Play the rice game and help feed chronically hungry people in low income countries. The game is simple, and for every correct answer, ten grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) – the world’s largest humanitarian relief organization. Since its launch over a month ago, FreeRice.com is experiencing rapid popularity, thanks to bloggers and social networking websites. So far, FreeRice.com has raised over one billion grains of rice, which are enough to feed more than 50,000 hungry people for one day.

In response to an organized campaign by groups like ONE, presidential candidates have gone on record with their views on global poverty issues. Here’s an exerpt from Josh Peck from the ONE campaign;

The On the Record site features each of the candidates’ personal video responses to ONE members and short summaries of their plans on:

Reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis
Eradicating malaria
Improving child and maternal health
Achieving universal primary education
Cutting in half the number of people without clean water or enough food

For the first time ever, the entire presidential field is debating these issues and coming up with plans that recognize the challenge and the opportunity we have to build a better future for the world’s most vulnerable people. The result is a huge victory for you, our members and for the millions of people around the world living in extreme poverty.

The candidates’ detailed responses to our questions show that they are tuned into these issues like never before.

Check out what the candidates are saying:

http://www.onevote08.org/ontherecord?id=164-2761034-a6cJ.t&t=3

Through On the Record, we have the chance to make a more informed choice than ever before. This year, we’ll go into the primary season with more knowledge and more confidence that extreme poverty and global disease will be central to the 2008 election.

Our Christian faith and biblical tradition extend an extraordinary invitation to each of us and our faith communities to become agents of God’s compassion and healing in a wounded world. The Good News of Jesus Christ is both a comfort and a promise for the poor and, at the same time, a call to those of us who are not poor to be linked with God’s vision of justice and reconciliation. The Church’s history shines with examples of courage and commitment of those who addressed themselves to the needs of our most desperate sisters and brothers.

JustFaith, a thirty-week adult educational and formational process, offers an opportunity for people of faith to embark upon a spiritual journey into compassion. Most of us long to be a generous and compassionate people. However, occasions to explore this tradition in a deliberate and engaging way have largely not been available. JustFaith provides a lively and challenging format to read, view, discuss, pray, experience and be formed by the justice tradition that changes lives, inspires faithful witness, and transforms the world through love and service. Across the country, JustFaith has proven to be a potent and successful strategy for expanding and energizing Christian commitment to address human suffering. Indeed, many participating churches choose to repeat the JustFaith process year after year. The JustFaith program has been offered in over seven hundred churches from a variety of denominations in thirty-five states throughout the country.
Contact info@christiansendingpoverty.org for more information

Between now and October 16th you can join in an initiative lead by Jubilee USA

Today, millions of men, women and children around the world are literally starving for debt cancellation. See the truth about debt here.

The 2007 Jubilee Act (HR 2634) would provide expanded debt cancellation for many countries that were not included in the 2005 G8 agreement and need debt cancellation to address extreme poverty.

Moving the Jubilee Act through Congress is the central goal of this fall’s Cancel Debt Fast, a rolling 40-day fast for debt cancellation that will take place from September 6 to October 15, 2007.

The Jubilee Act has been reintroduced, but we can’t get it passed without you!

Show your support of the Jubilee Act (HR 2634) by choosing one day to fast. Fast from food or television or cell phone or whatever is meaningful to you, then visit your congressman’s district office and let him know you have fasted in support of the Jubilee Act and ask for his support of the Act as it passes through congress.

Let us know what day you will fast by emailing info@christiansendingpoverty.org Get full information, support and instructions here

Developing Hearts that Yearn for Justice 2008

Gather with 150 other clergy and lay people concerned with social and global justice to be refreshed, renewed, recommitted and reconnected! Speakers include; Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Brian D. McLaren , Fr. Richard Rohr, Bishop Samuel Ruiz, Elsa Tamez, and Matthew Fox . I don’t know where you could find a group of speakers like this in one place and it’s practically on our doorstep! The conference begins this side of the border at University of San Diego, and then continues in Tijuana at Casa de Migrante.
The theme of the conference, “Be Not Afraid,” is intended to recognize the reality of fear that many immigrants face in their difficult journeys, and the reality of the growing atmosphere of fear in the United States confronting us through the symptom/lens of immigration.

Click here for more information and to register.

The date of the Alternative Gift Market has been changed to Saturday November 17th. The venue is San Marcos Community Center, San Marcos. Please mark your calendars and plan on being there. This year’s event will be much bigger than last year, with music, perhaps food, as well as a diverse range of items to choose from. Several area churches are promoting and sponsoring the event and we are excited to be able to showcase the work of so many global artisans, and benefit directly those struggling to overcome poverty around the world. It’s fun and worthwhile event so please make sure you’re there, and bring your friends and family.

Last year one extended family came as a group and had a blast choosing gifts for each other. Make it a tradition in your family!

See you there.

June 10, CEP joined with congregations and groups in the annual Escondido CROP WALK. CROP WALKS are a way to have fun and raise funds to alleviate hunger at home and around the world. The two-mile walk began at the First United Methodist Church, with 200 people participating. The event, sponsored by Church World Services, was one of 1,800 CROP WALKS held in hundreds of communities each year. Twenty five per cent of the money raised went locally to Interfaith Community Sevices. Seventy five per cent to international relief agencies selected by each walker. Participants are anticipating next year’s CROP WALK and the oppotunity to care for the poor and “walk with the world.”

Last week several of us from CEP attended The Gathering 2007, a conference put on in Washington D.C. by Bread for the World. Over four days, we worshiped together, dialoged, brainstormed, and renewed our commitment to end hunger and poverty around the world.

We attended many helpful sessions including a pre-conference workshop – the CRC Justice Seekers Assembly – put on by the Christian Reformed Church to start a denomination-wide movement focusing on justice in CRC congregations. As a member of the CRC, this gathering was one of the highlights of the trip because it allowed me to connect with others in our denomination who are also working to end poverty.

It’s difficult to summarize an event like this in just a few words. It was inspiring, life changing, yet sobering. I gained a new appreciation for the complexity of our political institutions and legislation and realized how vital it is that we organize on behalf of the poor. Much of the focus of the conference was centered on the farm bill, an enormous, sweeping piece of legislation that affects not only the poor domestically but those suffering from extreme poverty in the poorest countries around the world.

When I joined CEP, I was most interested in doing “things that really mattered” to help the poor. Things like – sending aid, sponsoring a child or a village… Advocacy was certainly a consideration, but it was far down the list below most of the other things I thought could help more.

This conference convinced me though that advocacy IS one of the most important activities in the fight to help the poor. Why? Because the poor don’t have the resources necessary to organize, lobby and protect themselves from entities who are primarily interested in promoting self-serving agendas. Take the cotton lobby for example. This is a highly cohesive, organized, well-financed group that spends millions to make sure that cotton crops continue to be subsidized here in the U.S. But subsidizing cotton in recent years is unfair, not only to the majority of farmers here in the U.S. but especially to those farmers who are unable to make a living now due to the overproduction of cotton that has resulted in depressed cotton prices. So what does this really mean, you might be asking? It means that these subsidies are wrecking entire economies of poor nations and are literally killing thousands and millions of people in these places. As a (now informed) Christian I cannot support policies that are unjust and hurtful to the poor of the world. To find out more about the farm bill visit http://www.bread.org/learn/background-papers/2007/farm-bill.html.

But the conference wasn’t just about the politics of injustice. It was much more than that. It was true to its name – it was a gathering. It provided a unique opportunity to learn and share, hear stories, even to vent. I learned from Lawrence, a Zambian who ran a prison ministry there with 1000 volunteers that many involved in this movement are as interested in sharing the truth of the gospel as they are in meeting needs. Meeting so many evangelicals who are concerned for the poor was a great comfort to me. Or the network of small businessman who are using their expertise to help small business owners in Latin America and Africa adopt best practices that will help their business expand and run more efficiently. So many are using their God given gifts to make the world a different and better place.

It was certainly a trip to remember. I hope some of you will be able to attend in 2009 when the conference is held again.

Peace to you,

Cory

As we approach Easter many of us are called to concentrate on our prayer life and especially to ask God to show us where we have a habit of sinning and what part of our life He would have us change. I have asked myself if I am guilty of the Sin of Silence, as it is highlighted in the verse from James 4:17 “Anyone, then , who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins”. Perhaps it is a question we can all ask ourselves.

After 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus’ first action in Galilee was to preach from the scriptures, as we learn in Luke 4:18 His theme was good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed. Are you bringing good news to the poor and oppressed? Do they know you care?

You cared enough to visit this site, but what will be your action now, so that the child going to bed without food, water, healthcare, education, or hope knows that you care?

To do nothing is more than being passive, it is to be guilty of the sin of silence. It is a rejection of those who suffer. So, what can we do? CEP seeks to help those who are concerned find an avenue that they can use to take action. Visit our Get Involved page for some ideas, or see the example below.