Sunday
Sep112005
The Micah Challenge
Sunday, September 11, 2005 at 5:55PM 
The new Micah Challenge website is now live. We focused on the Micah Challenge today at Richview and it was pretty challenging to me. There are some great resources at the site. Some facts: The world is enjoying unprecedented wealth, and yet more than one billion people live in abject poverty, struggling to get by on less than $1 a day. Each day, 50,000 people die from preventable, poverty-related causes. 850 million people go to bed hungry every night. Today, 15 million children are orphans because of AIDS. One in six AIDS-related deaths is now a child. Every 3.6 seconds, another person dies of needless poverty. Today, the richest three people in the world own assess that exceed the combined economic activity of the world's poorest 48 countries. If the world had 1,000 people, 600 of those would live in a shantytown. A woman in sub-Saharan Africa is 200 times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman in North America. That's 1 in 16 in that part of Africa that die in childbirth. Closer to where I live, the disparity between rich and poor neighborhoods in the city of Etobicoke is increasing. There has been a 69% increase in poor families in Toronto over the past twenty years. The community in which I live (lots of apartment buildings) has moved from moderate poverty in 1991 to high poverty in 2001, according to the United Way.
Reader Comments (2)
The stats are indeed sobering, and I cannot help but note that while the millions starve to death, Toronto is going ga ga over all the stars in town for the film festival, drooling over a bunch of multimillionaires going back to play hockey, nearing completion of a $200,000,000 refurbishing of the Royal Ontario Museum and closing up their $350,000 summer homes. All of that to say that what the masses of poor in the world need is not for us to sign petitions asking for something to be done. (Not that that is all the Micah Challenge is about - I am not referring to them, but quite often we scream at the government to do something while doing so little ourselves.)It is time to change the way we live. We need to live more simply. Live on less and give the surplus away. Earn more gold but live on copper (to badly paraphrase a Piper saying). It of course starts with me - I am still basking in the glory of enjoying the Eagles this year - at a cost of $230!! (for two) Just some musings for you.
Ken: I agree with most of your comments. I think we need to lobby government and speak out for justice as well. Some issues are systemic as well as personal. But of course you are right on in your analysis. U2 tickets are cheaper! ;)