pwrdfblog

Drama and Development

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:57:44 GMT

Many of you may not know, but when I was a teen (back in the dark ages) I used to do a lot of improv at Theatresports in Toronto. In my 20s and early 30s, I worked at St. John's York Mills, and had the privilege of working tangentially with the drama program there-- again, with plenty of improv in my time with the youth I was working with.

So I wasn't all that worried last week when, after a lovely Christmas lunch here at the office, we moved into our staff meeting and discovered that we would be playing theatre games. Before you ask, no-- this is *not* what a typical staff meeting looks like.

Adele Finney, our Executive Director, led us through an unorthodox visioning exercise involving theatre games. The culmination of the time was playing the game "machines". If you already know this game, skip the next paragraph. But if you're not an improv junkie, you might want to learn how the game works: read on.

Machines begins with one person moving to the centre of the stage and beginning and repeating a simple action and noise. It could be something as simple as miming pressing a car horn and saying "beep beep". They continue to do that motion and sound until the game ends. A second person then joins in and adds their own motion and sound- possibly directly interacting with the first person, perhaps just nearby. Then another person joins. And another, until the machine is complete. The goal of the game is for a machine to organically be created with some purpose. In some versions of the game, a final actor comes on the stage and describes how the machine works. In other versions, the machine is named either before it starts or as part of the description of its function.

We didn't have anyone explaining the machines, but Adele gave us the kind of machines we were to make. They started off fairly easy: "Make a food machine", but moved into more cerebral and philosophical territory. Our culminating machine was "Make a machine that shows what PWRDF will be like in 3 years."

The machine I wanted to talk briefly about (after all this introduction) was one called a "responding to HIV and AIDS machine." The machine began fairly conventionally with a couple of people moving onto the stage and moving around, miming giving out food and medicine.

I stood on the sidelines, watching.

Then Zaida, one of our development staff, stepped into the middle and began to flap her hand against her chest and breathe in a raspy, wheezy voice. She was clearly not part of the machine, but was someone suffering from AIDS. Her breathing was incredibly poignant, and her simple action and sound moved us all.

I couldn't stand on the sidelines anymore.

I stepped in and became a "comforting" part of the machine: patting her shoulder and breaking a rule of the game by using actual words ("We're here") as part of my response. The people who were already in the machine moved over to Zaida and began giving the food and medicine to her (another breaking of a rule- you're not supposed to change your action at all during machines). Others joined in, all focused on easing her suffering.

It was an incredible moment- not one that could be scripted. Not one that could even happen within the rules of the game. But one that touched us all.

It reminded us that our work is not the work of machines, but is work with people. People who are in difficult circumstances. People who are suffering. People who crave human contact, and to live with dignity, love, and hope- the same things we all want.

It also reminded us that sometimes we have to break the "rules" in order to do what we do in the best manner possible. Sometimes it's not enough to sit back and wait for things to happen: sometimes you have to go out and *make* them happen.

This game might not have given us our vision for PWRDF in 2015, but it reinforced for us all why we were there. Hmm. Maybe it *did* give us a vision, after all!

A Walk in Rivier Froid

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:21:05 GMT

As soon as I heard it, I knew I’d arrived.

It wasn’t the sound I thought it would be. In fact, I didn’t even
know I thought it would be a sound at all, or that I knew that I wasn’t
“there” yet.

But, this afternoon, I heard a domino get slammed down on a playing
table. And I knew. I knew that I had arrived in the Haiti of the
Haitians.

Last year when I was in the Dominican Republic with my family, I
learned how passionate the Dominicans are for their dominos. They slam
each piece down on the board as they play them, and when I heard the
same thing in a Haitian village, I knew I was there.

Trips like this one involve a lot of being driven from project to
project, meeting to meeting, compound to compound. For the most part,
the inhabitants of the villages we pass through are faces staring
curiously at the convoy of vehicles bumping along the road, or are
people I am asking questions of and taking photos of as I prepare
stories about our work.

Rarely do we get to climb down from the vehicles and walk through a village. But it happened today.

We had to walk in about 15 minutes up some very steep hills in the
community of Rivier Froid, a part of Carrefour, a suburb of
Port-au-Prince. So, we got out of the car and crossed a footbridge over
the cold river, hearing the sounds of laughter from below.

Curious, I glanced down to see dozens of children playing in the
water as they washed themselves, throwing water at each other, and
generally having a good time in (what we were told) was cold water. Of
course, *my* kids played in Lake Huron at Thanksgiving, so I know how
oblivious they can be to the temperature!

After we crossed the river, we walked through a village comprised of
small buildings, huts, emergency shelters- pretty much anything that
would put a roof over someone’s head. We saw people shelling peas,
playing dominos, drinking rum, washing clothes, laughing with friends.

Because we were traveling with Father Cole, the local priest, there
were calls of “Mon pere!” following him through the village, and he
stopped regularly to talk with people who had been at church that
morning and those who hadn’t, with children, men, and women, with anyone
who wanted to pass the time of day for a few moments. It’s one of the
things I appreciate about traveling with partners is that they KNOW the
people they serve.

And for me, walking through the village was a fantastic experience. I
didn’t have to stop and take pictures or interview people, I could just
move along, enjoying the ambiance, enjoying the first real exercise
I’ve had all week.

The Kingdom on Earth

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:08:06 GMT

Today, Naba and I visited the parish of St. Matthieu with Father
Cole, the Coordinator of CEDDISEC (the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti’s
development arm) and Father Phanord, the priest of the 7-point parish of
St. Matthieu. PWRDF has been heavily involved in the area since the
earthquake, and we visited the permanent school we have helped to
construct with Fin Church Aid, and also several of the 70 transitional
shelters (houses designed to last about 7 years) that we have funded in
the parish.

But I don’t really want to get into the technical specs of what we’ve
done, nor do I want to write up the stories of the people we met today-
they will come in due time.

Today, I want to get all theological and share something Father Cole
said as we were sitting at Father Phanord’s house with a cold drink and
some cashews after our visits. During this wind-down to our day, we
talked about the overall work in the parish, about the challenges faced
by people in the region before the earthquake, and how the Church could
be involved in addressing those issues.

One thing that is important to note before I tell you what Father
Cole said is that the parish has put all its efforts since the
earthquake into re-building the school and into building housing for the
most vulnerable people in the community. The church itself was damaged
so badly in the quake, they haven’t been able to worship in it since.

Father Cole thanked us for our partnership with CEDDISEC, and said
that we were helping the Church to make the Word of God real for the
people in St. Matthieu. “We need to provide not just the promise of a
better life, but the ways to achieve it. After all, the Kingdom of God
is not just in the sky but here on earth, too.”

I think he summed up in two sentences the mission of PWRDF here in
Haiti. We are here as the Canadian Anglican response to the devastating
earthquake that struck almost two years ago. We are here sharing the
generosity of so many thousands of people in Canada who gave so
generously to our relief efforts. We are here to work not just to
rebuild lives, but to rebuild better- to offer a better life.

That work is taking place in the work of a Canadian engineer who has
been here for over a year helping to construct schools that exceed the
earthquake and hurricane strengths that Haiti faces. It is taking place
in the offering of meals to children so they can go to school. It is
taking place in the work with families living in the heart of Carre Four
who are learning to cultivate small gardens in the centre of their
urban sprawl. It is taking place in the cooperation of all the agencies
of the ACT Alliance working here. And it is taking place in the work
of St. Matthieu as they focus on the needs of the community, but also on
the needs of the church- they want to rebuild their house of worship
soon, as the church building will be able to continue to act as the glue
holding the community together, and as a beacon to that better life we
are promised in the Gospel.

We Are Family

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:50:51 GMT

I’ve talked on and off over the last year and change about being part
of the ACT Alliance. “PWRDF is a member of the ACT Alliance, a global
coalition of 125 churches and agencies involved in relief, development,
and advocacy work around the world” is a stock sentence I use in stories
about our work. (I use the word *our* here deliberately, as PWRD and
all the other members ARE the ACT Alliance).

Last fall, I had the pleasure to visit the ACT offices in Geneva when
I attended a gathering of communications professionals from various ACT
agencies. While I was there, I came to understand much better what ACT
was about and the strengths that the alliance brings: 125 member
agencies working in over 140 countries doing $1.6 billion of work each
year.

But it is since I have come to Haiti that I have really come to
understand what it means to be part of the ACT family. Since landing in
Haiti, we’ve visited with staff from the Lutheran World Federation
(LWF), NCA (Norwegian Church Aid), FCA (Fin Church Aid), and the ACT
coordinator in Haiti.

As members of the family, we’ve been able to visit the offices of
LWF, which they share with FCA, have dinner with staff from different
agencies, visit projects we jointly work on, and discuss future options
for relief and development work in Haiti.

There are 10 ACT members who are “operational” here in Haiti. That
means they have staff here overseeing projects. PWRDF is not
operational- we support the projects with funding and visit to monitor
them.

The 10 members who are operational here meet every two weeks to talk
about the work, about joint projects, etc. They used to meet every week
right after the quake, and soon will drop to one meeting a month as the
projects become more long-term and less immediate.

The collaboration between the different agencies has been great to
see. They share office space, ideas, local partners, expertise,
vehicles- anything and everything that others might need. They’ve been
incredibly welcoming to us, and have helped us to visit several projects
in our first few days here.

On Wednesday night, we went out to dinner with staff from LWF and
NCA, and it was great to be able to swap stories with people who are
doing the same kind of work as us, to talk about potential projects here
in Haiti, and to share expertise in areas ranging from the production
of biogas (pigs = good, cows = bad: if you want to know why, ask me and
I’ll tell you!) to why no one wants to drive to Macaya (7 hours of
unpaved roads in the mountains that will make you wish your tailbone had
divorced you years ago!)

I’ve been a supporter of PWRDF’s involvement in ACT for quite a while
now, but I’ve got to say that now that I’ve experienced what the ACT
family can do together in responding to a devastating experience like
the earthquake, I’m an even more fervent supporter of this alliance!

The Comedian

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 01:53:37 GMT

15 hours after getting ready to leave this morning, I’m back in
my room to type up this quick blog before declaring today OVER. It’s
been a long day but a great one!

Naba and I traveled with Jaana from Fin Church Aid (FCA) out into the
hill country near Leogane to visit one of the schools that PWRDF and
FCA are supporting with the hot lunch program. While at the school in
the village of Trouin, we met the Canadian Foodgrains Bank food study
tour that was at the school that day. You’d almost think that was
deliberate!

I will be writing more formally about the school canteen program, as
it’s called by those involved. But I wanted to share the story of one
young man we met at the school today- the Comedian.

Delmut Evans was introduced to us as a comedian who wanted to say
“thank you”. We weren’t sure what to expect when a young man bounced
into the room wearing a much-too-large sports coat, a necklace of
leaves, and a fedora with white greasepaint making a beard and elderly
looking eyebrows on his youthful face.

He had the other 477 students at l’Ecole Nationale Trouin laughing
with his entrance, and his schtick kept them giggling every time he so
much as moved.

In addition to being a comedy act looking for a network, he also had
more English than any other student I talked to at the school. He
tossed comments at us throughout the day, and his favourite thing to say
to me was, “I am good!”

Needless to say, I taught him to say “I am awesome!” I showed him a
relative level of good, great, and awesome to help him understand the
superlative. But I think he deserved it!

Meeting him was such a pleasure, and it was great to visit a project
and know that we are helping young people like Delmut to be able to go
to school and to have enough to eat that they can focus on their studies
and not fall asleep in class!

More tomorrow when I’ve had some sleep myself.

Building Capacity and Shelters

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:53:47 GMT

I’m sitting in the offices of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF)
after spending most of the day driving to and from Leogane. I’m not
sure my spine will ever forgive me, but such is the price I pay for my
awesome job .

While in Leogane, we visited the LWF field office, where- among other
things- we saw food stored for the school feeding program we’ll be
visiting later this week. It was great to see Canadian Foodgrains Bank
logos on many of the bags of rice awaiting distribution at the program!

The main reason we were there, though, was to visit some transitional shelters and see how they’re made.

What, you may ask, is a transitional shelter? Excellent question!

Immediately after a disaster, those who lost their homes generally
are provided with tents to live in. While the tents are great for the
short-term, they’re not really something you want to live in for years
(a reality for over 600,000 Haitians, who are approaching the second
anniversary of the quake and are still living in tents. Over 2 million
were displaced by the earthquake, so about 2/3 are now in other homes.)

Enter the transitional house. We saw two types: ones made of wood
and ones made with steel frames and plywood. These homes are 3m X 6m
(10′ X 20′) and house a family of 5-8 people. Transitional homes are
designed to last about 5-7 years. The goal, of course, is that by then
permanent housing has been built.

The cool thing about this project is that not only are almost 500
homes being built (200 wooden ones and 275 steel frame ones), but the
work is all being done by people from the IDP (internally displaced
people) camps. LWF trains people in the camps on how to put together
the steel frames and then build the houses around them. The people who
are thus trained then recruit another 9 people each and train *them*-
building capacity both in construction and education skills.

These teams of 10 (the one person trained by LWF and their 9
trainees) are then hired for 3 week stints of building transitional
housing. They are paid $213 for each transitional house that is built.
It takes 2 half-days to build a house, meaning that each member of the
team is making at least $10 a day.

$10 a day may not sound like much, but in a country where the majority of people earn less than $1 a day, it’s a huge deal!

Haiti- First Impressions

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:05:05 GMT

Naba and I landed in Port-au-Prince a couple of hours ago, and are
now safely ensconced in our room at the ACT Alliance’s Guest House
here. The cool breeze from the oscillating fan is occasionally on me,
which feels nice in the heat here.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to give you my first impressions
of Haiti and Port-au-Prince. Keep in mind, this is all before we have
talked to any of the organizations we’re here to visit, or seen any of
our projects. These impressions are all from flying over the country,
spending some time at the airport, and then driving to the Guest House.

My first impression was one I mostly expected when flying over Haiti-
there isn’t much forest left in this country. My understanding is that
this is due to mega-agricultural multi-nationals that have come in and
razed the forests for plantations, but I can’t cite it right now.

As we flew in over the hills and ocean, there was certainly a lot of
beauty. Flying over Port-au-Prince gave a sense of the crowded
buildings and sprawling mass of the city, but not so much of the damage
from the earthquake. We got to see more of that driving through town,
which I’ll talk about later.

The airport was interesting. There were 4 lines at immigration,
which went fairly smoothly. Perhaps this was to lull us into a false
sense of security as we got into the scrum to retrieve our luggage.

The less said about this experience the better, but suffice it to say
it was an interesting one, and one I’m not all that anxious to repeat.

We eventually reclaimed our luggage, with almost all the things still
inside that we had brought with us and almost all the zippers still
working.

The drive through Port-au-Prince was interesting to me. As we left
the airport and began to work our way through the heavy traffic, over
the roads that in some areas were great and in some were bone-jarringly
awful, I started to compare and contrast.

Haiti is the fifth country I’ve visited for PWRDF (well, technically
the 7th if you count visits in Canada and a trip to Geneva, but I’m
thinking about developing nations rather than developed ones). I’m
starting to see many similarities in the countries I visit.

For one, there are generally compounds- houses with walls and gates
and guards- all over the city. Another is the lack of chain stores. We
passed many businesses with hand-painted exteriors and not a single
Starbucks, McDonald’s, or similar chain.

When I was in Burundi a couple of years ago, a significant portion of
the vehicles on the road belonged to Non-Governmental Organizations
(NGOs) including the UN, various church groups, etc. Here in Haiti
there is a huge UN presence with 90+% of the NGO vehicles carrying UN
staff and troops.

The other interesting thing I’ve seen in each country I’ve visited is
unique forms of taxicab or small bus. In Burundi, they were short
buses with colourful paint jobs and lights to draw attention. In India
and Sri Lanka, they were auto-rickshaws: 3-wheeled vehicles that could
hold a surprising number of people in them.

Here in Haiti, they are modified pickup trucks with colourful tops on
them and a step on the back to let people climb aboard. I saw upwards
of 20 people in the back of some of these pickups.

The other kind of vehicle we saw a lot of was dump trucks. Even
though the earthquake was almost 2 years ago, there is still a lot of
rubble to clear and buildings to reconstruct. We drove past many a
worksite on our way to the Guest House.

I can’t wait to start meeting our partners and learning about the
work that is being done here. But, for now, those are my initial
thoughts. I am currently uploading photos to Flickr and will add them
here when the upload finishes.

Off at Last

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:51:01 GMT

I'm not sure if I'm in denial or tired or what, but today it's feeling kind of unreal that I leave for Haiti in 12 hours...

I'm sure once I've landed in Port-au-Prince tomorrow afternoon, it will hit home. As I get to see for myself what has happened (or not happened) in the almost 2 years since the earthquake. As I meet our partners who have been working for those 22 months to bring relief, hope, and a sense of the future to those affected by the earthquake.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the school feeding program we are involved in, learning about efforts to start urban agriculture in Port-au-Prince, even to visit an Internally Displaces People (IDP)'s camp within the city. Yes, almost 2 years later, there are still many thousands of people living in tents in these camps.

Reconstruction is S L O W!

I think it's great that we will be meeting up with other Canadians from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank while we are there- it feels kind of odd to travel to Haiti to meet up with friends from Winnipeg, but there you go. Such is life in this industry!

I'm also looking forward to meeting with Canadian government representatives while we're there- I really valued the time I had last year with the Canadian International Development Agency's staff in Colombo, and I'm sure it will be just as valuable in Port-au-Prince!

I will be blogging about my experiences- hopefully with photos too, depending on the wi-fi capacity where I'm staying. With any luck, the blogs will be appearing over at the (holding my breath until it's launched) brand-new pwrdf.org website with a cross-post back here to LJ.

But, even if the website hits some snag today and isn't launched, I'll be blogging here as often as I can from the field.

So, wish me luck, and hopefully this will all feel real when it is real- tomorrow!

A Migrant Moment

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:11:55 GMT

PWRDF's Executive Director, Adele Finney, is in Hong Kong on the second leg of her Asian trip. Here is her blog for November 15.

Late yesterday afternoon when we finished our meeting for the day I went upstairs to my room and fell asleep. I woke up with a start about an hour later and had no idea where I was or the time. I knew if I remained calm I’d get my bearings within seconds. Hong Kong. Mariner’s Club. Anglican Alliance. Dinner time.

We’re three days into the Anglican Alliance Asian regional meeting, the second part of my Asian trip. It’s always such an upside-down-inside-out experience to work at a task together with people from several different countries. Countries represented here are China, Philippines, Burma, Pakistan, India, Korea, Sri Lanka, United States, Canada, Australia, UK and Uruguay.

It’s been very intense as we respond to papers about relief, migrants and refugees, advocacy on climate change and hear from people about their country context, teasing out what Asians think the Alliance should work on over the next three years. What makes it both wonderful and intense is that all the stories PWRDF hears and passes on to you have faces and bodies writ large with passion, courage, pain, sometimes discouragement or cynicism, but mostly joy in being together.

Yesterday we visited St. John’s Cathedral where we heard about three programs. Helpers for Domestic Helpers is part of the community outreach program of St. John’s Cathedral. Lawyers and legal assistants provide free legal advice, assistance and guidance to some of the 291,764 foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong (2011), 89% of them Filipino, 10% Indonesian and 1% Other. I’m becoming aware on this trip of how many lawyers provide essential pro bono services to vulnerable and suffering people. For the good, without cost.

The other two organizations are supported by PWRDF. The St. John’s HIV Education Center was the first in Hong Kong to address the HIV and AIDS epidemic. The government took notice and began support services, so the cathedral program is now turning its attention to the wider region. The Mission for Migrant Workers provides assistance and counselling to migrant workers, 99% of whom are women who came to Hong Kong out of economic necessity to support their families and who labour primarily as domestic workers (4000+ people leave the Philippines each day to seek employment overseas). This is the vision of both the domestic workers and the Mission for Migrant Workers:

We dream of a society where families are not torn apart by the need to survive.
We dream of, and will actively work for,
a homeland where all can live decently and with dignity.

My waking up not knowing where I was or the time, was a passing disorientation. It’s nothing like the confusing dispossession of people who leave families and countries in hope of a better life for themselves, but mostly for their children.

Voices of Partnership

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:13:46 GMT

PWRDF's Executive Director, Adele Finney, is currently visiting PWRDF partners in Asia. Here is her third blog from her trip:

“As those who oppress people around the world have all the time to come together, the churches can be the spaces where those who suffer can come together,” said Father Rex, NCCP (National Council of Churches of the Philippines) General Secretary. Hmmm, I thought. What would that look like in Canada? Maybe the weekly Saturday lunch the church hosts for those who may not have enough money to buy food for a whole month or need the companionship of a friendly table.

“We love company,” said Bishop Nathanael Lazaro, NCCP Chairperson. What better people with whom to talk about partnership! The NCCP has 20 international partners, ten representatives of whom are here at the table for the Bilateral Partners’ Conference and to mark the beginning of NCCP’s 50^th anniversary.

You may be asking, “What is a bilateral partner, and who cares?” Good question. It’s a World Council of Churches’ term for the relationship between national councils of churches and external churches and agencies. The funding part of that relationship has always been a challenge because it skews who holds the power.

The Filipino and bilateral partners at this meeting have tried to redefine their relationship and spent Friday afternoon finding words for how they want live out their partnership from here on. None of the action items are funding requests, but rather common causes and commitments to base all our work together in the Filipino people’s struggles and joys. That makes church partnership a different kind of animal than we’re used to in Canada.

What does partnership mean in a country declared by the United Nations as the third most vulnerable country to the effects of climate change? In a country where 4000+ people leave the country daily to work overseas because there are not enough jobs to provide sustainable living? In a country where over 1200 human rights activists have been the victims of extra-judicial killings, and the perpetrators ride away on motorcycles with impunity? The Filipinos at this meeting say partnership means a lot. It means they are not alone, that someone hears and works to make spaces for their voices and concerns to be heard in the wider world.

At the closing dinner and celebration, partnership was a lot of fun. There was a wonderful children’s anklung (Asian bamboo instrument) ensemble. The Teatro Ekyumenikal kept before us hope in the midst of injustice and suffering. There were great songs, great singers, great food...and an item called “The Ecumenical Partners Creative Offering” that took two attempts to get us on our feet—our partners were not letting us walk away from the celebration without contributing to it in kind. We finally asked the children’s anklung ensemble to replay a song, and we did something like a conga line and then invited new partners to join us. We weren’t great, but our hearts were fully on the dance floor.

A Million Reasons to be Online

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:18:01 GMT

PWRDF hit a milestone this week. In September, 2005 we joined CanadaHelps, a website which allows non-profits to receive donations online. Between our launch 6 years ago and this week, PWRDF has raised over $1million online: $1,034,900 to be precise.

Of that total, $428,386 came in during 2010.

So, why am I writing about this? First of all, because it's good news and it's awesome to be able to share it! Also, I want to be able to thank all those who have been part of that million dollar effort.

But I also want to talk a bit about online fundraising. Now, those of you who know me know that fundraising is *not* my forte. I have a hard time asking someone to pitch in for gas when I drive them somewhere, let alone asking them to give money to a cause. The best that I can do is to tell stories of what we do and why our work is so great (something I LOVE doing), and hope it leads people to support us. As a professional fundraiser, I'd be a flop.

But online fundraising is something I'm learning a lot more about in the last little while. And the more I learn about it, the more clear it becomes to me how important it is, and how I need to get better at it. So I'm trying!

As PWRDF launches its new website (soon soon soon I hope!) I'm aware that we need to expand our online donations portal. We will be looking to make online donating much easier and more functional in the coming months.

I also wanted to touch briefly on the totals coming in online last year. The statistics around online donation show that disaster relief brings in significant amounts of online donations, and 2010 bore that out for PWRDF. The Haiti earthquake and Pakistan flooding accounts for the lion's share of the $428,000 we raised online last year. I know that the Japan tsunami and Horn of Africa drought will have accounted for significant portions of this year's online donations, too!

So, again, thanks to all who have helped us reach the million dollar milestone online! I'll be curious to see how long it takes to raise our second million this way!

Silence my Soul

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:10:42 GMT

Here is the second guest blog by Adele Finney, PWRDF's Executive Director, from her travels to Asia.

Quezon City, Philippines
Bilateral Partners Conference
November 10, 2011

My computer says it’s 12.06 a.m. It obviously didn’t register the cross-Pacific flight. My watch says it’s 1.03 p.m. Manila time. I’m at the table of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP). We’re on an hour-and-a-half lunch and siesta break, with people taking turns doing “horizontal meditation” in one of the three rooms upstairs reserved for naps. The people who probably need the naps most are still sitting at the meeting table with iPads, telephones and laptops, keeping up with e-mail and work back in Korea, Canada, Australia, New York and Grand Rapids, Michigan. There are even pens and notebooks.

This Bilateral Partners Conference (more on “bilateral partners” next time) opened with a dramatic dance and worship service. The Philippines has long been a leader in the expressive arts for the common good. Nearly 30 years ago I participated in theatre workshops the Philippines Educational Theatre Association conducted throughout southeast Asia introducing effective dramatic tools for citizen reflection and participation in social issues. The NCCP has started Teatro Ekyumenikal that weekly brings together 28 youth from its member denominations to study scripture, improvise, reflect on and create dramatic pieces for worship services. About seven of the youth danced the beauty and struggle of the Philippines towards a just and merciful society.
Then we sang a song I had not heard before:

Silence my soul
these trees are prayers;
I asked the tree,
tell me about God.
Then, it blossomed.

The arts—dance, song, storytelling, painting—are the best ways I know to start moving the molecules around (more on the molecules here). In this coming year, the 28 youth in Teatro Ekyumenikal will share what they have learned in their home congregations and denominations, and we pray they will blossom as they blossomed today.

When Am I?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:06:26 GMT

The following is the first guest-blog by Adele Finney, PWRDF's Executive Director. She is currently travelling to Asia to meet with PWRDF partners there and also with the Anglican Alliance, and will be blogging as much as she can while she is away.

On the way to partner visits in the Philippines and an Anglican Alliance meeting in Hong Kong
November ?, 2011

I’m not actually sure what day it is as I fly from Vancouver to Hong Kong. I know I left Ottawa Monday at 5.45 p.m., left Vancouver Tuesday at 2.10 a.m. and will arrive in Hong Kong on Wednesday morning. The screen on the back of the seat in front of me says it is 5.35 a.m., Hong Kong time. When I land I will adjust my watch and live in the reality of time in the Hong Kong airport until I leave for Manila.

PWRDF development staff do this kind of travel as a matter of course; it’s part of their jobs. Farida Akhter of Bangladesh just made this kind of journey back and forth to Toronto last week for the PWRDF Board of Directors meeting, her last meeting after six years on the board. Airplane travel is the closest we’ve gotten to the “Beam me up, Scotty” transporter.

My mother-in-law who grew up as a missionary kid in India in the 1910s and 20s travelled by boat from Madras (now Chennai) to Boston. When she arrived and stepped into her first automobile ride, she described herself as so overwhelmed that she "nearly lost her composure". Our family smiled and thought it was a sweet, old-fashioned expression.

I tend to call it being “undone” in a transporter kind of way. Over the past few years I’ve taken to seeing myself as mostly space, atoms whizzing around in a living, energetic human form. I try to see “undoings” as opportunities for opening myself to God’s Spirit moving through me and rearranging my spiritual, cultural and probably physical, molecules. It requires trust rather than fear, hope rather than dread. That’s the way I choose to be on this trip to visit PWRDF’s Filipino partners and meet with the Anglican Alliance in Hong Kong.

Meetings Meetings Meetings

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:42:57 GMT

So I'm sitting in the back corner of a meeting room at the Toronto Airport Hotel this afternoon at joint meetings of the PWRDF Board of Directors, Youth Council, and Diocesan Representatives. Once every two years all these different groups get together to meet each other and PWRDF staff, to learn from each other, and to continue to build the organization.

This is my second one of these Leadership Forums (Fora?) and I must say I find it incredibly valuable to be at them.

Today I got to present the designs for the new PWRDF and justgeneration.ca websites, which went really well. But what I really like is the chance to meet people I get to see rarely or have never met. Today I met Tim Grew, who is a diocesan representative in Ontario and who runs a great Facebook group for his diocese. We've never met face-to-face- just facebook-to-facebook.

But now we know each other. And because we know each other, we are better able to help each other to share the work we are doing for the organization.

While I support the value of social media and spend tons of time on it, I also understand the real need for regular, in person interaction to build stronger relationships and to share in a way that online doesn't allow.

The other great thing today is that I'm currently listening to Jim Cornelius, the Executive Director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and Sally Keeble, the Director of the Anglican Alliance, talk about their work.

It's great to see these two people getting to know each other and to talk about how CFGB and the Alliance can support each other in our work.
Being in the same space as each other is allowing this conversation to happen in a way that would never happen otherwise.

So, I guess today's post is mostly a social media commentary on the need for offline communications and relationships. I hope the next Forum in 2013 is just as valuable for learning, networking, and relationship building!

Aid Effectiveness vs. Development Effectiveness

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:02:40 GMT

I just got back from a webinar (in a different room on the whole other side of the building!) about the difference between aid effectiveness and development effectiveness. I've got to admit, a lot of the technical aspects and acronyms they were using (WP-Eff anyone) were a little out of my experience.

But then the presenter, from the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, put up a slide highlighting the differences between aid effectiveness and development effectiveness. And I got it.

A lot of it is about the difference between charity (aid) and justice (development). He offered about a dozen comparitors, but I want to share 3 of them here, because I found them particularly striking.

Aid effectiveness is about trickle down, development effectiveness is about equitable distribution.

Aid effectiveness is about the symptoms of poverty, development effectiveness is about the causes
of poverty.

Aid effectiveness is about jobs, development effectiveness is about decent work.

As I type these in, I realize they're all about economics, but they can be applied in other ways as well (about human needs vs human rights for example).

But these four that I pulled out really struck me as being about why I work at PWRDF. Because I really believe that we need to change how we approach things in the world- a paradigm shift rather than a shuffling of deck chairs.

The idea of equitable distribution rather than a trickle down from the rich to the poor strikes at the heart of this. It's what the 99% movement is about. It's what "deep justice" is about.

The difference between symptoms and causes is an old one. The old expression "if you give a person a fish, you feed them for a day, if you teach them to fish, you feed them for a lifetime" began to get at this question. That expression has significant problems, but it's one many people are familiar with. So it makes a good starting point for that idea.

But the one that struck me most today was the difference between jobs and decent work. I listen to the business reports on the radio (well, sometimes- I don't listen to the radio much any more) and hear the economic statements about how many jobs were created or lost each month. Rarely do they talk about how many of the jobs are part-time or minimum wage, just how many net jobs were gained.

Now I've worked my share of Mc-Jobs in my day, and- while they did come with a paycheck- I am much happier with what I am doing here. And I've got the benefit of a developed nation's legal and social structure keeping my jobs fairly safe. I must say, having "decent work" strikes me as being much more affirming, dignified, and better economically than having a "job."

I am not, by the way, saying that aid isn't important. It is. But if development issues are never addressed- if the causes are never examined- aid will be a perpetual and growing need. By working significantly to address the causes of poverty through development, we as a species can really cut back on the need for aid in the first place!

So, that's what stuck out for me in terms of aid effectiveness and development effectiveness. I'll wrap up by sharing a video that we watched the first few minutes of which talks about development effectiveness. The first 2:47 is what we watched in the presentation, and it's worth a look!

The Best $2

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:24:03 GMT

There are days in this job where things go great, where you know you're making a difference and that the world is slightly better because of the awesome things you get to be a part of. And there are days that are awful, when you hear about yet another injustice, murder, disaster, or problem. And then there are days that just touch you.

Yesterday was one of these.

The drought and famine in East Africa was a major news story this summer, and was an emergency that PWRDF promoted a lot. Anglicans responded with over $750,000 dollars in donations to the relief efforts through PWRDF, money that is being put to good use in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

As we have been processing the donations, Ricky- a member of our admin team- came across one of our online donations.

The donation was for $2.

There was a note attached to it, which read:

In keeping with the Biblical account of the woman who gave two mites, I am giving the only $2 I have right now, in the hopes that it will relieve someone, somewhere, in the horn of Africa.

(For those of you not familiar with the story of the widow's mite, here it is from Luke's gospel:

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury;he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’ Luke 21:1-4)

Reading the note that this person attached to his donation made my day. Not just that he was remembering the importance of giving small things, but that he wanted to make sure his last $2 went to help someone who was worse off than himself.

This donor is my inspiration for today. Thanks to you, sir, for sharing of yourself to make the world better for everyone!

Got your Goat

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:14:54 GMT

Last week I was at a gathering of fellow communications professionals from church-based relief and development agencies (for a full list of acronyms, visit the CFGB website!) During our conversations, the topic of buying goats came up. Again.

Goats are a short-form for talking about the gift guides that are omnipresent this time of year. Started by World Vision about 20 years ago, they have become wildly popular as a means for people to give a meaningful "gift" to those who have everything. You look through the catalogue, choose a development gift to buy, and the organization sends a card to the person you are buying it for.

Great idea, right?

Not necessarily. PWRDF and many other development agencies are not big fans of the "buy a goat" idea because we believe that development should be instigated by the people living in the situation, rather than the person giving the money.

Or, to put it another way, what if the person to whom the goat would be given doesn't want or need a goat?

When I was in Burundi a couple of years ago, I had a conversation with Edmond, one of our partners there. He told me a story about this situation, where a foreign agency came in and did what they thought was right for the people of this village. Here's what he told me:

There is a Twa (the Twa, or pygmies, make up about 1% of the Burundian population) village which was very run down. The houses were a mess- dirty, broken down. The people sat around with nothing to do. So a foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) came in and gave everyone pigs. The pigs were to provide occupation, income, and food for the village.

About a year later, the NGO came back and found the people of the village sitting around among dirty, broken down houses with nothing to do. There were no pigs in sight. The NGO staffer asked, "What happened here? We set you up last year- spending $100,000 on this village- with all the things you needed to be pig farmers! We come back now, and nothing has changed! What have you all done?"

The villagers told them, "We are not farmers. We are potters. We know nothing about caring for pigs, and they died. Now, if you had given us potter's wheels and kilns, we would have been much better off!"

This illustrated exactly one of the problems with giving a goat.

The other problem is less tangible but probably even more important. It has to do with philosophy of development. At PWRDF (and at the other agencies who were represented in our discussion: PWS+D, CCODP, ADRA, CFGB, WRC, and CBM- I warned you about the acronyms!) we believe that all the people we partner with are the people who are best equipped to know what the solutions are to the problems they are facing. They are the ones living in the situation. They are the ones who know the local context. They know what needs to be done to remedy the issues. My coming in and telling them "I want to give you a goat" is condescending, patronizing, and all kinds of other things that remove the dignity and power that every person has.

Now, the more aware among you might point out that PWRDF has a gift guide (you can find it here). So, you might say, aren't you doing the same thing that you're complaining about above?

My answer is this: "Well, not really."

You see, I wrote our gift guide very carefully. We understand the power of a concrete symbol like a goat. Goats are, to use the marketing lingo, sexy. People understand giving a goat where they don't understand working to promote gender equity among communities. It's easy to get people to donate a goat. In fact, they *want* to donate a goat.

So I have written items in our gift guide that are concrete and easy to understand: feed a child in Haiti, train a midwife in Mexico, give micro-credit loans in Bangladesh. But each of the items I have written is contained within a sector of PWRDF's work: food security, health care, etc. and the donations will go to that sector (each page of the gift catalogue with PWRDF's gifts on it makes that clear.) Rather than buying a specific goat for a specific person, the donation will go to PWRDF's food security program.

Yes, we will be feeding 3200 students in Haiti this year. We are not making things up just for the guide.

But the donations will go to that area of work, even if not to that specific piece of work. And we will be funding fully all the programs talked about in the guide.

Most of the other guides out there also get a goat through to whoever buys a goat. And that goat often goes somewhere where it will be useful. Just, not all the time.

What do you think about alternative gift guides like this? Do you use them? How would you approach this issue, if you were in PWRDF's shoes?

Climate Change Marketplace

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:58:10 GMT

I've just come back to my desk after a fascinating presentation by Maria Theresa Nera-Lauron of the People's Movement on Climate Change. Tetet (only her mother calls her Maria Theresa- and only when she is in trouble!) came to Canada from the Philippines to present in Ottawa and Montreal and now in Toronto on issues relating to climate change and land grabbing. While I won't go into details about everything she talked about (it would fill screens and screens, and I don't want too may tl;dr reactions) I did want to reflect a bit about one topic- REDD+.

REDD+, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, is one of the current "solutions" to the climate problem. Looking at the title, it sounds like a great idea. Reduce emissions. Stop deforestation and degradation. Help people in developing countries. It's a win-win-win, right?

If only!

Unfortunately, the policy document for REDD+ contains- in addition to great rhetoric about mitigating climate change and reducing poverty in the developing world- some fine print. "The problem is always in the fine print," Tetet said repeatedly in her presentation.

The fine print in REDD+ allows corporations to do some creative accounting and shift some credits around, allowing them to actually contribute more to deforestation than they could before. In addition, the definition of "forest" has changed in this document.

When I say "forest", what do you think of? I'll bet your image involves large trees, possibly some undergrowth. Maybe some animals- deer perhaps, or foxes, or bears.

Does it involve sugarcane plantations?

No?

Well, according to the documentation of REDD+, plantations will count as "forests", allowing companies to cut down old growth forests and plant sugarcane, pineapples, or other crops.

Does that sound like preventing deforestation to you? I didn't think so!

As Tetet was talking about the dangers of allowing corporations to make the battle against climate change an opportunity for further profit, I thought about Annie Leonard's "The Story of Cap-and-Trade", one of her Story of Stuff series of videos. Rather than going into the details she provided, I will finish today's entry by sharing Annie's thoughts on the corporatization of the battle against climate change.

Tetet and Annie come from very different backgrounds, but they both see the problem in the current situation. Hopefully more of us will see it, too, and will stand up for real change which will help humanity to adapt our behaviours rather than simply mitigating the effects of climate change!

How CIDA Matching Funds Work

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:43:28 GMT

Hi, lovely readers! I'm back from 3 weeks of vacation, and- yet again- there is a major humanitarian disaster when I'm away (last summer my vacation coincided with the Pakistan floods, then I took time off in March- right after the Japan tsunami). This time it has been the Horn of Africa famine. I know, it's not a *new* disaster, but it has received tons of media attention.

One result of all the attention has been the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) announcement of the East Africa Drought Relief Fund. This fund is similar to funds that the Canadian government has set up in previous humanitarian response situations. Basically, they match- dollar for dollar- donations that come in from Canadians to charities like PWRDF that are working to provide relief in the situation.

The CIDA matching funds are not all that well understood, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and describe the process so that those of you who don't understand it can hopefully get it better. If you're already a CIDA guru, feel free to skip this entry!

CIDA Matching Funds- the Tutorial

The East Africa Drought Relief Fund (EADRF) works like this: I decide to donate $100 to PWRDF and designate my donation for the Horn of Africa famine relief. Each week during the matching period (which ends on September 16), PWRDF informs CIDA of how much money we have received for East Africa Drought Relief ($239,000 and counting). CIDA then earmarks money out of the $50 million they have set aside for this disaster relief and adds that money to the EADRF. According to the CBC, Canadians have donated over $20 million so far to the disaster, meaning that the EADRF will have over $20 million in it.

The $100 I donated to PWRDF does not get given to the government to administrate. It goes to PWRDF's response work in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia with our partner agencies the ACT Alliance and Canadian Foodgrains Bank..

The $100 that CIDA contributes to the EADRF does not automatically come to PWRDF. Instead, aid organizations are invited to submit proposals to CIDA for relief work in the Horn of Africa region which will address the humanitarian situation brought on by the drought there. Some of the money will go to the UN and the World Food Program. The rest will be available for agencies like PWRDF to apply for.

I know, it's complicated. But this is how it works. I hope this description has helped to clarify how the matching funds work...

Horn of Africa Drought

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:07:34 GMT

The drought which is currently affecting somewhere upwards of 10 million people in the Horn of Africa (primarily in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia) is not a new occurrence. PWRDF has been working with those affected by this drought for several years in Kenya. But it's only in the last few weeks that most people have become aware of the situation. This is because a drought is a slow onset emergency.

What is a slow onset emergency you might ask? That's a good question. Emergencies, or disasters, can come in several forms. Immediate (or rapid) onset disasters are ones like the Haiti earthquake: a few minutes devastates a nation. Slow onset are situations like the current drought or like the flooding in Pakistan last summer.

Often these slow onset disasters affect more people than the rapid onset disasters, but they generally are less well known in the population.This is largely due to the fact that slow onset disasters are much less impressive on the news. The Japan tsunami allowed great images and video footage to be aired and re-aired on television and in newspapers. The rise of a river in Pakistan over months doesn't provide that same impactful imagery until it hits the point where houses are washed away (over 20% of Pakistan's land area was affected by the floods last summer).

From the standpoint of a person who works for a disaster relief agency, the newsworthiness (or lack of newsworthiness) of a disaster makes a huge difference in the amount of support we get. For instance, the response to the Haiti earthquake was overwhelming last year: over $2million in donations came in to the PWRDF offices.

The Pakistan flooding received roughly 25% of that amount.

Now, I'm not saying that the only reason these situations elicited the kind of reaction they did was because the earthquake was a rapid onset disaster and the flooding was a slow onset one. But I know it was part of it.

I will be interested to see the response of the world to this latest crisis, and I'll be interested to see what kind of reaction there is to the pleas for aid coming from PWRDF and other agencies!

I Want to be an Aid Worker

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:24:57 GMT

I ran across this video about a year ago, and my colleagues and I had a good chuckle at it. I thought I'd share it here, since I think it points out some good things about how people can make a difference and help to end poverty without becoming an aid worker themselves. As a warning, the video is quite sarcastic... But please do laugh along!

"When do I meet Bono?"

Firewood in Kenya

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:23:07 GMT

I finally had a few minutes to go through my Google Reader this morning, and found an interesting video there. The video follows two American men from the Paradigm Project as they work with their mission to bring 5 million efficient stoves to some of the 2.5 billion people in the world who cook over open fires every day. They want to save the women (who generally are the ones who have to collect the wood as well as cook over the open flame) the time they are using gathering firewood as well as from the harmful health effects caused by the smoke from open fires. This video shows these two Muzungu (white people) traveling with a group of women in Kenya on a 5 hour trek to cut and haul wood.

This peaked my interest because I know PWRDF is involved in similar work in Kenya. We don't provide the same kind of stoves that the Paradigm Project does. PWRDF has had success in sharing solar ovens with many people in Kenya, Tanzania, and other parts of the world (I met a woman using one of our solar ovens in Sri Lanka last fall!)

I thought I'd share this video here because it shows the relationship that is built between the two men and the women they are working with, as well as giving a good account of the sheer amount of *work* gathering the firewood is.

Episode 1: Woodwalk from The Paradigm Project on Vimeo.

Grocery Shopping

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:46:10 GMT

I don't know about you, but I've been feeling it in the cheque book every time I go to the grocery store these days. In the last couple of years I've found the prices for the basics- bread, milk, fruits and vegetables- have been going up quite a bit. I used to balk at spending $2.50 for a loaf of bread, now I'm regularly paying $3.50. Milk used to be found for $3.99 and is now $5.59. My wife and I are conscious of these price shifts, and are looking at the effect it is having on our bank balance. Combine that with the rise in the price of gas, and we start to get a bit worried.

Now for us, groceries make up about 10% of our budget. So a 50% rise in staple prices would hurt for sure, but we would likely get through it by cutting back on the extras- seeing movies, eating out, etc. Maybe I'd buy a few less DVDs and my wife less knitting yarn.

For the poorest people in the world, 50-80% of their income goes on buying food. A 50% rise in the price of staples like rice and vegetables can easily push people into starvation. In fact, the number of people living in hunger in the world sits at around 900 million right now, which is down from the 963 million who were hungry at the height of the 2008 food crisis, but more than the 820 milllion who had lived in hunger before that crisis started.

The Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, has joined with other Anglican leaders in pressing the G20 agriculture ministers who are meeting in Paris tomorrow and Thursday, to work to address the issues of high food prices and food insecurity which afflict so many around the world- mostly subsistence farmers, many of whom are women.

The Primates are calling for:

• More support for small farmers – most of whom are women who produce 60 to 80 per cent of food in the poorest countries.
• More investment in agriculture, especially research and development
• Measures to stop speculation in food commodities.
• Better training, access to credit and markets, and insurance schemes for small farmers.
• Backing for recommendations that have come from agriculture ministers in developing countries.
• G20 countries to keep the promises of the 2009 Aquila Food Security Initiative to achieve clear targets for higher spending on agriculture: Canada being the one country that has a record of meeting the goal.

I join with them in this call, and encourage you to learn more about the causes of food insecurity and to lobby your own governments to continue to work to eliminate hunger! There is enough in this world for the needs of all!

News, News, and Papers

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 20:01:52 GMT

I'm sitting at the annual gathering of the Anglican Editors' Association in Ottawa this weekend. I don't edit a newspaper, but I am here because, as the person producing PWRDF's stories, it's great to know the people who put out the papers Anglicans get mailed to their doors. The three most important things in real estate are location, location, location. The three most important things in ministry (and what I do *is* a ministry) are relationships, relationships, relationships. It's great to laugh, talk, eat, and learn with all these people.

There's been a lot of conversation here today about news and how it's consumed in today's world. Now, the reality is that these newspapers are monthlies- the news in them is not exactly current generally. They do bring a level of credibility in what they report, they highlight the things that go on in the local diocese, and present columns, opinion, etc. But the "news" of these papers isn't all that new, since the paper is prepared 1 month before being delivered (that is, the June paper is in the can on May 1.)

The reality of real-time social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites, and the prevalence of blogs for sharing information and opinions has left news outlets struggling to change their model of being to remain relevant in today's world. It's been really interesting to hear some people defending the importance of journalistic integrity and editorial independence. Others are talking about the importance of social sharing of news stories and how people find the things that are of interest to them.

I'm not sure what the future will bring for diocesan papers, but I know these people will approach it with their eyes open and with much humor among their arguments about how best to do it.

So I'm interested to hear how you get your news- what are your sources, how do you share it, and what value (if any) do you get from printed papers in today's world?

Holy Cow!

Mon, 30 May 2011 19:30:24 GMT

Has it really been over two weeks since I posted last on here? Wow! I know I have thought about it, but just been overwhelmed by projects (not that today is any different...) But, I think some amazing things are happening at PWRDF, so it is at least a good kind of busy.

The latest issue of Under the Sun, focusing on how PWRDF responds to disasters, should be arriving with the Anglican Journal on people's doorsteps tomorrow if it's not already there. I'm really pleased with the issue, and need to thank Saskia, the designer, for all the amazing work she does to get UtS out the door each time!

I posted about the PWRDF in the Field video a couple of weeks ago, but that was another piece of work that is now done and out there. I'm now working on stories for the new version of the Acts of Faith Alternative Gift Guide put out by the Anglican Church of Canada. When I finish those, I will be running a couple of workshops this week: one on photography for staff at KAIROS, and the other on social media in youth ministry at Common Ground 2011. Then it's off to Ottawa for 5 days next week to attend the Anglican Editors' Association and some other meetings.

After that, I hope things will slow down a little going into the summer. But they never seem to here at PWRDF. I get tired just thinking about it, but at the end of the day, when all these things roll out the door, it's amazing to see.

And I promise I'll try to update more regularly. It's just hard to find time among all the communicating to talk about the communicating here.