• HOW to RESPOND to POVERTY. part two.

    djp7215/10/2008


    today is Blog Action Day 2008, and this year the theme is POVERTY…. and so here is my story in two parts:
    part one is my working for World Vision as a display coordinator. part two is the amazing “co-incidence” of receiving the first letter from Xolo our sponsor child on the 15th of October 2008: the very date of “Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty”.

    part two: the positive.

    as i already mentioned in my last post, we signed up to sponsor a child thru world vision australia. we did what is called a special request, we asked for a boy the same age as our oldest son Drummond, give or take a month and we also wanted him to be from South Africa {my wife Benita is South African coloured}. so after a few weeks we got XOLO in the mail….
    XOLO - the picture folder
    you can see a bigger version of that here
    it isn’t the world’s greatest picture of XOLO, it’s a janky pixelated washed out picture of an unhappy looking little guy, as a photographer i long to go over and take pics of a lot of the kids i see come through our displays… anyway inside the XOLO’s picture folder it has his stats:
    XOLO's inside picture folder
    you can see a bigger, readable version of his stats here

    So we have had little XOLO’s picture folder in the kitchen with us, Drummond has been learning all about him and has gotten with the programme straight away, he has been putting aside part of his pocket money for XOLO and he even get’s a mention every now and then in Drum’s bedtime prayers.

    We’ve been meaning to write to him, have the boys draw him a picture, take a picture, etc etc, but things have been busy over the last month.

    Today on the 15th October, it is the actual day of Blog Action Day on Poverty, so this morning i was thinking about whether i will blog anything about the subject… and then in today’s mail there is a cool looking envelope:
    15th october 2008 - a letter from SA

    my mind was seriously on everything else under the sun and i had no idea who could be sending us a letter from SA, it must be Benita’s relatives or something… and then we opened it and was knocked out that it was a letter from our sponsor child XOLO!
    15th october 2008 - a letter from XOLO

    Well XOLO is about to turn 5 so it’s not written by him of course, it’s actually written by one of the WV co-ordinators there in SA, the hand writing is a little tricky, but we now know that he lives with his 72 year old grandma who has bad eyesight. he lives in a little village with a well that is about 20km’s from the closest town, XOLO’s mum is away in Durban looking for work, no mention of XOLO’s father.

    talk about timing, God has a great sense of comedic timing. on the actual day i receive the letter from my sponsor child. classic. so of course that has moved me to write today. and come to the conclusion of what i think we should do about poverty…
    HOW DO WE RESPOND TO POVERTY?
    by doing something!
    something tangible, personal, and ongoing. and the most common sense thing i can see to do is make a difference in one child’s life.
    it costs about $1.50 a day.
    $10 a week.
    you blow more than $10 a week on crappy take away food, coffees and drinks that are killing you. i don’t care who you are, you can afford $10 a week to save the life of a child.

    if you want to save a child’s life with your spare change please contact me. i can help you make it happen today. don’t just blog links to resources or read the thousands of blogs out there posting about the problem, and though it’s helpful i think just giving a one time donation is not as powerful as actually connecting with an actual child in need personally.
    do something. sponsor a child. i’d love to help you make that happen. there is nothing in it for me, i get no commissions, i get no gold stars, i get nothing out of it other than joy of making it happen.

    XOLO

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    HOW to RESPOND to POVERTY. part one.

    djp72


    today is Blog Action Day 2008, and this year the theme is POVERTY…. and so here is my story in two parts:
    part one is my working for World Vision as a display coordinator. part two is the amazing “co-incidence” of receiving the first letter from Xolo our sponsor child on the 15th of October 2008: the very date of “Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty”.

    part one: the negative.

    like you i have grown up in “average” conditions in a western country and pretty much live everyday thinking how life would be better if i only had more stuff; if i only could afford that new MacBook Pro… i can’t wait till that new 5D Mark II camera comes out… etc etc… and if you work for yourself then you know the joys of wondering how you will pay rent next week when you have no work coming in… this is the stuff of our lives, committing to going on a diet tomorrow but tonight i will cruise through mcdonalds drive thru for one last fast food meal. we are wrapped in our own worlds doing the best we can…

    and like you i’ve grown up seeing starving children on my TV and hoping that one day i could make a difference, do something, anything.

    but here’s the killer, MOST people {including myself} NEVER do ANYTHING. oh yes we are full of good intentions and we promise ourselves that one day we will get around it. {just like that diet, or that gym membership} and that is the killer. we just don’t actually do anything. we can justify spending hundreds of dollars on films, DVD’s, albums, phone bills and the stuff we “need”, but we just never quite get around to looking into sponsoring that child, donating that money or finding about that organisation.

    for years i’ve been planning on doing something, and it never eventuated. until this year when i saw a job advertised for a part-time “display co-ordinator” on the Gold Coast for World Vision Australia. i had no idea what it entailed or exactly why i was doing it, but i applied, then got rejected, then got an interview, then got the job, then got the training, then was on the job…. and THEN i finally got a sponsor child.

    yes it wasn’t until my first shift actually on the job that i actually signed up to sponsor a child.

    my very part time {2 shifts a week of around 5 hours each, for about a six week “campaign” and then two or three weeks off and then another campaign} job with World Vision is what they call the grunt work, the face work, the rubber on the road work: i stand at a table covered in sponsor children in shopping centres and malls and try to get total strangers to stop and sponsor a needy child through World Vision. it’s pretty much the best and worst job i’ve ever had. i couldn’t even imagine what it would be like doing this job full time….

    this job is actually lifting me to new ends of thinking too much and seeing life as this weird existential experience. i mean i stand in the middle of a shopping centre, surrounded by shops selling all sorts of useless crap and pampering services, the whole mall is designed to make people want to shop, and each shop within the mall is screaming out for attention with latest sparkly beads for sale, and here i am standing in front of a few card tables with a bunch of childrens pictures from around the world. it is seriously like sending out a Amish farmer in his horse and buggy to compete in the formula 1 grand prix… on a good day i like to think of it as David out to fight Goliath.

    sometimes it is hard to not look at the entire western civilisation as some disgusting monstrosity, an example of the pinnacle of selfishness… i cannot tell you how many times i have watched a woman refuse to even return a “hello” to me when she realises what i am there for, only to walk straight to the display window of jewellery store. or to see couples in the twenties ignore you with their Boost juice and shopping bags in their hands. i cannot tell you how many families have walked past and said something along the lines of “we couldn’t afford it” and each of the children is chomping down on lollies while sitting in shopping trolleys laden with food, toys and the latest XBox games.

    by far my “favourite” top two responses from the public walking past in shopping centres are:
    The Head Snapper & The Concerned Lips.
    The Head Snapper is someone who is usually slowly walking thru the Mall/Centre in that shopping induced haze, they are not in a hurry, they are just idly walking and gazing around when their gaze slowly lands onto our World Vision display and before they can help it they are staring at all these children’s faces, they are trapped by all the orange of the sponsor children’s little cardboard picture folders. then all of a sudden they realise that i am there, a human being who wants them to actually do something about it, and they realise exactly what they are looking at. and then: WHA-CRACK! they snap their heads away from me and the display so fast i can almost feel the whiplash.
    The Concerned Lips is someone who walks past and maybe nods at you and the stand, but they have no intention of stopping so they give you that i-am-concerned-so-i-will-tighten-my-lips-a-little-and-give-a-concerned-tilt-to-my-head look, if you are really lucky they will even give you one of those and even a slight concerned moan or sigh as they slightly pause at a child’s picture…

    check this commercial that World Vision Australia did for April 2008:

    I LOVE THAT ADVERT!

    but can i be straight up honest with you?
    getting the everyday jo public to sign up for a sponsor a child is HARD. REALLY HARD! and even though i’m pretty new to it all, it’s getting harder every week.
    personally i think the whole world vision approach at the shopping centres is a bit soft, i would love to do something radical and have massive banners and television displays with really confronting messages and images. we cannot compete for peoples attention in a shopping centre, but we could get attention with the “rude” reality of truth and the power of contrast. Big signs that say “SAVE CHILDREN NOW” or “YOUR CONCERNED LOOKS DON’T FILL HUNGRY BELLIES” or “STOP FEELING GUILTY, DO SOMETHING GOOD”… i know, i know we’d be booted out of the centres with a chorus of boos. because people don’t like to feel judged.

    that commercial above is excellent in my opinion, it gives it to people straight, BUT the advert was considered a flop because jo public complained because it was too judgemental. people don’t want to feel like World Vision or the little starving children are judging them. well the bad news for such people is that they have already been judged, and they have been found wanting. history will look book at our generations with disgust, how can we in the west be spending so much on ourselves when we could easily make a massive blow to poverty? 700 billion just from the USA to bail out the rich crooks and banks? 70 billion just from China on the Olympics? we sit back in the glow of our televisions while Africa, the most amazing country on earth, implodes….

    so how do i go on? what will keep us from throwing our hands up in the air and saying “too hard!”? stay tuned for part two: the positive.


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