Sunday January 22, 2023

My B.C. Hydro bill arrived this week -- $1.16. For two months of electricity. At first, I thought it must be a mistake. Then I realized that the B.C. government had given me a $100 credit to compensate for the skyrocketing costs of living this past year.
I don’t understand how a non-political arms-length crown corporation, that supposedly operates independently from the government, pays for the government’s political promises. But I’ll take the $100 anyway.
I’m not sure I deserve it, though.
I may complain about the price of gasoline. And house insurance. And imported asparagus. But I’m much better off than many people – both here in Canada and around the world – who can’t afford gasoline, let alone asparagus.

Keeping girls in school
One of my preferred charities provides menstrual kits to girls in Uganda. Each kit contains eight re-usable menstrual pads, and two pairs of undeerpants. Because many of the girls cannot even afford panties.
The charity is ISEE Solutions, founded by a Kelowna teacher, Erika van Oyen.
She had gone to Uganda in 2008, as a volunteer.
Most of us know Uganda only as the home of former dictator Idi Amin. It’s one of a group of three countries in the centre of Africa, sandwiched between Kenya and Tanzania to the east, the Congo to the west. The other two are Rwanda, infamous for the 1994 genocide of over half a million Tutsi by the majority Hutu, and Burundi.
All three are the product of European countries dividing up Africa for their own benefit.
Van Oyen observed that few girls in Uganda attended school past Grade 6. That is, past puberty. Because they started menstruating.
“A girl having her period is ridiculed,” she explains. “Teased if she soils her clothes. Humiliated. So they stay away from school. They fall behind in their classes, and eventually they drop out.”
And so half the population, approximately 25 million women, are denied the education available to men.

Working together
When van Oyen returned to Canada, she felt compelled to do something about this inequity.
She could, probably, have organized a program to ship massive quantities of Canadian sanitary pads and tampons to Africa, and hand them out indiscriminately. But that would have made poor people dependent on products produced by rich people.
She opted for menstrual pads that could be washed, dried, and re-used for several years.
She and her mother organized workshops, one Saturday a month, where 30 or so volunteers made up the re-usable pads and panty liners.
Covid-19 restrictions cancelled those sewing bees, but had an unexpected benefit – moving the production to Africa. The kits – consisting of eight re-usable pads, two shields, two underpants, two Ziplock bags for soiled pads, and a facecloth – are now assembled in Uganda.
Only the waterproof fabric, not available in Uganda – think of Gore-Tex as an example – is now shipped from Canada.
So far, van Oyen’s ISEE Solutions program has supplied kits and information to over 7,500 Ugandan girls. And she can see results. Wherever girls have been exposed to van Oyen’s programs, school absenteeism has declined.
“The girls are using the kits,” van Oyen says. “Some share their kits with other girls who have not been able to attend our training sessions.”

Education crucial
Van Oyen used to lead the training sessions herself. “But why should they listen to me, a white woman, as if I have all the answers?” she asks. So now she has trained local women as teachers.
“Education is a major part of our program,” says van Oyen. (The “ISEE” initials stand for “Sustainability, Education, and Empowerment.”)
“A large part of our work is to prevent pregnancies,” she continues. “So we teach women to know when they are fertile. We promote abstinence first – providing menstrual supplies and sex education is NOT promoting sex. But if it’s going to happen, we want it to be safe sex, in a healthy relationship.”
I could take my $100 B.C. Hydro refund and buy myself a tank of gasoline. Or I could send the same money to erika@iseesolutions.org (or through her website www.iseesolutions.org) and enable a dozen girls to complete their education.
To me, there’s no comparison.
ISEE Solutions is not the only possible way of helping people who are far worse off than we are. Other charitable organizations will build water purification plants. Provide goats and chickens. Plant trees.
Choose your own charity; I don’t care which one.
But please make better use of the rebates governments all over Canada are handing out than spending it on imported vegetables.
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Copyright © 2023 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn

Last week, I suggested that the best “filter” for unwanted messages is not fact or politics, but the emotion that the messages arouses in you. Or, tries to arouse.

Tom Watson took the term “messages” beyond emails and spam: “If the way to validity of unsolicited messages is to identify the emotion appealed to, then perhaps that's the way we should judge political messages. Many political messages appeal to negative emotions, and all they do is rile people up, which is unhelpful.”

Isabel Gibson: “I've read some discouraging words on the connection between induced anger and political fundraising; the challenge of getting off that track, once on it; and the tendency/need to continue to ratchet up the rage to keep the money flowing in. The rage/payment cycle might help a party buy ads; it doesn't help citizens build a country. And all the parties do it.
“Your proposed filter -- What emotional buttons is this pushing in me? -- is a good one.”

Unwanted messages come from many sources, including TV. Mirza Yawar Baig finds it easy to avoid those: “We have not had a TV in our home for over 30 years and believe me, we don’t miss it one bit.”

Part of a letter from Clare Neufeld, who has taught his computer to filter out a lot of unwanted emails: “I suppose there are plenty of low levels of confidence in people’s sense of emotive self-worth, apart from perceived outer symbols of success or status as seen thru things -- which makes too many gullible, so that we/they become easy targets.
“Now, however, we have added AI, more sophisticated than the one-on-one in-person hucksters of yesteryear, and highly impersonal while exceedingly personally tearing at our heart strings. Subtle -- not blatant.
“A healthy sense of grounding in personal responsibility, alongside a healthy sense of scepticism of calls, emails, tweets, Tics or Tocs, etc., seems to be quite useful -- helpful -- perhaps even critical for these days.”

Hilde Vickers: “Unfortunately fear and anger are both very addictive. And depend on what one believes to be true. As someone who believes the science on climate change is more correct than wrong, that reports of human-caused climate disasters are more true than false, my anger and fear of environmental degradation and injustice motivate me to take at least some minimal actions on behalf of climate justice.
“On the other hand, a family member, who believes much of the radical right anti-government/establishment fear mongering, seems to be entirely addicted to those kinds of angry messages.
“I think hatred might be the best litmus test in the disinformation wars. Yet even that is tricky. Sometimes I want to hate oil and mining corporations, and other economic powers.”

Jim Hoffman noted one negative emotion that I didn’t mention: “Where they attempt to make you feel guilty. The sad faces, woeful looks, desperate conditions depicted help us to feel guilty of not caring, not being willing to help, not participating… and can become powerful influencers/manipulators to open our wallets.
“Making me feel guilty elicits a deletion in my world.”

Laura Spurrell summed it all up: “It is actually quite simple; everyone is selling unhappiness. If I was happy with the way I looked, I would not need this or that face cream, this wrinkle remover or that weight loss product etc. If I was happy with my home, I would not need new gutters, a paint job, new window coverings, etc.
“I could go on but you get the point.”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns