charity:water in NY Times!

I am very happy to see international traveler and global health writer Nicholas Kristof has written an article about charity:water in the Sunday edition of the NY Times! I first heard about charity:water last year right before my birthday, when the Facebook Causes application asked me to fundraise by having family and friends donate $22 for my 22nd birthday, as charity:water's founder Scott Harrison had donors give $33 for his 33rd birthday. This organization is partnering with non-profits in developing countries to build wells with hand-pumps for thousands of communities in Haiti, Honduras, India, and many African countries. You can get involved with volunteering for charity:water by emailing nicky.yates@charitywater.org.

You can learn a lot more about Kristof's topics by reading the comments people post about his articles on his blog. In reading the comments on his charity:water article, I found articles and research on whether or not water projects in developing countries are sustainable, by the International Institute for Environment and Development and the World Bank (Comment 7) (lesson: don't abandon the wells after building them!). I also found people from other countries who would like to partner with charity:water (Comments 10, 15, 18) and information about a dangerous plan in place regarding the NYS Watershed and the Delaware River Basin Commission (Comment 13).

I really liked Comment 14, about how Mr. Kristof breezes right over the fact that it was the spiritual crisis Scott Harrison underwent and how he became a follower of Christ after his time volunteering with Mercy Ships. Also Comment 11, criticizing Nick Kristof for paying too much attention to the act of giving, and not highlighting the fact that self-sacrifice is what's important. Sacrificing one's time for others, and building community, so that the people you are helping are actually being empowered to make changes for themselves, not simply enabled by being given handouts.

Or put another way, having the moral courage to stand up for what's right, every day of your life. I've posted three comments on Irshad Manji's Moral Courage Project webpage so far, explaining how to stand up for our fellow global citizens and how to get others motivated, too. We can't expect to partake in activities once and that solve all the problems in the world. We need to keep at it, and dedicate our entire lives to the causes, making sure to follow up with those we help and not abandon them. There are plenty of people already taking up this cross, as Shane Claiborne shows with his movie "The Ordinary Radicals." We can do it too, and social media can help. Scott Harrison's successful marketing campaign demonstrates the power of social networking; I think this can be taken a step further if teachers would think outside the box, and incorporate blogs, twitter, and Facebook into everyday homework assignments. More and more non-profit organizations are creating these social networking accounts, and the sky's the limit with the charitable organizations one can find out about and get involved in, merely by spending some time on the Internet. Let's wake up and use the tools God has given us to use here in the 21st century.

You were blessed with a voice, so use it!

For all the revolutionary things I come across in my experiences, I don’t blog nearly enough – which just makes the posts I do get around to writing that many times more heavy and laden with lots of information. Sorry about that.

It bothers me that all the really fascinating things I learn about – moral courage and social entrepreneurship, Paul Farmer and liberation theology, taking the core of your “religious” beliefs seriously and public service – I learn about outside the classroom, church, and mainstream media. That some of the best public health measures could actually be things like what Scott Harrison is doing with charity:water – gathering support and raising money to install wells in Africa so that people can have easily accessible, clean water. Development in Gardening, which helps people in developing countries start their own gardens so they can improve nutrition for AIDS patients and community members in general. Or Oxfam America, which not only works on international development projects, but also advocates for Congress to put money towards helping women in developing countries adapt to climate change. And the hospital and public health infrastructure Paul Farmer has built in Cange, Haiti, that I am reading about in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains. And then Irshad Manji, professor in the NYU Wagner School of Public Service and Director of the Moral Courage Project, who invited me to a private viewing of The Stoning of Soraya M.

The last time I cried as much as I did while watching The Stoning of Soraya M. was when I watched The Passion of the Christ. Except, it was worse this time, and not because my hands were tied with rope. The Passion…well, most people have heard about the story of Jesus…He died for our sins on a cross, He was ridiculed for calling Himself God. He was a great person. But Soraya was also a great person, and yet she was killed too, for no good reason. Not just by her community, but some of her own family members, as well. Leading up to the event, people in Soraya's community had uneasy feelings about the accusations and following through with the stoning. They knew that there was something wrong with the situation, and yet…the stoning still happened.

This story is about more than “stoning.” It’s not saying that the stoners should be punished, or the Islam faith rejected. Firstoff, the takeaway from tonight’s film screening and discussion is that we need to stand up for things that we find wrong in society, as Zahra did. She is the reason the book was written, and the reason this film exists. She used her moral courage to take advantage of a journalist in town to bring to light a horrible situation, that of suppressed women’s rights and an unconscionable practice that still exists today called stoning. Two thousand years ago, Jesus said “let him who is without sin throw the first stone.” Nobody could throw the stone because nobody was without sin. Too bad people still haven't learned this lesson.

Yet there is a moral fiber that runs through virtually every religion, and Islam is no exception. Irshad Manji has made that clear with her book The Trouble with Islam Today. What happened here (and that I believe has happened with many Catholics and other Christians) is that people strayed from the fundamental truths of their religion. Religion fosters groupthink, which is bad. Belief in God and spirituality should be a personal endeavor. Just as Muslims should know the truth about the Quran, Christians should know that the Nag Hammadi texts exist, and that there are gospels which may be just as valid as the four gospels that made it into the Bible (which only cover the Outer Mysteries).

In Mountains Beyond Mountains (a book that describes the work of Dr. Paul Farmer, who started the non-profit Partners in Health in Haiti and potentially may be in charge of USAID's Foreign Assistance Efforts), there are many memorable quotes by Farmer but one of my favorites is, “You want to talk crucifixion? I’ll show you crucifixion, you bastards.” The way I understand this is, we shouldn’t merely be worshiping Jesus for dying for us. Yeah, that’s great, we can give all our selfish thoughts over to him and know that we don’t have to be damned for eternity. But the main point we should get from Jesus’s life is how to treat others. The stories in the Bible aren’t one-time deals that we should just read over and over again. They are really happening, today and every day of our lives. The destitute – the people of Cange, Haiti, living in poverty and misery – that Paul Farmer found to be of great faith, they are the people we should be looking to help. Women all over the world who are considered to be of lesser importance than men, and innocent, righteous, loving women who are stoned to death for no reason – they are the ones we should be paying attention to. Not just living here in our comfortable lives, going to church every weekend and having fun with friends. How can you live with yourself in good conscience, knowing awful, horrible things are happening to people in this world because people have a skewed view of who God is?

I'd like to leave you with these lyrics, from a Follower-of-Christ perspective:

But if we are the body
Why aren't His arms reaching?
Why aren't His hands healing?
Why aren't His words teaching?
And if we are the body
Why aren't His feet going?
Why is His love not showing them there is a way?
There is a way
-Casting Crowns

"The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." -DC Talk

Why you should question authority

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Irshad Manji [see great bio on her Facebook page] speak at NYU, during a conference on social entrepreneurship through Wagner's Bridge group. She is the author of "The Trouble with Islam Today" and has been described as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare." How did she become the person she is today? She knows the importance of questioning authority. As a little girl in Canada, where her family escaped as refugees from Uganda, she attended the madressa, where she was taught that women should be subservient to men and not to ask too many questions about her faith. Well, she was expelled, to say the least. Since, she's critically analyzed the Quran and been a strong proponent of ijtihad - Islam's word for the concept of critical thinking. Ever since learning about her, she's become one of my favorite role models. I truly find many parallels between her and Shane Claiborne, author of "The Irresistible Revolution." I've gone through a similar journey of questioning in my own religious upbringing in the Catholic Church, especially after reading Shane's book. As a little girl in the madressa, Irshad Manji had this question: "What if I'm not being educated? What if I'm being indoctrinated?" So, I challenge you to question your own educators.

Barack Obama understands the dangers of not questioning authority. He specifically appointed strong-minded people to his Cabinet to avoid groupthink.

I question the definition of “conservative." What is being conserved? A way of life particular to the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries? With all due respect, in the long history of the world I would not pick this particular time period to conserve. I would conserve the way God made the planet. He gave us food that grows from the ground to eat - food that is whole and protects us from chronic diseases, not chemically modified artificial food in packages. He provided grass for the cows to eat. Water from springs to drink - not from plastic bottles. He gave us an ozone layer to protect us from the sun. Legs to get from place to place instead of burning fossil fuels and letting our muscles waste away and our waists get bigger. He gave us sunlight as solar energy. THOSE are things I would choose to conserve.

My Research Methods textbook agrees with the idea of questioning what you are taught. I've always wondered whether or not I wanted to get a PhD and "do research for the rest of my life." Well, what if the traditional, keeping-your-distance-from-your-subjects way of doing research wasn't the only way to do research? Perhaps community-based participatory research is an even more effective method. When researchers come to the conclusion that the IRB is more than often a bureaucratic barrier than a way to protect people, and the Belmont Report concludes that its guidelines may not be sufficient in dealing with studies of social programs (versus biomedical research), we should indeed question what we are taught. Community-based participatory research allows the researchers to interact with community members. The success of grassroots organizing has always come from involving the stakeholders in the decision process. Why should the research process be any different? If you want to design a program to help the community, for God's sake, involve the community in the program planning!

During Irshad Manji's speech, she mentioned a conversation between Oprah and Will Smith right after Obama one the election. Oprah asked Will Smith his thoughts on Obama. Will Smith replied, "all of our excuses are gone now, Oprah. GONE."

So now I ask, what do you question in your life? Will you be bold enough to be a "social entrepreneur" and do something about it? It only takes one person to make a difference.