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Author: Marcus Campbell

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, significant progress had been made to alleviate poverty.

In the first two decades of the millennium, global poverty rates had been cut by more than half and there was good reason to be optimistic about the future. 

The optimism spurred world nations to come together in 2015 and agree to work towards an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals. Number one on the list: eradicating extreme poverty for all people everywhere by 2030. 

The pandemic plus rising inflation and the impacts of the invasion of Ukraine have set progress back as much as nine years in many low-income countries. 

Despite the United Nations declaring a “Decade of Action” to accelerate progress and get back on track, efforts to end poverty are not yet advancing at the speed or scale required to meet the goal.  

Where do we Christians fit in to this and what can we do?

At the turn of the millennium, Christians were at the forefront of anti-poverty movements like Make Poverty History, Jubilee 2000 and Micah Challenge (now Micah Australia).

In Australia, activism has continued through the years, with Christian groups lobbying successive Australian governments to increase funding commitments to sustainable development across the globe.  

The position of the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) has been that Australia should commit to the internationally-agreed target of contributing 0.7 per cent of our Gross National Income (GNI) to sustainable development initiatives by 2030. 

After a long period of the deepest cuts to the aid budget in Australia’s history, the Albanese government has restored a modest increase, as well as partial indexation to ensure it grows over coming years.  

There’s hope again!  

But of course, it isn’t just about governments. It’s about all of us.  

We in the UCA, through UnitingWorld, are blessed to be a part of a powerful network of people and organisations working together to make sustainable progress to end poverty in our world. 

The lives and work of our overseas partners constantly show us what is possible even while faced with huge challenges.  

Take our partners in Bali.  

Imagine a tiny group of Christians, living amongst staunch Hindus. They make up less than two percent of the population and live on the cultural margins, with little power or influence. But led by the Gospel to bring good news to the poor, they set themselves to weaving a web of relationships.  

They win the trust of the poorest in their community by listening to them. They bring together village elders and government representatives. They reach out to their international church partners for support. Then, slowly but surely, they become the catalytic center of a movement of social transformation. 

Because of their hard work, people blindsided by COVID-19 have the chance to start again with new livelihoods. Women, young people and people with disability are able to have their say in how their village uses government grants. Families get access to health services and children go to school. And, best of all, the communities become more resilient and more able to deal with setbacks and disasters. 

This is the story of our partner, the Protestant Christian Church in Bali. Through them, we have the great privilege to be a part of their incredible community development work to end poverty in rural villages.  

Every day, our overseas partners are impacting the lives of people and helping communities overcome poverty in real and lasting ways. 

It’s a joy to be able to support them in it.   

The movement to end poverty is formidable, but smaller than the need requires. 

So everyone is invited, and everyone has a role to play. 

Together we can end poverty. 

Photos: After he had to leave his job to look after his elderly mother, Komang was struggling to make ends meet and was losing hope for a better life for his family. Supported by UnitingWorld, the Protestant Christian Church in Bali helped him start a small chicken-breeding business that has given him an entire new future. 

You can help us make a powerful impact this tax time

We’re fundraising to resource the critical work of our church partners in the Pacific, Asia and Africa; giving people the tools and opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. 

Right now, your donation will be combined with funding with the Australian Government to make up to six times the impact ending poverty! 

Donate today at www.unitingworld.org.au/endpoverty 

The horrific murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey last month by her former partner has renewed an important conversation about the prevalence of men’s violence against women in Australia.

The discussion has focused on the critical legal and funding issues that need to be addressed, but many experts argue that we must also work to change attitudes and behaviours to prevent violence long before it ever occurs. As domestic violence researcher Dr Sue Heward-Belle argues:

As Australia is left reeling over the tragic deaths of yet another woman and her young children, we must reflect on our own attitudes towards domestic violence, and what we can do as a community to counter these types of behaviours.

We can all help to shift the society-wide attitudes that justify, minimise or ignore violence. And we can all be part of building solidarity for a safer world.

How do we do it?

We can treat violence against women as the crisis it is.

On average in Australia, one woman a week and one man a month is killed by a current or former partner. One in six (1.6 million) women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by a partner since age 15.

Australian police currently deal with 5,000 domestic violence matters on average every week – one every two minutes. ABC News have created an interactive counter to highlight the prevalence of the violence.

The problem also affects our wider Asia-Pacific region, where rates of violence against women and girls are far higher than the global average. (Our partners are leading a dialogue and empowering advocates to address the issue).

What can we do to draw attention to the crisis?

Follow the lead of women’s movements.

On April 30, 1977 a group of 14 Argentine mothers gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to demand answers about their children “disappeared” by Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship (1976 – 1983). Their action defied the regime’s law against mass assembly, but despite the risk to their lives the women would gather every Thursday to demand answers and seek justice.

As the number of disappeared grew, the movement grew, and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were able to gain international attention to the ongoing human rights violations. The women were deemed as “subversives” and five of the leaders were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the regime. But the women persisted.

Their movement was a catalyst to building a consensus so broad that the dictatorship’s days became numbered. The women’s fight for justice then continued for decades into the democratic era. They would eventually get the answers they demanded, giving closure to hundreds of people whose loved ones were murdered during the regime.

40 years of turning up and not giving up.

Wear black on Thursdays

Thursdays in Black is a global campaign that was started by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and its approach was inspired by movements of courageous women like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. You can read about the others here.

The WCC relaunched Thursdays in Black on International Women’s Day this year, urging churches and people of faith to join the movement of wearing black in solidarity with women facing violence.

Every Thursday, staff at UnitingWorld and many of our international church partners wear black as an act of solidarity to honour women everywhere facing violence and injustice.

It’s a small gesture, but a powerful symbol of our unity of purpose and commitment to act.

Imagine how powerful it would be if every person of faith thought this issue was important enough to turn up every week for. I’d like to think that most of us already do, we just don’t actually turn up.

How to get involved

It’s simple:

Wear black on Thursdays. And if you have one – wear a badge to declare you are part of the global movement resisting attitudes and practices that permit rape and violence. Show your respect for women who are resilient in the face of violence and injustice.

Start conversations about the issue and encourage others to become advocates themselves.

Get in touch at info@unitingworld.org.au if you’d like us to send you out a badge.

We’re also collecting photos of participating partner churches here. Church partners from Papua New Guinea, West Papua, Bali, Fiji, Vanuatu, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands all participate. Some have been involved for many years. Inspiring!

Send us yours: info@unitingworld.org.au

Bible college teachers and youth leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Vanuatu. Photo by Martha Yamsiu Kaluatman

UnitingWorld is the international aid and partnerships agency of the Uniting Church in Australia, collaborating for a world free from poverty and injustice. We support Pacific churches to lead a dialogue in the theology of gender equality and address violence against women in their communities. Read more.

 Click here to support our work.

We all say Christmas isn’t about the presents, and we mean it.

Ask around. It’s about family and friends, our neighbourhoods buzzing with community spirit, parents belting out Michael Bublé or Mariah Carey to annoy their children…

It’s about being present. A time to come together, sharing our lives in kindness and gratitude.

So why do we still buy so much stuff?

Each year, we’re confronted by the enormous and growing commercial enterprise Christmas has become. A season of hyper-consumption fed by accelerated production the world over.

We eat more, travel more, buy more and produce 30% more waste than at any other time of the year. Every December in Australia, we give an average of 20 million gifts that are unwanted and at least half of them quickly end up in landfill.

No wonder it’s been described as the world’s greatest annual environmental disaster.

We all want to be generous during our favourite time of year, but collectively our Christmas giving creates pollution and waste that has a huge environmental impact.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to be generous without more stuff, more waste and more CO2 in the atmosphere.

One way to think about it, is that every dollar we spend is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.

Here’s six gift ideas that don’t cost the planet.

1. Gifts that fight poverty

Think of charitable organisations that reflect the values of your loved ones (like us!). Donate in their honour or give a poverty-fighting gift that can change a life. What could be a better gift than clean water to a community that doesn’t have it? Or income opportunities like goats and pig-farming to help a struggling family secure their future?

Check out our full catalogue of life-changing gifts here. They come as gift cards with envelopes, or you can even go completely digital and send via email.

2. Give an experience

Theatre, concerts, workshops, community and cultural events often fly under the radar because there’s so much competing for our attention each week.

People say rock is dead and nimbys killed live music, but that will only happen if people stop going! The first step is getting some tickets…

Give someone an escape from the office to places like this urban farm that runs useful workshops on organic gardening, pickling and preserving, beekeeping and how to make things like beeswax wraps and hand-carved kitchen utensils.

Or give an experience outdoors with eco/wildlife tours, kayaking, canyoning, snorkelling (or shark dive, anyone?)


(her face)

… or stay inside give a voucher for a massage or foodie restaurant experience and support local businesses.

3. Give plants

Visit a local community market, there’s usually great plants for great prices. Find some nice pots (second-hand/recycled even) to put them in. Give them to loved ones and they’ll grow into some really thoughtful and unique gifts. You can even pair it with a gift card that supports tree-planting projects in the Pacific and Indonesia!

4. Give time

It’s an absurdity of modern life that despite all our technological advancements – still we work more. Pledging your time could be a thoughtful and useful gift.

Maybe your in-laws could use some extended babysitting to get away for the day? Perhaps your dad can’t get up the ladder to do the gutters any more? Or your partner has been meaning to get their bike serviced but hasn’t had the time to do it?

Imagine asking your grandma if your gift this year can be time spent helping her with the garden…

Yes, you should do these things anyway, so why don’t you?

You could even pledge your time in a card with an explanation and deadline, so they know you mean business.

5. Buy second-hand

Fifty dollars for a T-shirt? Nah mate.

Buying at your local op shop saves you money, cuts down consumer demand for stuff to be produced and supports organisations making positive change in the world. That’s something to dance about.

Onto Gumtree yet? It’s a brilliant place to save a few second-hand treasures from landfill to be re-gifted.

6. Buy local, buy sustainable

Want to reduce your global impact? Think local. Buy from local small businesses, craftspeople, those grandmas selling delicious jams at the school fete. Stuff that hasn’t been shipped across half the world to arrive under your tree.

Why not bake something yourself? Rise up a whole army of gingerbread men to scale a pyramid of brownies.

Go old-school. Homemade Christmas puddings still haven’t gone out of fashion. Be inspired by this brilliant non-profit pudding venture.

There’s so many zero waste, reusable gifts out there: keep cups, reusable bags, bamboo toothbrushes, wallets made from recycled paper! Check out this Zero Waste Christmas Guide by UnitingEarth.

Vote for a better world with your choices this Christmas.

Disclaimer: vote with your whole community. We know that to overcome the global challenges we face, individual action isn’t enough. We also need drastic changes to our social, political and economic systems to mitigate the climate crisis ahead.

This global problem requires global action.

Truly purposive action is holistic – individual behavioural change leading to important ‘awkward conversations’ in our communities, plus collective action aiming to influence widespread societal change.

The choices we make as consumers have already been influencing producers, but there’s a long way to go.

We each have the power to make a difference and it can start this Christmas.

This blog was inspired by an internal conversation among UnitingWorld staff to share sustainable Christmas gift ideas. Credit to everyone who fed the great discussion.

– Marcus

See how UnitingWorld and our partners are taking action on climate change and its impacts in the Pacific.

On a small island out on a lake in West Papua, a group of women are crafting themselves out of poverty by keeping a disappearing local art tradition alive.

The banks of their lake home skirt the far limits of Papua’s most modern city, Jayapura, but people here still travel between the islands using wooden canoes.

Traditional bark paintings (malo) have been produced by women from this area for hundreds of years. They spend weeks together making the canvases out of the beaten bark of fig trees, and then paint designs that express their culture, highlighting the theme of ‘harmony between all living things.’

Ask them how they learned the designs, and they all say, “our ancestors taught us.”

But despite everyone in their cooperative being talented artists and hard workers, they struggle to make a living, and their wider community lives in grinding poverty. The isolation of their island and their lack of business experience means that many of them work two jobs while raising children. Most of their husbands are fishermen, but fears of local overfishing has pushed their work out to sea and into the city where they make meagre earnings.

We wanted to invest in the women’s skills and see their business grow. So, after consulting with them about what they need, our local partners have been running business training and are helping them buy industrial sewing machines to help them expand their business to include bags and clothing with their traditional designs.

Together we’re helping them do what they love, get a fair price for their labour and lift themselves out of poverty.

My colleague Meilany, a local project manager, told me that empowering these women has huge flow-on affects for the community.

“You can’t make positive change for women here without also affecting all of society,” Meilanny says.

“These women work hard so that they can afford to send their children to school; many of them never had the chance themselves.”

“And if you teach a woman practical or artistic skills, or to read and write she will teach her family, her children. That knowledge is passed on.”

West Papua has a staggeringly high number of people living below the poverty line. Upwards of 27% live on less than $2 a day. Our local partners are working to change this at a community level, through strategies that invest in critical aspects of life: food security, health, women’s incomes and the future of children.

They need our support to continue to make projects like these a reality. Invest in these skillful women and projects that are helping people grow a new future in West Papua.

 

Visit www.unitingworld.org.au/papua to make a donation.

In hope and peace,

Marcus Campbell
UnitingWorld

 


Read more

In a place of extraordinary hardship, people still rise

Earlier this year, I made a trip across West Papua. It’s just 150km north of Australia, but it feels a world away – one of the poorest regions in the Asia Pacific. Yet everywhere I went, what struck me most was the profound generosity and sense of community that bound people together. This runs deep in local culture and traditions, expressed so naturally it almost seems to grow up out of the soil. It’s also what makes our work with the local Church so effective.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing stories of change and highlighting the work of our partners to tackle hunger, empower women and confront communicable disease in West Papua.

I’d like to start with the story of Beni and his family.

Beni and his wife Sarah live way up in the remote highlands of West Papua. When I met Beni in his garden one afternoon, he had been working all day but couldn’t stop smiling – even as he spoke about his recent struggles to put food on the table.

In 2016, the area he lives was gripped by one of the worst droughts in living memory. Crops right across the region failed. Beni and Sarah’s sweet potato, their main food source, was decimated.

“Our crop grew tiny and hard with the lack of rain; it was the same across the entire region, so everyone was worried… The whole village was wondering if we would all starve if we didn’t leave the area,” said Beni.

Thankfully, UnitingWorld’s local church partners were there to help during and after the crisis. Our partners gave Beni seeds and training to nurture the family garden and enter into field-sharing arrangements with his neighbours to test out how different crops grow across the mountain.

Beni says the help provided by the project has allowed his family to plan for the lean seasons.

He was beaming when he showed me his latest soybean plants sprouting up, and was keen to explain how well it had gone – not just for him but his whole community.

You can help us invest in training and equipping more families like Beni’s.

Imagine what it’s like to have – for the first time ever – the ability to plan confidently for your future. That’s the experience of Beni and Sarah today. Proud of their hard work and expertise, they’ve now expanded their skills to making tofu, much sought after in the highlands. It’s giving them a small additional income for medical and school needs for their children.

Our partners are providing the expertise and training these families need – but they can’t do it without our support. Your gift can get more workers in the field, supply more seeds and nurture more families to take up life-changing opportunities.

With your support, together with the hard work of people like Beni and his family, we’re helping communities grow better futures.

I’m looking forward to sharing more stories of change over the coming weeks!

In hope and peace,

Marcus Campbell
UnitingWorld

Donate now to help people grow a new future in West Papua.