula Plastics & Recycling in Turlock, California is remolding millions of pounds of plastic bottles into packaging for fruit, cookies, and cupcakes. Oft-cited on the internet is this nugget: Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.  If that’s true (I can’t find the source of that statement), mining landfilled aluminum can’t be far behind.

Then there’s my favorite: the Zero Waste trend. It’s partly an industry push to redesign products to eliminate wasteful packaging like plastic clamshells, and partly an individual quest to keep garbage at bay by buying in bulk, reusing containers, and otherwise avoiding packaging. The Zero Waste mantra? “Refuse, refuse, refuse” and “Don’t buy it!”  These folks are upgrading the old three Rs into five—Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Rot (compost) and then Recycle—and launching a great new word: minsumerism.

Here are two Zero Waste slide shows to watch: this one about a California family that produces almost no garbage, and this one about the village of Kamikatsu, Japan, on track to become first place in the world to produce Zero Waste.

This is one race to the bottom—the bottom of my garbage can—that I’m really going to enjoy!

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

How often do you think about where your food comes from? When you are sitting down for a meal, do you imagine the farms where your food grew and the farmers who planted and harvested what sits on your plate? Do you ever think about these things?! If you do think about these things what do you imagine?

I recently watched a documentary titled “King Corn” about two friends who purchased an acre of corn to learn about the questionable farming and eating habits within the American food system. They discovered that the reality of the source of our foods, specifically corn, is vastly different from what we might image. An average corn farmer owns thousands of acres of industrialized corn that is not edible until processed. The irony is that the farmer cannot even feed him or herself while most of the corn that is grown in the United States is used to feed cattle, or is used to make sweeteners or unhealthy foods.

The documentary has me questioning why we do not put much thought into where our food comes from or how it is grown. As Christians we are entrusted by God to care for creation. The first step to caring for creation is caring about creation. Yes, many of us live in urban or rural areas where we do not come into visual contact with farms on a regular basis. But that does not mean we should not care.

Once we start caring about creation, we can start caring for it. As Christians we should try to cultivate an attitude of respect and reverence for creation and a duty to ensure that those attitudes are upheld in the ways we grow, produce and transport our food. However, if we are not even aware of the sources of our produce than we can never fulfill our call as Christians to do these things.

The ELCA has deep agricultural roots and has a history of working for policies that support farmers, promote local food systems and advocates for ethical eating habits of its members. To learn more about the work ELCA is doing in relation to the U.S. Farm Bill please download this brochure. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves about these issues and then advocate for policies that ensure the sanctity of creation. I encourage you all to watch the interesting and entertaining documentary “King Corn” and tell me what you think! I would love to hear from you about how you feel it related to your faith! (It is available on instant play on Netflix!) I can’t wait to hear from you!

God Bless,

Karen

I have been thinking a lot about the food production and distribution systems in the United States, and was so happy to read Anne’s recent post on our national food culture here.  It’s always comforting to know that others are wrestling with similar issues and ideas — after all, isn’t that one of the reasons we have this blog?

One of the aspects of food production I reflect on is how disconnected we are from the “roots” of our food, and how we can best rebuilt that connection and help those suffering from hunger and poverty.  Both my husband and I come from a long line of small town/suburban backyard gardeners (and some farmers), and I honestly never thought too much about this as being “different”.  When we settled down and bought our first house in a Chicago neighborhood, we were on auto-pilot as we planted a garden and started a compost bin.  We had a tiny yard, but enough room for a few tomato and pepper plants.  Many of our neighbors did too.

As more of our friends also bought first homes and settled in, I began to notice that not everyone planted a garden.  Call me non-observant or naive, but I hadn’t really noticed this before.  Hmmmm.  One of my suburban-raised friends confessed that although she does feed her kids fresh vegetables, she hadn’t grown up eating them and certainly not growing them.  The affordability of purchasing fresh vegetables is a topic for another blog post, but this was not the issue for my friend.

Growing vegetables can be very cost-effective, and doesn’t require vast parcels of land.  One way that domestic hunger can be relieved is through more home gardening — both through donations of fresh produce to food pantries, and through knowledge transfer from experienced gardeners to others — some of whom may be suffering from hunger and poverty.

I recently found this fascinating article “For God So Loved the Dirt . . . by Norman Wirzba in the April 2011 issue of Sojourners Magazine that I wanted to share (you’ll first need to complete the Sojourners online registration process, but it will be worth it).  The author discusses the theology of “God’s garden” as described in various passages in the Bible and how it contrasts with a resource utilization/consumer view of the Earth.  I love the imagery of God as a farmer in overalls, digging in the dirt — does God have dirty fingernails like I sometimes do?

Wirzba’s assertion that local economies enable us to see how our actions may help or harm others is really interesting.  I don’t believe that most people intend to hurt other people, but it’s hard to gauge your impact on someone you never see.  In our global economy, I don’t have to look my farmer in the eye — even if my purchasing decisions might be harming his/her family.  I’m not suggesting that local food is the only “answer”, just that it forces us to really see the other person.

The author concludes with a vision of religious institutions moving away from seeing the Earth as a megastore where you might find a good deal, and instead building the connections between God’s garden and his/her people by transforming parking lots and lawns into gardens.  Although he doesn’t explicitly discuss it, I imagine the author may agree that donating some of that produce to a local food pantry might be nice too.

Looking through the archives, I found that I blogged about this last year here, and that some congregations are already started to dig up their lawns and grow food.  I really like the concept of faith congregations building community around gardening — sharing food, building bridges, and teaching each other.  Are there more congregations doing this since last year?  I hope so.  Could this idea work in your congregation?  Does this article challenge some of your assumptions?  I look forward to your thoughts.

Erin Cummisford

HIV virus

Are you old enough to remember when AIDS was “discovered?” How did it affect you at the time? What were you thinking about it in those early years when contracting HIV/AIDS was a guaranteed death sentence?

Or are you young enough that AIDS has always been part of the world? It’s something to avoid if at all possible, but should you become infected, you’ve always known that in wealthy countries like the U.S there are treatments. It is a manageable disease.

If you’ve been watching the news, you may know that June 5th marked 30 years since the first report about the illness was published. At that point, no one knew what it was, and it didn’t yet have the names HIV or AIDS. Medical knowledge has come a tremendous distance in that time. According to this article in the Washington Post, instead of receiving a death sentence, a 20-year old diagnosed today can expect to live to be 70 with proper treatment. And, as I learned from a radio interview with the CEO of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, those who are HIV-positive and take appropriate medications and precautions have only a 4% chance of transmitting the disease.

Yet significant challenges remain, scientific, social, and logistical. Scientifically, the drugs can have tough side affects, and there’s still no cure. Socially, the stigma of being HIV-positive or living with AIDS  is still significant. It prevents people from getting tested and seeking treatment. And that’s a crime when proper treatment not only saves the individual, but also cuts transmission by 96%! That’s so close to stopping it! Logistically, education, treatment, and support are unattainable or simply unavailable in many parts of the world.

Like most serious diseases, people suffering from untreated HIV/AIDS are much more likely to also suffer from hunger or poverty.  Ending the disease – or at least ensuring people everywhere get proper treatment – would help a lot in reducing hunger. It helps both those inflicted with the disease, and it help their children. So take action this month. June 27 is National HIV Testing Day. Get the test yourself, both to know your status and to show others it’s okay to get tested. Make a donation to the ELCA HIV/AIDS Campaign. Your money is used both domestically and internationally to provide such things as HIV/AIDS education, access to tests and treatment, and support of AIDS orphans. And spread the word that we all have a part to play in ending HIV/AIDS. If you’re not sure how to get started, resources to help are available here. There are lots of ways to help; please get involved.

-Nancy Michaelis

Ever since my junior year in high school, I’ve always wanted to be a runner.  Now over 30 years later and as the half-century birthday approaches, I still have not accomplished the goal.  There is nothing better than fun runs and community cycling events, but my body is not getting any younger.  It is no longer possible to ignore training or regular exercise in order to go out and jog an enjoyable 5k.

It is terrific to work with ELCA World Hunger and be inspired by the expertise and efforts of my colleagues and our Hunger Network of volunteers and friends across the country.  About six months in, I saw a document that referenced our staff philosophies which included Michael Pollan (author of Omnivore’s Dilemma) suggestions of eating “less, lower, and local.”  Oops!  This was news to me, and I was definitely not in compliance.

In my career as a fundraiser to encourage giving with an understanding of donor motivations — whether related to faithful stewardship and traditional, intentional tithing or more philanthropic decisions to make a difference and leave a legacy, individuals most often explain that their gifts are made out of gratitude for countless blessings.

Out of gratitude for health, happiness, peace, and an abundance of food options, I need to make some changes in order to practice what I preach!

I have a little dream to create some really great running, cycling or work-out shirts for ELCA World Hunger that could be worn during  events or visits to the gym, where people could creatively promote awareness and encourage giving through the celebration of health and their own physical exercise.  Imagine little herds of shirts showing up in fun runs across the country and photos being shared! 

On a recent trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico, a couple hosted dinner in their home celebrating the gifts of their garden!  This was such a lovely and delicious tribute to our work together.  We enjoyed pesto over homemade pasta, salad, and rhubarb pie.

I live in a condo and do not have an acceptable space to grow vegetables.  Or do I?  I could grow lettuce and herbs on my window sill, and maybe I could push the limits of the condo association with a few pots on the back porch?

Recently, our Hunger Leaders in Southwest Texas Synod sent the attached photo of their Hunger synod assembly display.  Members were challenged to employ square foot gardens as a way to grow their own vegetables and in the process figure out how much money they saved with home grown produce and send the difference to ELCA World Hunger.  When you also incorporate the concept of eating lower and local, this is truly a celebration of the earth’s bounty and all of our blessings.

Do you ever feel you’re on the verge of something?  It’s time to incorporate some changes in my health regimen and live this work fully.  Summer seems easy, and it’s good to think about how to make this the priority all year round.

Sharon Magnuson

Hello!

My name is Karen and I will be a 2011 summer intern for ELCA World Hunger. That statement is written with both feelings of excitement and anxiety. I hail from a small town in the coal-region of Pennsylvania called Pottsville and this is my first time living in a big city. While I believe I have mastered the train system, the buses are still a mystery to me. However Chicago is a beautiful city and I cannot wait to start exploring and experiencing the culture.

Interning for ELCA World Hunger will also present me with an array of exciting and at some times stressful opportunities to serve God by serving individuals around the world. I have been passionate about this kind of ministry since I was young. In middle school and high school, I loved participating in service projects both locally and throughout the United States with my youth group at Trinity Lutheran Church. At my alma mater, Susquehanna University, I majored in Religion and minored in Women’s Studies. I also took every opportunity to go on mission trips provided by the university and the area. I was blessed to visit individuals living in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Liberia and the Philippines during my four years at SU, and I learned much about global hunger and poverty. I also served as the Deacon of Service for two years in the Chaplain’s office. In this position I served my campus and community by providing opportunities for them to serve locally and around the world through programs such as CROP Walk, Fair-Trade Festivals and 30 Hour Famine. All of these experiences prepared me for this summer and wherever God is calling me next in the world.

This summer I have a full plate helping with many different aspects of ELCA World Hunger. I will be posting weekly blogs here about different issues pertaining to world hunger that I struggle with and I hope you will struggle along with me as we discern how to be followers of Christ. Among other responsibilities, I will be helping out with the Malaria Think Tank and networking with hunger leaders in our congregations. I am excited to be traveling to Washington D.C. for the Bread for the World National Gathering this weekend and for future opportunities to travel and meet people around the country who are just as passionate about ending world hunger and poverty as I am!

Overall I hope this summer will be full of discernment. Perhaps God is calling me to work at a non-profit organization or become a missionary in the future. I am excited to see how this summer shapes my future at Luther Seminary. I will be attending in the fall on an M.Div. track and I am excited to see where those four years lead me.

Please continue to read my future posts and I look forward to hearing from you about your thoughts and passions as well!

God Bless

“Make half your plate fruits and vegetables,” says the USDA, which recently introduced “My Plate,” a new nutritional icon.

Not a problem for garden-tenders with productive backyards and back fields, or people who live near farmer’s markets and produce stands.  Not a problem for the Obama family, whose 2011 Kitchen Garden is teeming with seasonal produce. Challenging for people in “food deserts” and everyone whose diet is heavy on frozen and processed foods.

This fascinating kitchen garden map hints at the reasons why our national food supply favors frozen pizza over fresh vegetables. It compares two versions of the 2011 White House kitchen garden: the actual garden, and how it would look if it were planted according to how much U.S. taxpayers spend to subsidize crops! (To enlarge the map, hold your control key and hit the plus sign.)

The subsidized garden is devoted to commodities: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice. A lot of them, like 70 percent of our wheat crop, end up as processed food. While 80 percent of the rice crop is eaten as just plain rice, about 20 percent goes into processed food or beer. Corn, the only vegetable on this list, ends up as animal feed (40 percent), ethanol (33 percent), or things like corn chips and high fructose corn syrup that nutritionists recommend we avoid. Soybeans become oil, livestock feed, or even cement. Way up in the corner you can see “fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other specialty crops” which receive one-half of one percent of subsidy dollars.

This is not a polemic about crop subsidies but my next step in pondering the subject of local food cultures. After eating so well and so darn locally during my pilgrimage across northern Spain, I’m curious about the foundational ideas and policies of our own food culture. Lots of helpful stuff has been posted on this blog, like this review of the movie “King Corn”. Nancy Michaelis brought up the subject of our lack of crop diversity long ago.  On her visit to a food desert in Detroit, Julie Reishus ran into lots of products made with commodity crops and very few fresh fruits and vegetables.

But we don’t seem to talk about the farm bill, food subsidies, or the values that are built into this system…and how our participation in this system impacts not just our own diet and health, but the world’s food supply.  Hmmm. I guess it’s time to finish my half-read copies of Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma—and time to put a little more energy into understanding agricultural policy. Unsubsidized fruit and vegetable growers are my new neighbors, and now that our rainy spring has ended, their tractors are out in force, prepping for a new season and new crops. If I’m going to live in farm country, if I’m going to eat locally, I have a lot of learning to do.

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

In the global movement to fight malaria, we often hear the phrase “nothing but nets.” It’s catchy and alliterative and makes the containment of malaria sound oh-so simple; really it’s everything a catchphrase ought to be.

And mosquito nets, especially long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), are truly wonderful instruments. They’re one concrete way to help households and communities prevent the bites from malaria-infected mosquitoes. Nets are cheap and effective, and through the efforts of many of our colleagues in global health ministries, they’re becoming widely available in Africa and in other areas where malaria impacts lives. Plus, they make great visual aids for a congregation that chooses to tackle the important task of raising awareness and funds to fight malaria.

But it would be a misnomer to apply the phrase “nothing but nets” to the work of the ELCA Malaria Campaign. Nets are definitely one part of the efforts our Lutheran companions are mounting to prevent and treat malaria in Africa, but they are just that– one part of the larger efforts. Our companions in Africa have created malaria containment programs that are creative, multi-faceted and sustainable, and respond to the specific needs and cultural dynamics  of their contexts. These programs take advantage of the most current medical and epidemiological insights about how to prevent and treat malaria, such as:

• indoor residual spraying
• up-to-date diagnostic equipment and testing
• artemisinin-based combination therapies

They also provide education to help individuals lower the impact of malaria in their lives. They teach:

• the efficacy of spraying
• how and why to implement mosquito nets in their household
• preventative measures for pregnant women
• the elimination of environmental conditions that encourage mosquito reproduction
• how to recognize the symptoms of malaria and when to seek medical attention

Our companions have many creative plans to impart these lessons, from training an advocacy choir in Zimbabwe to sing about malaria prevention and treatment, to purchasing bicycles for members of village health teams in Malawi.

In this newspaper article, Bishop Bvumbwe of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Malawi weighs in about the ELCM’s approach to malaria work. He says what’s needed first in his context is education; nets come later.     And so the ELCA Malaria Campaign will be there, leveraging your donations to supply what’s needed most (nets and more!), accompanying our companions as together we equip households to keep themselves safe from malaria.

– Jessica Nipp, ELCA Malaria Campaign