MONTREAL – A former UN water advisor is warning that water and sanitation should be much higher on the core MDG priority list given they are essential to reaching the other goals.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, US President Barack Obama, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and more than 140 leaders have now gathered in New York City for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit, which runs September 20-22.
The Millennium Development Goals include the goals of halving the proportion of people who cannot reach or afford safe drinking water and halving the number who do not have basic sanitation by 2015. Presently, over 900 million people lack access to drinking water and 2.6 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation. Read the entire story.
Here’s a brief video we did at CrossWalk this past weekend. I am talking about CrossWalk’s upcoming series “Going Glocal” and interviewing CrossWalk member Tamra Handysides about Stand Up 2010 and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
If you live in the Inland Empire, the San Bernardino County Homeless Partnership (SBCHP) needs your help. They’re getting ready for the biennial “Point-In-Time Count” of homeless persons living in San Bernardino County. The survey is aimed at helping SBCHP be more effective addressing homelessness in the county.
“Point-In-Time Count” will take place in January, 2011. The valley regions will happen on January 26, from 11:00 PM – 3:00 AM; and the desert/mountain regions, January 27, from 11:00 PM – 3:00 AM.
SBCHP needs one-thousand volunteers. I signed up yesterday. I’ll be encouraging my church to participate as well. You can find out more information at the SBCHPwebsite, or call Michele Bletcher at the Office of Homeless Services (909) 421-4680. You can also download the 2011 PITC Flyer.
Apparently it’s been around for awhile, but I like this video titled The Girl Effect. I discovered it on Garr Reynold’s blog, Presentation Zen, who discovered it on Dan Heath’s blog, Made to Stick. Check out the video and then see my comments afterward:
You can learn about the organizations behind The Girl Effect at http://girleffect.org. One of the reasons I like this video is because of CARE, a humanitarian organization I support. CARE fights global poverty by helping poor women around the world. As they say, “women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.” Read more here.
I am honored to be part of a Public Service Announcement titled “I’m a Social Justice Christian.” The PSA was produced by New Name Pictures, a film production venture co-founded by my friend Ryan Bell, pastor of the Hollywood SDA Church.
You can learn more about the project at www.socialjusticechristian.com. There’s also other resources for the “I’m a Social Justice Christian” campaign on their website. I’ve included the PSA in this post, as well as Brian McLaren’s response. Please pass the word about the project. Good work Ryan!
My family just returned from a week in Nashville, TN, were spent Christmas with our extended family. One of the highlights of the week was the evening we spent volunteering at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee. My sister-in-law, Julie, arranged for our entire family, even our children, to spend an evening volunteering at Second Harvest’s massive distribution center. We spent two-half hours on an assembly line packing boxes of food to be distributed to the poor. I worked with my son Braden and his cousin Aiden, packing boxes of canned meat and fruit. The boys rocked!
I was impressed with the organization. They claim, “Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee is one of the largest and most comprehensive of over 200 food banks and food distribution centers nationwide.” If you’d like to learn more about how it works, check out their History page on the website. There’s a short video that will tell you about how they began and what they do. And if there’s anyone in the Southern California region who knows about an organization similar to the Second Harvest Food Bank, please let me know about it.
The Suburban Pastor is the personal blog of Jeff Gang. I’m a pastor at the CrossWalk Seventh-day Adventist Church in Redlands, California. This blog is a place for me to share my thoughts about ordinary life as a Jesus follower, pastor, husband, father of three, friend, and triathlete in my spare time.
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