The print run for this first booklet seems to have been a little small; we have run out. However, I have the final PDF of the booklet available. Simply send an email to justice@anglican .org.nz with ‘gardening booklet’ in the subject, or down load by clicking this link: gardening-booklet. Distribute or use as you like.

To sign up for the others click on the box below titled Just Booklets with the dandelion flower picture.

The article is worth reading for anyone who didn’t catch it. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10559807

NZ has been one of the worst performers in terms of our aid contribution as a percentage of our GNI (gross domestic income), and are one of only 3 countries who have not set a timetable for honouring our .7% pledge (Australia and Japan are the other two).

However, the aid that we do give tends to be given well. That is to say the aid is not tied or linked to the donor countries political agenda. New Zealand aid was separated from Ministry or Foreign affairs seven years ago. The 2005 OECD DAC peer review report on NZAID, speaking of the 2002 changes, said “The reorientation of New Zealand’s development co-operation has been impressive… The creation of NZAID can be considered a success. In practice, its semi-autonomous status has been appropriate, allowing the agency to focus on poverty reduction and ensuring that the development programme is separate from - albeit coherent with - the foreign policy agenda.”

McCully said that poverty elimination should not be the focus of NZAid, rather it should be economic development. “You could ride around in a helicopter pushing hundred-dollar notes out the door and call that poverty elimination.” This is grossly unfair to the work of NZAid. In reality poverty elimination and economic development are always related, and getting the balance right is the work of all development and aid workers. The problem with talking of economic development in separation from poverty reduction is that it might simply be a door to assisting trade and business interest at the expense of those who are most marginalized and in need.

The role of aid is to say ‘what do you most need, and how can we help;’ the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is to ask ‘what are our goals, and how can we advance them. It is not that one is good and one bad, simply that they are conflicting goals. This is the reason some degree of independence and separation is necessary. McCully wants to make sure that NZAid is working towards Government policy. Well of course, that is not in question. All departments should work towards government policy; the question is which policy aims should they be working towards? Those of our humanitarian and aid policies, or our Trade and Foreign Affairs policies?

The Oxfam press release is well worth reading.

Van Jones is the founder and president of Green For All, and his work is a model for Christians who want to do community development in environmentally-friendly ways and for those who want to find ways out of the “environment vs. jobs” debate.

Jones points out the many ways in which solving environmental problems can be done with justice. His position is that as long as we’re going to all the trouble to create a clean energy economy, we might as well make a renewed effort to tackle discrimination and inequality, too.

He addresses the involvement of faith communities directly and challenges the “so-called progressives [who] snarl the word ‘Christian’ as if it were an insult or the name of a disease.” He presses activists to become problem-solvers, to become more about “proposition” than “opposition.” In a short list of principles for a new movement, Jones advocates fewer “issues,” more solutions; fewer “demands,” more goals; fewer “targets,” more partners; and less “accusation,” more confession.

I really like the sound of this approach. It rings true with my conviction that as Christians we have a call not to protest but to witness. Not just doing something to protest an injustice, but something that highlights another possible way of living. Turning the other cheek - or planting a garden in the parking lot of a coal power plant instead of holding a placard.

Has anyone read this book?

This morning Prime Minister John Key claimed in a Radio New Zealand
interview that the Summit involved government, business and community
organisations. Out of the nearly 200 participants, there are three
representatives from Community and Voluntary Sector organisations.

Many Community and Voluntary Sector organisations are bitterly
disappointed that the value and role of community-development and
community support is not being recognised by the National-led Government
around how our country can navigate our way through the economic
recession.

From the Summit will flow an action plan that will feed into this
year’s Budget round. Community and Voluntary Sector organisations are
not even at the table to be part of that discussion and action plan.

On Wednesday this week (25 February), about 70 representatives from
across the community and voluntary sector, philanthropy, and government
agencies met in a Sector-initiated forum. They met to collect
information about the impacts of economic recession on the community
sector and discuss strategies for managing the significant changes that
are expected ahead.

The information collected is _not_ included in the discussions at the
Job Summit today because of the lack of Sector representation.

Organisations in the 20 strong ComVoices working group are calling on
all Community and Voluntary sector organisations to make their concern
and disappointment heard loud and clear.

It is vital that social services are not just tacked on to the end of
the process.

Please distribute this email and contact your local MPs from all sides
of the House, but particularly the Prime Minister, the Minister of
Finance Bill English, Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett and
Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector Tariana Turia. Let them
know the Sector expects more from them.

We have provided a pro forma email/ letter that you can adapt to your
own organisation, and the MP contacts list to help start the process (in
word and pdf versions to take account of accessibility software).

Please also make your voice heard through the Government website set up
for the Summit http://beehive.govt.nz/feature/summit.

It is really important that Sector organisations make their collective
voice heard at this time.

The word community has many connotations, some positive, some negative. Community can make us think of a safe togetherness, shared meals, common goals, and joyful celebrations. It also can call forth images of sectarian exclusivity, in-group language, self-satisfied isolation, and romantic naïveté. However, community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own (see Philippians 2:4). The question, therefore, is not “How can we make community?” but “How can we develop and nurture giving hearts?”

Choose from goats, ducks, water and more. Not only are they fun and meaningful for recipients, Just Gifts support the life changing work of CWS partners as local people work to overcome poverty and injustice in their own communities. They give water, food, income and opportunities to people in need of a better life.

See CWS website for details

CWS, the official development, justice and aid agency of New Zealand churches is holding its annual appeal. This year it focuses on CWS partners overseas that help there communities survive through conflict. Poverty causes conflicts and conflict worsens poverty. Most of the victims of conflict are civilians, many of them women and children.  They face a daily struggle to stay alive, protect their families and earn a living. The support that CWS partners provide brings them hope and enables them to work together for a better future

The CWS Christmas Appeal has been a tradition in New Zealand churches since 1945. Please donate now. See www.cws.org.nz for details or phone 0800 74 73 72

Worship resources available online. Click here

The King of Bhutan - The prince who brought satellite TV to Shangri-La

It reminded me of a book I read a while back called “Remotely Controlled” by Dr Aric Sigman which explores the social, psychological, health and cultural impacts of TV - a must-read to understanding our crazy western society and its export throughout the world through the medium of television. I can’t find any review that does the brilliance of this book justice, but the closest I could find was this one.

The king of Bhutan dreamed of hauling his remote realm into the 21st century, so now it has crime and corruption and 46 channels, and a steeply declining Gross National Happiness

Bhutan had no schools, hospitals, roads, currency, electricity, police, courts, nor, until the 1960s, diplomatic relations with any other country. Yak-rearing was the main occupation, an ancient form of archery the main sport. Thus, serenely unbothered by the world beyond the kingdom’s borders, the population basked in what Professor Robert Thurman, of New York’s Columbia University, one of the few western authorities on the country, calls “a state of enduring spiritual contentment”.

With the new king’s eagerness to modernise Bhutan, things are rapidly changing, and in recent years Bhutan has embarked on a fast and furious programme of modernisation. And this is where the current problems began.

The first event to shake the kingdom out of its millennial slumber was the arrival of television. Most Bhutanis seemed perfectly content to be living in the last country on earth where the box was banned (along with Coca-Cola and high-heeled shoes), but then a round-the-clock satellite service of 46 channels – most provided by Rupert Murdoch’s racy, Asian-based Star network – was launched.

The extent of TV’s responsibility for the damaging social changes that followed is still hotly debated. Crime, vandalism and anti-social behaviour – the blight of many advanced societies, but barely known in Bhutan – started to become commonplace. Local communes, once models of rectitude and scruple, reported a sudden wave of corruption cases, while parents and teachers noticed that children were becoming alienated, contemptuous of discipline and obsessed with western pop culture. An editorial in the country’s national newspaper, Kuensel, despaired of what was happening: “We are seeing, for the first time, broken families, school dropouts, and other negative youth crimes. We are beginning to see crime associated with drug users all over the world – shoplifting, burglary and violence.”

With Bhutan’s loss of innocence came – largely at Jigme’s urging – the abandonment of the absolute monarchy, to be replaced by an elected assembly, and the embrace of the modern world. “We no longer live in a small hidden kingdom,” he declared three years ago. “We are very much a part of this new globalised world. At the end of the day, what it will always come down to is – how can Bhutan stand on her own feet? How can we make a good living? What can Bhutan sell that the world wants to buy? How can Bhutan compete with other nations as equals? We are not competing with each other, we must compete with the rest of the world. It is no longer enough to say, ‘I am the best in Bhutan’ – you have to be the best wherever you go in the world.”

The quiz is run by St. Michael’s Global Mission Group and is raising funds for the Anglicare StopAIDS programme in Papua New Guinea for HIV/AIDS testing, education, counselling and health services.

To raise extra funds, we’re auctioning off a selection of awesome prizes half-way through the quiz. Come prepared with your general knowledge and brainpower to compete in teams of 8 people.

Tickets are $20 each, or if you want to go beyond the call, you can buy a table of 8 and sell the extra tickets to your friends. We’d love to see you there!

E-mail quiz@stmichaels.org.nz, phone (leave a message) / txt 0275 547 714 for tickets or more info.

• 7pm - 9pm, 22nd November 2008

• St Michael’s Church Hall, 83 Upland Rd, Kelburn, Wellington (just before the Kelburn shops)

Youtube video: Anglicare STOPAIDS fights HIV in Papua New Guinea

I’ve been thinking about what made me shift from someone who took the bus and gave a bit of money to charity, to actually getting a bit more involved in stuff like intentional community, more political engagement and other stuff that goes a bit deeper than putting out recycling every week. A big change in my life was when I got to know (and got a huge crush on) a really socially active, anarchist, vegan hippy (please excuse the false black and white categories) who helped me to see the world in a new, more real way. Which is a bit hard to replicate on a broad scale in terms of a building a social movement! (Or perhaps not, perhaps the way to build an authentic active social movement is for us all to change the way people live by our sheer sexiness?)

What makes or made others get involved in social justice action? A sermon? A media report? Friend’s roping someone in? Stuff people learn at school or uni?

Is it a case of learning about an issue, and then doing something about it? Or is it more often after getting involved in some kind of action, maybe even by accident or circumstance, and that involvement opening someone’s eyes and getting them passionate about the cause?