Environment protection: All about Love and Justice

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(Photo taken in Kurigram District of northern Bangladesh)

Written by Tony Chan (Senior Partnership Development Officer)

 

Friends asked me, “Your organisation (CEDAR Fund) is for poverty alleviation. Why does it actively promote environment protection?”

 

This is closely related to CEDAR’s understanding of poverty. We believe that poverty is resulted from an impaired relationship. In the beginning of creation, relationships between man and God, man and man, and man and nature were good. However, man sinned and disobeyed God, and even exploited others and the nature for their own benefits. Those who were exploited became the poor.

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Creations are Groaning, Neighbours are Suffering – How Should Churches Respond?

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In our seven weeks of Lent practice, we explored Creation Care from different perspectives. We also reflect on our relationships with the nature, neighbours in poverty, and our community through scriptures, songs, and actions. Creation Care is indeed propelling us to embrace the created world and all creations with care and love. This is what Jesus manifested to the world. Therefore, this care and love for creations and people are obviously evangelistic and missional.

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Climate Injustice: A Christian Perspective

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Written by: Edward Lai Ka-chun (Senior Communications Officer)

 

On 15 March, thousands of students from New Zealand, Australia, India, Thailand, and Hong Kong skipped school and took to the streets to protest against the collective inaction of governments and other world leaders on alleviating global warming. The wave of ongoing protests against climate change has spread across the globe since last Autumn. In an interview with foreign media in February, a French student who boycotted school said, “Why study for a future, which may not be there?”

 

This is somewhat true. In recent years, the United Nations has issued multiple warnings on the imminent threat of climate change: If the countries do not collaborate and adopt comprehensive policies to stop temperature rises, based on the current volume of greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures will increase by 1.5°C by 2030. Once we reach the tipping point of a 2°C rise, the world will be plunged into an eco-catastrophe and our offspring will bear the consequences of their ancestors’ poor behaviours.

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Ethiopian Child Sponsorship Programme – Graduates Passing on the Love

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Every year in Ethiopia, there are a few beneficiaries “graduating” from the Child Sponsorship Programme* supported by CEDAR. Generally, beneficiaries are no longer supported by the programme once they reached 18 years old, however, we believe that the criterion to “graduate” from the programme shall not be limited to their age. We, instead, take the holistic development of the beneficiaries into account. For this reason, even as they turn 18 years old, we continue to subsidise them in occupational training for 1 to 3 years in hope of a higher chance for them to be employed with a certain qualification. For those that were admitted to university, our subsidy will apply until the completion of their degrees. From 2018, the programme has subisdised 145 children and adolescents and helped 204 parents or guardians form self help groups to fight against long term poverty.

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What is Creation Care?

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God and His Creations

“Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” – Romans 1:19-20

When Apostle Paul explain the gospel to the church in Rome, he pointed out that the created world manifest God’s eternal power and divine nature, and no one can hold excuses against it. In the Old Testament, the writers wrote numerous times about the world’s creations to praise God, for example, in Psalm 8:3-4: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Man can glimpse the glory of God through the created world, and knew that he himself was also part of the creations. Man and all things in the heavens, on earth, and in the seas belong to and sustain by the Creator.

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How do Churches Instill Hopes to People in the midst of Disaster?

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Herda, elder of Boladangko Church (Right) and Cynthia, who lost her father

 

Written by: Jady Sit (Communications Officer)

 

In early November 2018, a few CEDAR’s staffs visited Sulawesi of Indonesia to learn about the local conditions from partner PESAT and visit families devastated by the earthquake. The article below is our staff’s sharing after her visit. If you would like to understand more about CEDAR’s relief work there, please visit the page “Indonesian Earthquake and Tsunami Relief”.

 

“During the earthquake, the door was locked, and thus Cynthia’s father was trapped inside the house. When it collapsed, he died,” Herda, an elder at the Boladangko Church, said emotionally with her arm surrounding Cynthia.

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