“Death Sentence” to the Climate-affected Poor – Resisting Disaster in India

 

Editor’s note: When we were children, we learned about “climate change” in our textbooks; but this expression is no longer an accurate description of the threat presented to the world nowadays. The term “climate change” has gradually been replaced by “climate crisis”, which indicates that the planet has entered an emergency state. In this issue of SHARE, “Climate and the Poor” was adopted as the theme to remind the Christian communities about the group of people who are hit the hardest by the climate crisis. In “Back to the Bible”, we pointed out that caring for the created world is crucial in our beliefs. We have an article on our supporter’s experience of choosing a lifestyle that reduces carbon footprints, and another article about life education for Ethiopian youths written by our staff.

 

[“SHARE” OCT – DEC 2019 ] FOCUS 

Written by: Edward Lai (Senior Communications Officer)

 

The world experienced the hottest month ever in July [1]. In fact, 2015 to 2019 may have been the hottest 5 years in human history. [2]

 

In recent years, the United Nations (UN) [3] has issued several warnings on the imminent peril of climate crises induced by human activities. Under the same climate crisis, the threats borne by the rich and the poor are totally different. As pointed out by the experts at the UN [4], the rich can use money to mitigate the impacts of global warming, but the poor are almost powerless. They are left to bear the brunt of rising temperature, such as drought, famine and infectious diseases. CEDAR has been carrying out disaster relief and disaster risk reduction in various developing countries in Asia and Africa. In India, especially, we witnessed the severity of the impact of climate crisis on the poor.

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Fear Not the Slander and Shadow, But to Break the Silence – Interview with Indian Anti-child Trafficking Activist

(Aashima Samuel, the National Director of EFIC@R, interviewed by CEDAR)

 

“In Indian villages, when we and church pastors advocated anti-child trafficking, some Hindi nationalists accused us of, or even attacked us for ‘brainwashing’ villagers to convert them into Christians. In fact, among them, there were traffickers slandering us to extinguish our anti-trafficking voice,” said Aashima Samuel, the National Director of Evangelical Fellowship of India Children At Risk (EFIC@R), CEDAR’s partner.

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When Poverty Becomes a Sin

The author (far right) and other trippers visited ethnic minorities in northern Thailand

 

[“SHARE” JUL – SEP 2019 ] TAKING ACTION

Written by: Janice Cheng (participant of CEDAR’s exposure trip in 2018; church pastor)

 

In December last year, I went to the Thai-Myanmar border with CEDAR to learn about their poverty alleviation projects in the area. The 8-day trip enabled me to understand more about the region. We visited some villages with CEDAR’s local partners and spoke to various individuals during our time there.

 

The residents are mostly ethnic minority groups from the mountainous areas, and they all have their own predicaments to overcome. There are abandoned single mothers and minority groups who have been relocated to the border area in northern Thailand due to warfare and other problems. Since they have not been granted Thai citizenship, they do not enjoy any social welfare, employment or education benefits or support.

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What is the function of a church in the community? – CEDAR’s Project Experience in China

“Suppose that a community that was moderately equipped with a food market or a supermarket, a hospital, a school, a police station, and a church. Now you are asked to get rid of one of these institutions, which one would it be?”

 

Lorraine, one of our colleagues in China, posed this question to the participants during training programmes, and that one answer coincided among them was “the Church”.

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Saving One is One

Our partner worker carried a 12-week-old embryo baby model to deliver the message of “priceless life” to women who were preparing for abortion in the hospital.


 

Abortion, a bloody noun.

 

According to the interpretation of Wikipedia, abortion, also known as miscarriage or induced abortion, is the ending of pregnancy by removing an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus.

 

Under the influence of one child policy, millions of women and mothers undergo abortion or sterilisation every year. The Chinese official report pointed out 13 million cases of abortion annually. When this announcement was still hovering around the ears, some US human rights organisations already felt unacceptable and claimed that the actual number is 10 million more. According to this data, there are 63,013 cases of abortion every day, 2,625 cases every hour, and 43 cases every minute. Various reasons have gradually made abortion a “reasonable” choice and it is silently accepted in the society, which can be implied from an advertisement of a mainland Chinese hospital. In the advertisement, a woman was frustrated because of an unplanned pregnancy. After the hospital’s painless induced abortion, the family and even the grandmother were very happy to welcome her home. Various social influences resulted in sexual experience at young age and the prevalence of abortion.

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Mobilising Churches to Serve Their Neighbours

Churches who participate in MBC’s programme realise their mission to serve their neighbours and community through Bible studies

We have shared with you CEDAR’s work in Yunnan in a previous ePrayer where we are actively facilitating churches in China to take part in transforming their own communities. Using the SALT model, we hope to help believers to establish relationship with their community as the salt of the world. We thank God for the great testimonies told by them. Today, we would like to share our similar efforts on mobilising churches in Myanmar to take part in their community.

Over the last three years, CEDAR have been partnering with Myanmar Baptist Convention (MBC) to encourage about 50 churches to train their congregation in transforming their communities, using the Umoja approach. Following the lead of the Holy Spirit is a core value of Umoja. Facilitators would conduct regular Bible studies to help believers realise their mission given by God; and through prayer, they would ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to think about ways to practise their faith in their community.

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