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.