Five Million Reasons I'm giving to Syria

Today I was invited along by Tearfund to the Disaster Emergency Committee's Syria Live event hosted in the BT Tower in London. After a rather embarrassing 'I think I'm lost, oh THERE is the giant tower!' moment I arrived and got acquainted with some fellow tweeters. What followed was an hour Q&A with six leading experts from the UK's biggest humanitarian organisations. It is well worth a listen to the event and you can find it on the DEC website.

from dec.org.uk

While I was at the event I was mulling over what an appropriate post would be from all the heart rending and inspiring stories the experts were sharing with us. Ultimately it all comes down to to those, to the 5 million people trapped or displaced as a result of the conflict in Syria each with their own desperate needs, individual stories and hopes for the future. There are five million reasons right there to donate right now. I have also put together my top ten, however, for why I am donating today.

1. The money given to the DEC goes straight to partner organisations in our leading charities who are working on the ground NOW. The cash will get directly to those who are in extreme need of basic food supplies and medicine. The channels are open, the needs identified, they just need the cash.
2. The scale of the crisis is massive and escalating. 8,000 people, up from 1,000 at the start of the year, are fleeing Syria every single day. Basic supplies are desperately needed for the camps receiving them in Jordan and Lebanon.
3. Civilians are being disproportionately affected by the conflict. A large proportion of the refugees fleeing Syria are women and children.
4. The conflict has been going on for much longer than expected and is now considered to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the 21^st century.
5. Half of all refugees are children and are falling behind in their education. The money you give would allow partners to provide education for these children in the refugee camps to allow them to stay on track for until they return home.
6. On escaping from the country people face life threatening situations as they pass through active conflict. Our donations means that when they cross the border they are welcomed with supplies, support and a reminder that the international community cares as well as supporting people who are trapped in Syria and unable to flee.
7. The DEC partner organisations are directly consulting with affected people in Syria on how they feel the money should be spent ensuring the money gets to what they consider to be the most important needs.
8. Individuals and organizations in countries hosting refugees are working in a massively sacrificial manner to care for vulnerable people. Teachers are working double shifts to try and fit in extra children in schools that have doubled in size over night. Our donations can provide additional support to these overstretched areas.
9. Partner organisations are looking to people's emotional as well as physical well being. The level of suffering is overwhelming, our donations provide someone to care and to help people rebuild their lives.
10. These are people just like us, having babies, wanting to care for their children and get on with normal life and yet have been chased from their homes in fear. Let's stand with them.

Donate online here.

Being human

Things come in and out of the news so fast that it is so easy for us to move on just as fast. The wars rage and rumble away in the back ground but our lives carry on: work, caring for our families, all the normal things of life. But sometimes the human thing to do is to stop and to listen again. To listen to the voices of the people that desperately need our help and wonder deeply what we can do about it.

I've recently been asked by Tearfund to be part of their blogging team. Long term readers of my blog will know that Tearfund has a very special place in my heart and I have written, fund raised and generally shouted about their work for some time now. Their work is on the ground, done by local people and makes a real difference. I know, I've seen it for myself.

In many countries the church is best placed to respond to situations of disaster and crisis. They are already in their communities and have the local knowledge needed to address the areas of most desperate need. Tearfund utilizes this potential and enables them to reach out to their communities, of all faiths and none, with the provisions and support they require.




A Refugee Camp for Syrian Refugees - Eleanor Bentall, Tearfund

Tearfund are masters of collecting stories and that is the one thing I believe we desperately need to hear. That on the other end of a conflict are real people with real lives that are suddenly, violently interrupted by events outside of their control. And yet in these disasters we see the extent of human bravery and resilience. Babies are born and homes are made wherever we can find them. This video really says it all:
 

In Syria the crisis is escalating. Four million people have been affected by the violence and there are now over one million refugees, a figure reached much sooner than anticipated by the UN. On her trip Katie also met five families who had fled to Jordan, all of whom were living in a three bedroom flat. In an interview with Katie one of the fathers, Aamil, shared his story of fleeing his home.



Aamil and his family. Photo -  Eleanor Bentall, Tearfund

"We were living in Deraa when something like 20,000 soldiers came into our neighbourhood. They started shooting and killed about 300 people. They also burned our houses. So we left our homes carrying nothing, no money, no food, no clothing, only the things that we are wearing, that’s all. They were pursuing us with tanks so I took my whole family and left that neighbourhood. We left immediately and went to Zaatari [a refugee camp] in Jordan”

Food and shelter, the most basic of needs, are in desperately short supply. Medical help is absent and intensely required.

“We don’t have any food at all. Nobody has helped us and we suffer from cold during the night especially.”



Photo - Eleanor Bentall, Tearfund

Aamil hopes to return to Syria when the violence has ended but in the meantime the basics of life are desperately needed by him and many other families who have escaped the conflict.

It is easy to close our eyes, to go on with our day and put this kind of suffering to one side in our minds. But, as in all things, we have a choice and we CAN make a difference. Today can be an ordinary day or it can be a day where we let someone on the other side of the world know that we care for them. It can be a day where we cover our ears or where we take our petitions loudly to the ear of God. It can be a day where we allow humanity to be defined as violent and destructive or where we play our part in showing what being truly human really is.

Please pray. Please give. And please keep hearing these stories.

Zambia bound

As of this time next week I’ll be getting ready to board a plane bound for Zambia so there will be a bit of a moratorium on the ol’ blog posts until the end of July (unless I happen to stumble across a PC somewhere on my travels!).

The last time I visited Zambia with Tearfund about seven years ago it was a memorable and life changing experience. It was where I first started to write as I was overwhelmed on every front by new senses and experiences that begged to be recorded somehow. It was where I caught a whiff of my future as we read these words by the prophet Amos (from the Old Testament) writing in about 750 BC.  Speaking as an oracle from God he says:

“Do you know what I want?
   I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
   That's what I want.”

Read that and see yet another child begging by the side of the road and you will be changed.

I was blessed with capable, confident and insightful leaders on my trip. They facilitated our experiences, noted our reactions and spent the rest of the year encouraging us as we put our experiences into practice back in the UK as youth and student workers in our towns. And now the time has come around for me to be the leader. I can’t wait (and I can’t quite believe it!)!

In Zambia the first time around with my two pals who invented a brillaint game called 'Scary Monsters' which basically involved jumping on my and screaming 'Scary Monsters, arghhhh!'

The group of students we are taking are already remarkable. They are only 16 but I’ve heard statements come out of their mouths that wouldn’t be out of place being spoken by a forty year old. They are shiny with potential and at the start of an exciting journey onto further study or first jobs. It’s a privilege to be trusted with them at such a formative stage.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been surprised by my lack of anxiety about the trip (minus a stolen passport fiasco – THAT I was majorly stressed about). It has made me realised that all the ups and downs and many unknowns of the journey to ordination training might have had an effect. Hurrah!  Dare I say it, I think I’ve become more comfortable in the unknown than I have been before.

I’m more comfortable staring a challenge in the face and more confident that, scary as it might seem, the resources will be there when I need them. Even the news that our expedition leader for our mountain climb is dubbed ‘Hardcore Colin’ and wants us to abseil down the side of a mountain hasn’t COMPLETELY done me in. They should start offering the Church of England ministry selection process as a bootcamp for the nerves!

The last few years have been challenge after challenge after challenge and this pattern shows no sign of letting up any time soon. The enormity of the challenges coming up even this year makes me catch my breath when I think about them. But I’m also enjoying it. Immensely. Learning to drop the need to be in control of everything, even a tiny little bit, is hugely liberating. It leads to adventures, unexpected joys and an ability to be more where you are, right now, and enjoy it. I want more, more, more of it!

So I haven’t really thought that much about Zambia. Short of ordering a mozzie net online and sewing some gifts for the ladies we’ll be staying with in a local village I’m going as I am. Taking just the sweet expectation of watching some great kids get a little greater and coming back a little changed for the better myself by the many fantastic people I know I’ll meet. So I’ll see you on the other side!

Poverty, responsibility and not hacking phones

I’ve been thinking this week about responsibility. When the news about phone hacking first broke I remember feeling really alarmed for the people caught up in that culture of journalism. It’s not that it’s not despicable to hack people’s phones, of course it is, but how easy is it to enter a culture like a work place and just tow the line? What everyone is telling you is normal and acceptable become normal. Now we are seeing these people, and their PAs and chauffeurs, facing jail sentences. It is right, they did the wrong thing, but the thought keeps ringing in my ears – how easy was it to end up there?

It’s all a matter of integrity, of course, and taking responsibility for your own choices. A couple of nights ago I was at a talk run by the aid and development charity Tearfund. It made me wonder if the dramatic inequality in the world that we accept as normal is comparable. As an entire nation have we been caught up in a culture where inequality has been accepted and our responsibility abdicated?

I don’t think of God as an angry disciplinarian hauling you up before a cosmic court for every wrong decision you make. That wasn’t the kind of God shown in the life of Jesus who forgave when others were ready to throw stones. But I am absolutely certain that God is justice itself, particularly when it comes to the cause of the weak and the poor.

So I tread a careful line, knowing full acceptance but remembering the standards of the one to whom I appeal. What does he make of our communal acceptance of starvation when we throw yet more food in the bin? Of polluting the earth and allowing the poor to pay for it when their harvests fail and villages flood? So that’s the situation, what of the answer? That’s where it gets tricky eh?

And this brings me back to personal responsibility. Were the people who hacked phones any less responsible because it wasn’t there idea in the first place? Or was the error in colluding with something that they knew, really, was wrong? Standing up against a dominant culture is hard, there is no doubt about it.

And when it comes to global poverty it is even harder. Rather than just NOT hacking a phone we don’t know what to do. We encounter so much suffering through the news or charity campaigns that the sheer volume of it becomes a barrier to acting. Trying to single handily deal with the crises of the world is, like the Tearfund rep last night said, ‘like turning up to an earthquake with a dustpan and brush.’ We can’t change the climate or get clean water to everyone in the world on our own.

My thoughts on this over the last few days can be summed up in the phrase - ‘circle of influence’. I can change everything but I can change what goes on in my ‘circle’. I know I can reduce my own impact on the earth. I can urge the decision makers to hear the voice of the poor. I can grapple with the issues of my day, think things through, seek out opportunities to act. Most of all I can question, is this right or have I just accepted 'normal'?

Rather than living with startled rabbit syndrome brought about by the vastness of the situation I’ve found that accepting that the only thing I can change is myself to be hugely empowering. And more successful. Rather than being startled into inaction, recognising personal responsibility liberates into action. Rather than waiting for the world to change, I change. So there it is, my little contribution to the debate. What’s your take?

Handicraft Sale

I’ve been MIA for the last few days mostly because I’ve been hosting a handicraft sale in the church. This was to raise money for the work of Tearfund in the Mekong Sub Region. I can’t really begin to do justice to the work they are doing there in extraordinarily difficult circumstances but I was massively touched by the story of Lin (about whom I wrote an article for a recent edition of Inspire magazine - page 21-22) and how she has gone from extreme poverty and illiteracy to graduating university and now working with fellow migrant families to improve their quality of life. 

Can you get any cuter than this?! A knitted mouse made by my very clever Mum for the sale.

 A major part of the project that Lin was educated through is local handicraft sales so that the girls being educated at the centre can send money home to support their families. And so the idea for the handicraft sale was born. Doing what they do but here in England and sending the money to fund some of the brilliant work going on with migrants in the region. The exciting news is that I have a few items left which you can view in a Facebook album on my page. Just leave me a comment on this blog or on the album if there is anything you’d like and then you can pay through my Just Giving site. *Sales pitch over!*

It’s amazing how many talents are in my extended group of friends and family and the generosity people will show at just a simple request. We raised a good amount of money but more than anything I loved that it was an opportunity to get together with friends and neighbours for a cup of tea, a natter and to achieve a shared goal. In some ways it was my last hurrah in my current neighbourhood. Summer is busy with a trip to Zambia and moving house so I’m unlikely to have time to host anything else in church. 

As all the familiar faces from the congregation and neighbourhood popped in I started to feel a little choked up. Church is so like family, you see people day in day out, celebrate highs and lows and stick with each other (even if you might not always have chosen each other for company!) I’m so excited that my life is going to be about this, about community and friendship, but that also means saying goodbye to this one. Even thinking about it makes me a little teary and I’m even looking at our recently broken into flat through misty eyes exclaiming ‘Ah these poorly glazed windows and ramshackle walls, how I shall miss you!’

I went to look at our new flat this week. There is so much to be excited about (double glazing for one!). But for now I’m allowing myself a little moment of wistfulness for what I’m leaving behind. A very happy three years, a very wonderful neighbourhood, some very good friends.