Just one click

Like many people over the years, I have felt I was doing my bit - visiting sites such as hungersite and other “click to give” charity donation sites. I don’t know how beneficial they really are, but they appease the conscience a little: even a mouseclick can help.

And now you can see how much you are giving, whilst you procrastinate the hours away. Visit Freerice and join in the wordplay - every correct answer donates 10 grains of rice. How much can you give in 5 minutes?

While you’re there, check out the FAQ pages (a redirect to Poverty.com,) see how much cash aid is being donated by the richer countries, watch the counter as the deaths mount from hunger and preventible disease, then go back and click some more!

odious…

Over the last few years, with  Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History, Churches and other groups have campaigned tirelessly for the cancelation of debt in the poorer nations of this world.  So often we forget that nations in the west are still making demands for repayment of unfair or even illegitemate or “odious” loans made to countries for the purposes of arms trading, sustaining illegitemate regimes and oppressing millions of people.  Justin Alexander, in his most recent contribution to God’s Politics challenges us to think about the way the international financial institutions continue to operate to the benefit of the already-rich west and the detriment of the poor.  Have a read, and then go over to the Jubilee Campaign and add your voice to the challenges for  Douglas Alexander, Brown’s new Secretary of State for International Development.

Darfur

Very little is heard about Darfur on the news in the UK, much like the situation in Rwanda 15 years ago - the occasional headline, but nothing more, and usually not good news. It was good to see, immediatly as I joined wordpress, a link here. Written from an American perspective, with US reactions and political insights into this “forgotten crisis”, but worth a look none the less