Educating donors

I thought I'd share my response to this post by Vinoth Ramachandra in Sri Lanka.

Hi Vinoth,

You raise good points but, like Carol, I've been wondering what I - a rich westerner - can do with them.  Here are two thoughts:

1. Handled appropriately, child sponsorship itself can be an excellent way to educate donors.  I'm currently reading a Psychology for a Better World by Niki Hare (available as a free download from the author's page here).  The book looks at what psychological research can tell us about how to go about effecting social change.  One point she makes is that people are more likely to respond generously to the plight of one person in need than to the plight of many people in need. Child sponsorship makes use of that psychological trait by giving a potential donor a single person to respond to.

Once the potential donor has responded in that way, the agency providing sponsored children is in a position to further educate them about development needs and where they can help.  However, without the 'hook' of sponsorship, the agency would have been unlikely to be able to provide such education: child sponsorship gives them the entree into the life of the donor and can provide an educational opportunity.

I don't know about other Western countries, but the two main Christian agencies in New Zealand that provide child sponsorship (TEAR Fund and World Vision) both give donors the opportunity to support many other development and emergency relief projects and actively educate donors about them.  For myself, as a young adult at a music festival I was moved to sponsor a child through one of these agencies.  Over time, I came to understand more about development and have supported a variety of other projects instead.

2. The advantages of directly supporting indigenous development initiatives are obvious but, in practise, it's very difficult to do.  I agree with Carol that it's difficult to find such initiatives - I suspect that the majority would, indeed, be impossible to find as it's not trivial for people with little access to resources to have a web presence.

However, in two cases I have come across indigenous initiatives that I have been keen to support.  In the case of one (BEN Namibia - which provides bicycle ambulances etc. in Namibia) this wasn't too difficult: through their website I was able to make a credit card donation and could have set up monthly donations etc. just as I could for a New Zealand charity.  In the other case (Al Nayzak - an organisation which provides extension education to gifted kids in Palestine) I needed to make an international bank transfer directly to their account.  I was unable to do this at first as my NZ bank appeared to have no links to their Palestinian bank and, in the end, I had to transfer money into their Israeli account from which I gathered they would - with difficulty - be able to transfer the money to Palestine.

My ability to support both of these indigenous charities depended on them:
- having a web presence
- being able to communicate with me in English
- having access to the international banking system

This doesn't seem ideal!

I suspect that a better way for people such as myself to support indigenous initiatives is for NGOs in our own countries to take up a brokerage role.  They can identify reputable charities overseas, bring them to our attention and then handle for us the communication and money transfer aspects.  In New Zealand, TEAR Fund has taken on this role, and it sounds from Carol like TEAR Australia and Christian Aid do something similar.

Thanks again for your thought-provoking post.

--Heather :-)

Healing as a sign

Recently I've found myself in a number of conversations about why God hasn't healed various people.  Implicit in the question is the assumption - an assumption I've shared - that the primary reason God would heal a person is to relieve their suffering.  However, as Martin and I have been reading the New Testament book of John, that assumption has been challenged.


Firstly, in John 9 Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who was blind from birth.  The disciples want to know why this has happened.  Jesus tells them it is "so that the works of God might be displayed in him" - presumably by the healing Jesus then carries out.

We come across something similar in John 11.  Firstly, Jesus hears that his dear friend Lazarus is very sick, at which he says: "This illness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it."  A few days later, news reaches Jesus that Lazarus has died.  Jesus passes this news on to his disciples with the words "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe."  He then goes to where Lazarus is and brings him back to life.  This is followed by many people coming to believe in Jesus.

In both the other healings recorded in John (the healing of the official's son in John 4 and the healing of the lame man in John 5) the reason why the healing occured isn't mentioned.

Miracles in John are frequently referred to as 'signs'.  All four of these healings certainly functioned as such: they pointed to Jesus' being the Messiah and people were polarized by them accordingly.  Relief of suffering (either of the person themselves, or of those around them) seems to be at most a secondary purpose.  Indeed, in the case of the healing of Lazarus, Jesus was pleased that he hadn't arrived before Lazarus died - even though he had compassion on his sisters for their suffering - because it made a better sign.

So, in wondering why God hasn't healed various people, at the very least we should consider whether their healing would be useful to God as a sign, rather than only thinking about the suffering their ailment causes.


This all seems rather 'cold', though.  Doesn't God care about the suffering caused by illness and disability?  That seems unlikely - but it does seem possible that he cares about them less than we do!

Consider the story of the paralyzed man whose friends lowered him through the roof to Jesus (Mark 2).  When the man arrived at his feet, Jesus didn't heal him - instead, he said "Son, your sins are forgiven".  Only when the Pharisees challenged his authority to forgive sins - something that, after all, only God could do - did Jesus heal him.  Jesus seems to have cared a lot more about the man's sinfulness than his disability.  He seems to have used the healing primarily as a means of demonstrating that he really did have the power to forgive sins.  Similarly in John, being recognised as the Messiah seems to have been much more important to Jesus than actually healing people's physical illnesses.

 
I think that my/our questions about why God hasn't healed people may actually show up a significant problem in my/our understanding.  Bad as illness and disability are, sin - and being out of relationship with God - is a much more serious problem.  I don't think I remember that anything like enough!

Fun with hessian

Late last year I acquired a coffee bean sack.

Here are some of the things I've made from it :-) 

Rooster doorstop for my mother-in-law

Kokako coasters to go with 'kokako' brand fair trade drinking chocolate

Padded felt picture of a kokako for my niece

Padded felt kowhai picture for a good friend

Coffee bean sacks are huge!  All of this has used just over half of one side of it!

Sweatshop clothing

At our Bible study group today we got talking about the collapse of the sweatshop clothing factories in Bangladesh and about how we can avoid supporting such factories.  It's a topic Martin and I have been wrestling with for some years: we want to buy products from the Majority World in order to support the employment of desperately needy people; however, we'd rather buy from producers who treat their workers well, if at all possible.


Unfortunately, finding clothing produced in the Majority World in decent conditions is really difficult.  It's easiest to find baby clothing, then childrenswear, then womenswear: menswear is next to impossible.  For adults, T-shirts seem to be the easiest things to find, then really dressy clothes: everyday stuff is hard to source, as is underwear.


With those caveats, here's a list of all the retailers I've been able to locate that sell adult clothing:

T-shirts
Marketplacers (an initiative of the Baptist Union here in NZ)
Liminal
Micah clothing

Womenswear only
Chandichowk (in the UK but ship internationally)

Menswear only
From the Source (in the UK but ship internationally)

Mens and womenswear
Spirals of Abundance (in the UK but ship internationally)
Eternal creation (in Nepal, ship internationally)
Kowtow clothing (mostly womenswear)
Nomads clothing (in the UK, mostly womenswear)
People tree (in the UK but ship internationally)

There are also various people who sell fair trade clothing on Amazon.

Note that we've never actually bought any fair trade clothing other than T-shirts and underwear ourselves.  When we need new clothes, firstly we'll look to see if we can buy them secondhand.  If that fails, we see if we can find anything fair trade that we like and can afford (most of the fair trade clothing is super-expensive).  If we can't, we then just buy something 'normal'.  At that point, we'd rather buy something that gave a poor person a horrible job in a sweatshop than buy something made in New Zealand that does the sweatshop workers out of employment altogether.

In addition, at our study group I mentioned an article reflecting on the building collapse in Bangladesh and how one Christian woman is trying to respond to it.  She includes a few links to information about fairly traded goods, although a cursory look at them seemed to suggest they mostly dealt with food rather than clothing.

In God's hands

Here's something I shared in church this morning:

Good morning.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Heather, I'm married to Martin and we live with Sarah.

I have a medical condition called chronic fatigue syndrome.  It's a somewhat controversial condition.  Some medical people think that people with this condition have become convinced that they can't do things that they really can do - so to get better they need someone to make them do things that they think they can't manage.  Other medical people think that CFS people have got something wrong in how with how their body works, and that pushing them to do things they can't do actually makes their health a lot worse.  Probably they're both right - some people with these symptoms will get better if you push them, other people will get worse.  For myself, I've had this condition for 10 years and I know that I get worse if I push myself to do more.

Anyway, last week I went to see some specialists about a different problem. While I was there, they kept on talking about my fatigue and trying to persuade me that I needed to push myself.  They implied that my other problem wouldn't get better if I didn't do so.  I got really angry and upset: they weren't specialists in this area, I've been properly diagnosed with chronic fatigue by people who know about the condition - why didn't they just mind their own business!!!  And I was scared - I really wanted help with my other problem, but they didn't seem willing to help me unless I was willing to do things I knew would make me really sick.

After stewing about this for a day or two, I realised I needed to take it to God.

I started praying and acknowledged that I was in His hands - He is the one who is my real help, not the medical people.  As I spent time with God, I realised something else.  I was partly upset because I felt that the attitude of the specialists I'd seen meant that I might not be able to get any help from them with my other problem, but I realised that that wasn't the main reason.  The main thing that actually upset me was that they had offended my pride.

I believe that I'm a strong person who's coping very well with a really challenging illness and I'm proud of that.  When they seemed to see me instead as someone who's all scared and weak, I was offended and angry.  When I realised that, I had to repent of that.  Repent of the pride and also repent of putting my self-worth in their good opinion, rather than in who I am in God.

Having done that, God showed me something else.  The other reason I was so upset was because, whenever something like this happens, I have a sneaky fear that maybe they're right: maybe there isn't anything really wrong with me and I've brought all my problems on myself by just being too scared to push myself.  Ten years of my life spent mostly bed ridden for no good reason is a pretty scary thought!!  So I spent some time talking to God about that one, too - just acknowledging that fear and allowing myself to be reminded that, whether or not my CFS is 'real', it's God who's in charge of my life.

After taking all that to God and talking it over with Him I was finally calm again.  I may not be able to get the help I want from these specialists, but I know that I'm safe in God's hands never-the-less.  Whenever the upsetness has started to come back, I've reminded myself of that.

Thank you.

Being human

Last week Martin and I listened to a lecture by N.T. Wright on 'Being Human'.  I was intrigued by his concept of Jesus as the most 'real' human there ever was - living in the world in the way we were always meant to.  I've been chewing over that ever since.

If you'd like to listen to it it's available here.  It's a bit over an hour long and we found it very engaging.  The whole blog that we found it on (from Compass) is also well worth a poke around :-)

Faith and deeds

Recently our Bible study group was looking at James 2:14-26.  It starts out with:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?

it then continues with what I've always taken as an example of 'deeds':

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

however, it's not clear from the text that that's actually what it's an example of: instead, it may simply be an example of words and actions not matching up.  After all, the text simply continues by saying:

 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

This interpretation is borne out by the two explicit examples of 'deeds' the passage does give.  I found these two examples quite obscure until Martin realised that we were thinking of the wrong kinds of deeds.  I was thinking that the 'deeds' being talked about would be 'good works' - feeding the hungry etc.  The examples given weren't like that at all: they were Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice to God, and Rahab helping the Israelites who were besieging her city.  Martin realised that what links these two stories is that the people in them are acting like God is God (indeed in Rahab's case, she is also acting like her enemy's God was more powerful than her own).  The point being made is not that their faith was complemented by good works: instead, James is saying that their faith was shown to be real by the fact that they acted on it.

Martin and I have recently started reading the gospel of John and yesterday we came across another example of this kind of deed.  In John 4:43-53 a powerful man comes to Jesus and begs him to come and heal his dying son.  Instead of going with him, Jesus simply says "go, your son will live".  Without protest, the man goes: his action demonstrates his faith in Jesus and his words.

Martin and I are both priveleged to have examples of this kind of faith in our own parents.  In different ways, they have allowed God's claims on them to totally shape how they have lived their lives: their lives show what they believe.  We are grateful to have been raised by such people.