On Wednesday we rode our bikes to school. Hooray, hooray! Oh, and I walked up to the supermarket yesterday to do the shopping. More hoorays!
I stopped for a chat with my neighbours as I went past, so a positive outcome there.

I am often so easily overwhelmed by big problems in the world, and climate change is certainly a big problem. It is a problem that affecting our poorer neighbours disproportionally and they have not even been the ones to make most of the mess on our environment.

It says in the Bible, "Love your neighbours as you love yourself"
"It also says, "Whatever you did for the least of these brothers...
And Genesis talks about taking care of the land

God owns creation and it pains Him when we don't care for it well.

I want to be part of God's world that sees us caring for our neighbours, that enables all of us to live in such a way as to care well for our families.

Well, we might only have ridden our bikes once, and walked to the supermarket once, but once is much better than not at all. It is a small step in trying to make a sustainable difference. My way of trying to counteract being paralysed by the enormity of the problem is to trying to practise celebrating the positive rather than always seeing the deficit. I have been thinking about starting up a chart to show how many times we use each type of transport but I think it will be one of those things that rather than be a motivator will just make me feel depressed and show me how much further there is to go. I am hopeful that a once bike ride/walk will encourage me to do it again. So, hooray for us! Hooray, for a climate friendly choice. Hooray!

Please share your climate friendly Hoorays! I reckon I could do with a bit of encouragement to stick at it.
Have you done anything to try to make a bit of a difference about climate change? Have you had any interesting discussions about it in your households?

The Chocolate Cake

"Mum, is that chocolate cake fair trade?" Ah, we try to educate our children about how some of our purchasing choices can make a positive difference for poorer people around the world and then you can't even buy cheap chocolate any more without your kids checking that it's fairly traded. Oh, the guilt! Oh, the consequences of education! Oh, my conscience!

When I think about buying non-fair trade chocolate or cocoa now, I think, what will I say to my children when they ask me, "Mum, is that chocolate fair trade?" I've thought I could answer, "Sorry darling this chocolate is probably made from cocoa that children your own age worked to harvest. Children who were taken from their homes and forced to work on a cocoa plantation, often under dangerous conditions in West Africa, who paid very little or maybe nothing." (ouch!)

I have reflected upon whether I am just motivated purely by the guilt of being caught out here. Well, maybe, but I feel very unhappy about needing to give the above answer to my kids, and as I think about that answer it reminds me that I am unhappy about a world that exploits children so that I can have a treat.

And so, in our house, we have just about completely switched to fair trade chocolate(I say just about, because I know I am not always 100% perfect at this decision). It is more expensive, it is not as readily available (at least not the dark choc, and I reckon a number of the brands are not as nice as the big name brands), and it is hard to find fair trade cocoa. We have made this shift to almost 100% fair trade chocolate gradually. I figured previously, that even if I bought one block of fair trade chocolate that was making a little bit of a difference, and now we do it a bit more, it's a little bit more of a difference. Chocolate and cocoa have moved to be a true 'treat' food in our house. I can't make chocolate self saucing pudding or a plain chocolate cake as often I did, and I know this almost sounds silly, but I feel the pinch of this decision.

We keep talking with our kids about how products that are 'fair trade' mean that the people who worked for them get paid enough money to feed their family (this makes more sense to them than 'a living wage'). The kids tell visitors proudly that we have fair trade coffee, chocolate, some clothing, and that Mum has a pair of fair trade runners (much to my embarrassment). We are rich, we can choose to move chocolate from a cheap, whenever treat, to a special occasion treat.

And when my 7 year old wanted a chocolate cake for his birthday I knew it would be an under-appreciated , expensive, fair trade cake; that's what he wanted, and I knew that making it was also making a small quiet difference in the world, one that my conscience found life-giving.


You might like to look at Stop the Traffik, or Fair Trade Association for more information.
There is a Bible study you might like to use for some ideas from Stop the Traffik.

TEAR Australia's Kids 4 Kids kit "Lessons in Hope from Cambodia" is not about chocolate or fair trade but it is about about how kids in Cambodia are sometimes taken from their homes and forced to do dirty or dangerous work they don't want to do, the kit covers how TEAR's partner organisation CHO is helping to keep children safe through education. "Chann, Srey Leak and Heng live on the border between Thailand and Cambodia. Their families are very poor, so everyone - women, men and children - work hard to survive. In this Kids4Kids resource pack, you'll find out how Cambodia Hope Organisation is working to protect children from exploitation and strengthen community spirit." Ideal for primary aged children.

The Meeting

Well, I involved and took my 7 year old to visit our local member of parliament today. Before we went I talked with him about how many children in developing countries get sick and die unnecessarily from easily preventable diseases such as pneumonia (which he had twice as a baby and due to great medical care quickly recovered), malaria, and diarrhoea. We talked about how children who don't have enough to eat are more susceptible to disease and illness. We also talked about how many illnesses are easily prevented by providing access to clean water and immunisations. Our conversation included talking about how mothers are key players to healthy kids and that by keeping mothers healthy and by educating them everyone was healthier. Sam generally has his own comments and observations to make as we talked about these things, as he linked the things in our conversation with things we had already talked about and things he'd learnt doing Kids 4 Kids programs with me.
We went with a couple of people from our community. We wanted to be part of the Micah Challenge voice to let our government know that we want to see global poverty halved by 2015 and especially see more movement by our government by contributing to aid projects targeted specifically on MDGs 4 and 5. Sam understands about sharing, and I wanted him to understand that we are asking the Australian Government to share from our bounty. Sam was in our midst during our discussions around what we would say. He made a card with a "5" on it and helped with the colourful cupcakes I made to highlight the issue of wanting all children to reach their fifth birthday. He might have played with his cars during our discussion time with Martin Ferguson but he was there. Who knows how this kind of action will shape his ideas about the world and the outworkings of his faith. Who knows. I'm glad he was there.

The Map

Drat! I cannot find our world map. I used it as a teaching aid a conference kids' program and now it is GONE. It is a colourful kid's map. There is little text, save each country's name. It used to hang on our family room wall. The kids would look at it often, mostly pointing out that they live down here (in Melbourne, Australia). My eldest liked to identify countries that he knew, for example England, where his aunt lives. It was also a fabulous teaching tool for talking about different countries as they came up in conversation or on the news. It was easy too, already hanging, ready to find out if a country is; on the equator, in South America, borders Cambodia, or any other interesting fact about the world. Our journey of developing a sense of world-mindedness was easily aided by a map.
I need a new map. I'll keep you posted.