Turning Love into Action: Sowing Seeds and Reaping Justice.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Faith and International Development Conference on Calvin’s campus. The theme this year is "Turning Love into Action: Sowing Seeds and Reaping Justice" based on Christ's mandate to "love not with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18). Keynote speakers included Carlos Hernandez (Association for a More Just Society), Nicholas Wolterstorff (former Calvin philosopher, also professor at Yale), Dirk Booy (World Vision), and Michelle Tolentino (Compassion International). Representatives came from organizations such as Mennonite Central Committee, International Justice Mission, and CRWRC, to name a few. Lectures and breakout sessions ranged from human rights to charity, from justice to holistic development. I was inspired by courageous individuals who persevere in the face of struggles against violence, corruption, and injustice.

For me, the conference reinforced ideas that first smacked me in the face last year, at exactly this time. I was in the bustling city of Tegucigalpa, listening to enticing beats of Regueton, eating baleadas* and pupusas, speaking slang with my host family, learning about a different way and pace of living life. This was the first time I took a development class; a starting block on a journey of understanding what it means to be an agent of reconciliation, a catalyst for change, and a faithful presence in a community. My ideas of what it meant to engage with another were shattered and rebuilt.

Thinking about International Development has caused me to re-examine local development at Calvin and in Grand Rapids. I think the Service-Learning Center is a place where the core of good development is addressed. Service-Learning is a powerful means of fostering civic engagement and a healthy pride in one’s neighborhood and community. There is space for service no matter where we are in the cycle for understanding Service-Learning, from naïve to charity, to reciprocal and generative (Educating for Citizenship, By Carn McTighe Musil).

In reflecting on last year and attempting to be present in this year, it seems to me that it was easier for me to engage in a culture that was far different from my own. It was easier to find the strengths and be patient with areas for improvement in Honduras. Taking a step back seemed simpler as it was not a permanent space for me. When I think about North American culture, it is easy for me to be critical of a fast pace, consumerist, efficiency-driven society. Service-Learning (among other things) gives me a moment to take a step closer to my community, and simultaneously a step back to ask deeper questions about how we got to where we are.

I learned so much going abroad and was reminded of that through the conference. But I really think most of the learning has been in returning, especially experiencing Grand Rapids in a new and deeper ways through Service-Learning. There is great importance in acknowledging where we are in a cycle of learning, always on the lookout for the next opportunity to gain head and heart wisdom.

*Fresh handmade flour tortilla with beans, eggs, and mantequilla crema (sour cream) in the middle=yummy!

Posted by Liesje

Thoughts on Poverty

I just returned to the S-LC after spending a semester studying in Honduras. As a part of my studies there, I took a class on Poverty and Development, which was by far my most interesting class. Our professors, Kurt and Jo Ann, raised a lot of tough questions that really forced us to think about our lifestyles as Americans and the way our country affects the rest of the world. I’m still thinking through a lot of the things I learned in that class, and will probably be sharing more of those with you all in the near future. But first I’d like to share with you an excerpt from an e-mail that I sent to my mentor after my first class with Kurt. Here goes…

“For our first class, Kurt gave us some statistics on poverty, which can often times seem so scientific and hard to really picture, but one that struck me is that

50% of the population of the world lives on less than $2 a day,
and 22% lives on less than $1 a day.
On average, Americans have $120 a day.

A friend and I discussed how it's so easy to feel poor living in the U.S. as you compare yourself to everyone around you, but we're so rich compared to the rest of the world. Of course I knew that, but I think those numbers really surprised me. Especially since $1 a day is really the minimum that people can live on healthily, so that 22% who has less is malnourished, doesn't have clean water, and has no access to health care. It seems like we should just be able to spread out the wealth that we have, and according to Kurt, if we wanted everyone in the world to have food tomorrow, we could do it, we just don't want to. I guess I'm not completely convinced that it's that easy, but maybe it is. Isn't that exactly what people try to do with child sponsorship programs and the like? I'll give a little bit of my money to this other person, and thus spread out the wealth. Granted it's not much money, but it's the same basic idea. But I don't think any child sponsorship program will solve the problem of poverty in the world. Obviously a solution would have to be on a really big scale, thus the difference between charity and justice. I, personally, could feed a child in a third world country fairly easily, but I personally can't solve the problem of poverty in the world. But the whole country of the United States together with other wealthy countries could.

I guess I'm struggling with the whole "overwhelmingness" of the situation of our world. It's so broken that a solution seems impossible. And poverty, of course, isn't the only problem we're facing. The governments of the world are selfish, if not corrupt, so sometimes solutions seem far out of reach. We visited the American Embassy here last week and heard from a few of the employees. They told us about how their job is to pursue what's best for the U.S., even if it isn't in the best interest of the Hondurans. Well on the one hand, that makes sense. Of course their job is to get what's best for our country and our people. But on the other hand, that seems so selfish. We're never going to solve problems of poverty and hunger if we're not willing to sacrifice anything. We happened to be born in a very wealthy nation which gave us a lot of opportunities. We don't work any harder for our money than the people here in Honduras do for theirs, yet we have more of it. If we, as a nation, aren't willing to do anything that gives other countries more opportunities to be successful (without increasing our success as well), the gap between rich and poor will only continue to grow.”

Most of the things I realized in this e-mail are not revolutionary. They weren’t completely new to me and probably aren’t to you either. But they did strike me in a new way as I was living in Honduras, and they still warrant some thought from all of us.

S-LC Staff in Ghana - An Update

We are writing this post from the beautiful country of Ghana, West Africa. We are studying here at the University of Ghana for the semester through Calvin College. For those of you who don’t know us, we are both in our third year and work at the Service-Learning Center.

Ghana is divided into ten regions and more loosely into the North and the South which are drastically different from one another. The South is green, tropical, and lies on the coast whereas the North is a savannah and generally very dry and very hot. Along with these climate differences are differences in their colonial histories. When Ghana was colonized the capital was established on the Coast and naturally infrastructure followed. Overall, the colonial powers choose not to develop the North because there was no benefit for them in doing so. These historical disparities have had a lasting affect on the development of Ghana.

About two weeks ago our group went on a week-long trip to “The North.” We visited six NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) in various parts of the North. We learned how valuable it is to learn about development first-hand. We couldn’t help but talk to one another about how much seeing these things first hand was helping us understand them so much better than if we had read about them from a text book.

We got to talk to real people about the real work that they were doing. They were able to give us a realistic, and not always rosy, picture of their development work. In going to numerous NGOs with varying approaches and missions, we saw that they were all firm in their methodologies. This was difficult because we could compare NGO A to NGO B and pick out the good and bad in each without being able to find a perfect “way to do development.” It highlighted the complexities in development work. As we sit here writing this post we are having a hard time articulating our experience because the value is truly learned so much better when experienced first hand.

This is just a glimpse into how very much we are learning here and we hope that we can talk more about our time when we get home. It’s funny how in a round-about way a small lesson that we are learning is how valuable learning outside of the classroom is.

Kelly and Becca