MAGAZINE

Issue 2

September 2012 $2.25

Voices of

HOPEA collection of conversations with inspirational people working to end extreme poverty

Urvashi Singh:My Month Below the Poverty Line

Nutrition Tips from Anne Perera

Kiri Danielle on Manaatikanga & Global Poverty

The Food We Waste by Andreas Eggmann

Barry Coates: Oxfam’s Global Perspective

Table of Contents

A conversation with Professor Ella Henry from AUT

Prisoner of Hope: TEAR Fund’s Steve Tollestrup

Manu Caddie and the Global Hāpu

Fighting Poverty with Fair Trade: A conversation with Chris Hoy & Victoria Dimond

Meredith Akuhata-Brown & the role we can play

What motivated you to do the challenge for a whole month??

Last year I did it for 5 days, it was a really rewarding experience, get-ting to experience what it is like living in poverty. This year it held much more meaning to me be-cause I am actually going to the village where P3 Foundation is sending the LBL funds to. So that’ll be pretty cool to be fundraising for the kids Ill actually go and be able to meet and work with.

I’m doing it for a month because I felt like I’ll get more out of it. I’ll get to experience it more and get more sponsorship, and I want to pro-mote LBL. Telling people that I’m doing it for a month maybe inspires them to do it for 5 days. They don’t have to do it for a month, they just have to do it for 5 days but know-ing that I can do it for a month- any-one can do it for 5 days.

What was your family’s reaction to you taking this challenge?

First they were like ‘Err, I don’t know- you have to go see your doc-tor to get these tests done, these tests done, get all these things’ but in the end they were really suppor-tive, they help me set my meal plan and they make a conscious effort to eat dinner before I get home and stuff, so they’ve been really suppor-tive and really encouraging.

Tell us more about P3 Founda-tion, how it started, and the vil-lage project you are supporting?

P3 is a youth to youth charity and it started around 2 years ago and the founder is Dr Divya Dhar. It runs different projects throughout the year, and LBL is their main and biggest fundraising project. All the LBL funds go to a village in India called Kalimpong that is where the Owen Glen Family Foundation work so we partner with them and they match all the efforts we make, all our money dollar for dollar. Last year we made a little over $20,000 and they matched it dollar for dollar, and all the money goes to the vil-lage.

And what will the funds you raise be used for?

Education, sanitation, work for women, education for children, and health and building schools and building proper bathrooms and stuff.

When are you going and what will you do there?

A team of us are going late No-vember for around 12 days and we hope to run workshops with the kids, an get to see what the LBL funds are doing, the changes it has made. Every person in our team has a special skill they can bring to the community, that is how we are designing the work-shops we are going to run with the children and with the people of Kalimpong.

My Month

Poverty Line

P3 Activist Urvashi Singh:

Belowthe

‘I’m doing it for a month because I felt like I’ll get more out of it.’

What kind of sanitation issues does Kalimpong have?

They don’t have proper toilet systems and they don’t have proper education on how to…good sanitation, they don’t have the knowledge. They can get diarrhea, and cholera from unsafe drinking water, basic diseases that could be easily prevented.

Why did you decide to help create P3, a new charity, from the ground up?

Many people ask questions of chari-ties like how much is really going to the field, and how much is going on admin expenses. Being part of a youth for youth charity means there is no admin costs, 100% of everything is going to the field and that kind of satis-

faction in the back of your head- be-ing able to tell people that. I know it because I’ve been apart of the organi-zation, it’s really good to tell people that- they are like, ‘oh wow that’s amazing’ kind of thing. And also every-one in our organization are youth, they range from 16 year olds to 30 year olds. It’s just amazing what youth can do in New Zealand.

How do you get people to come to events and get excited? Youth are portrayed in the media as some-what apathetic.

Yeah that is true, but if you look really closely New Zealand does have heaps of teen changemakers and if you tar-get them they would totally been keen to get involved with organizations such as P3, World Vision, Oxfam. P3

just has a group of trustees, and then an exec and then different project teams. We just advertise, hey do you wanna come join this project team, do this, do that and there are so many people who are keen. Every year we have a conference call, the World Cen-ters Conference, people have to apply to be apart of this 3 day event where they hear inspiring speakers. It’s for 50 students, every year we get more than 100 applications, they’re so ea-ger, so keen, they just wanna learn more so that they can get out there and do things. P3 provides an oppor-tunity to do so.

Has it been harder than you though to do a full month of the Live Below The Line challenge?Yeah, I’m 3 weeks in now, I finish next week Fri-

day. It was hard in the beginning, after the initial 5 days, coz I’d done 5 days last year, it got hard. The hunger pain usually kicks in at night, and it gets hard like I feel like I could just got to the fridge and eat something and no one would know. But then I think about who I am doing it for and how they don’t have an option, they can’t go down stairs and open the fridge. So I just stayed in bed (laughs).

Are the hunger pains more intense than you thought?

Your body does get used to it, but sometimes you get really caught off guard and feel really weak and the hunger pain can be real intense. It slowly dies down, but it can hit you at any time, unexpectedly.

‘Your body does get used to it but sometimes you get really caught off guard and feel really weak and the hunger pain can be real intense.’

What I am planning to eat for lunch and dinner during the challenge based on my familiar foods:

• Rice to which are added some pre-soaked barley and lentils…

• Dahl made into a curry

•Canned fish cooked with onion/tomato/peppers etc..

•Mixed vege: broccoli/cauli/carrot….

Breakfast: Toast with scrambled egg into which are added some leafy vege such as silver beet and other greens from the garden: parsley, pen-nywort, curry leaf plus some cheese …followed by a hot milk beverage

Nutrition Tips from Returned VSA VolunteerAnnePerera

‘My message is: Variety, Moderation and Enjoyment, while thinking of the cost in this case.’

A cereal/legume combination will provide bulk and a balance of essen-tial amino acids at low cost.  This will need to go with some good sources of fruits and veges for vita-mins and minerals..

My message is “Variety, Moderation and Enjoyment” while thinking of the cost in this case.

Dried fruits and nuts would provide concentrated calories plus nutrients added into balanced meals made from a variety of foods from the fol-lowing groups.

Cereals: wheat, rice, barley, millet,

Legumes: lentils, dried beans, chick peas etc…

Vegetables: cabbage, broccoli, cel-ery, cauliflower, green beans, beet-root, carrots, spinach, onions, leeks, lettuce, peas, seaweed, parsley,  peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes.

Fruit: blueberries, cherries, plums, apples, pears, apricots, blackber-ries, raspberries, kiwi, bananas, figs, strawberries, oranges, peaches. eaten alone, morning, evening and between meals;

Nuts: peanuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, cashew nuts, pine nuts, pistachios, coconut. Consumed in moderation are beneficial for health.

Animal protein: chicken, beef, pork, rabbit, fish, milk and eggs;

Vegetable protein: soy, quinoa, len-tils, chickpeas, beans

Healthy fats: omega-3 essential fatty acids that we find in salmon, cod, herring, mackerel, sardines, tuna, (these can be canned fish).

 

Tell us more about yourself Kiri.

Kia ora, my name is Kiri Danielle and I’m going to be taking the Live Below the Line Challenge. I’m a journalist, I’m a mum (that’s the most important job!), and I’m a student of life. I care about peo-ple and I would love the world to become a better place. I think that people are the ones to do that, not Governments not any politicians or legislators but peo-ple. Peoples hearts, peoples minds, peoples conscience, and peoples actions and going to change the world so let’s see that happen.

Why are you taking the chal-lenge Kiri?

I am going to take this challenge because I want to see what it’s like to live in extreme poverty, I want to feel that, I want to know what it’s like so that I can be more compassionate and so that I can maybe help other people understand and be active to do something about it.

What does poverty mean to you?

For me poverty is not just an is-sue that is in one country but it faces every country where peo-ple are oppressed and where the systems are set up so that it be-comes a norm and becomes ac-

cepted. I think that more people need to not accept poverty, and by making sure that we experi-ence it in our own space helps us have an insight into what other people are experiencing and it connects us in mind and in spirit.

How does the Live Below The Line challenge make a differ-ence do you think?

Well it is better than doing noth-ing, it is better than sitting back and watching it happen. It is be-coming involved and taking part, making sure that you know what you are talking about when you stand up for issues. And espe-cially if you’ve lived it, then you have a much better understand-ing and can speak from a much more informed place.

It’s also about raising awareness. Not only awareness though, To make people talk, to get some discussions going to get some ideas thrown around about what we can actually do to help the world. There are so many people in poverty. When you look at places like the Pacific and Indo-nesia some of these places just have nothing and I know that there is enough food to go around. It would be great if this kind of challenge could help peo-ple do more.

KiriDanielle

Rotorua journalist and activist

‘Poverty is not just an issue that is in one country but it faces every country where people are oppressed and where the systems are set up so that it be-comes a norm and be-comes accepted.’

You’re taking the challenge with your daughter. What do you hope she will learn from the experience?

I hope my girl will learn to appreciate her mama’s kai. I hope that she will learn to appreciate that not every-thing comes easy and that she has it really good, really good, in compari-son to lot of people in our world. So I’d like her to not only appreciate that, but from that place, do something to help others. From that place of advan-tage. She gets a good kai, and that makes her strong and makes her brain clever and I’d like her to use it. I’d like her to use the position that she is in, with a bit of advantage, to do something about it.

How does this challenge connect to tikanga Māori do you think?

I think there is a huge movement at the moment towards looking back. Looking back to some of the ways that our ancestors lived, particularly with indigenous people there were some really good examples of how to care for others. Within the Māori world, the concept of manaakitanga is about making sure that the people you are with are well looked after, and we are with other people on the earth you know. So it’s nice to create that manaakitanga globally, look after peo-ple globally. I’m hoping that some of the lessons I learnt as a little girl about feeding others if you have kai, about sharing, about watching out for other people. I’m hoping that some of

those will become more entrenched. I like to think of myself as a pretty good person, I like to try and help other people if I can. I think doing this challenge will really motivate me to help more people. I think doing the challenge will motivate me from a place that’s quite deep.

How are you feeling about taking the challenge?

I’m excited to do this challenge. I’m excited, I’m nervous, I’m a little bit apprehensive but I’m also really hope-ful. I’m hopeful that by doing it I’m going to have my eyes opened and I’m going to be more empathetic and hopefully I’ll get some kind of wairua bubbling up in me to do more about it and hopefully that will spread and it will be contagious and some other people will join the cause. I think it’s a wonderful cause because there is some real depth to it, it’s not just about food it’s about the issues that create the hunger and the poverty and what we can do about that to alle-viate that at it’s core, at it’s source. Not just, you know, give a man a fish but really teach the world to do the fishing for each other, that’d be great.

Taking this challenge is going to mean that I have to face some issues that I’m hoping will help me be more empathetic to people in need and do more about it. If it is in my power to feed somebody, then I am going to do that.

‘Manaakitanga is this beautiful concept in the Maori world of looking after somebody else, of making sure that they’re cared for, that they’re fed, that they’re warm and cosy and happy.’

Food

The volumes are staggering.

The equivalent of half of the world’s cereal crop annually. Wasted

The equivalent of 95% of the total food crop of Sub Saharan Africa. Wasted.

1.3 billion tonnes of food annually. Wasted

252 billion USD annually. Wasted.

Somewhere between crops going into the ground, and your dinner ending up on your plate, we are using enormous amounts of re-sources and labour only to have those prod-ucts end up in landfills. A comprehensive study has not yet been undertaken to fully quantify the impact that food waste has on our environment, but what is known is that not only are we wasting the food, we are using the soil, water, fossil fuels and labour to produce food which will eventually be discarded, not feed anyone, and contribute to the output of greenhouses gases worldwide.

Wether the food is ‘lost’ during the production, harvesting, processing and shipping stages, as is the greatest cause in developing coun-tries, or ‘wasted’ by retailers and consumers as is the case in the industrialized world, the net loss is roughly equal.- 630 million tonnes and 670 million tonnes respectively.

The big difference is in the number of people it takes to waste that much food. ‘“Overall, on a per-capita basis, much more food is wasted in the industrialized world than in developing countries. We estimate that the per capita food waste by consumers in Europe and North-America is 95-115 kg/year, while this

figure in Sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia is only 6-11 kg/year,”

Although not as wasteful as Northern America or Europe, New Zealanders are responsible for wasting a large proportion of our food.

Each year in NZ about 260,000 tonnes of food waste goes to landfill from our house-holds. That works out to be about 64kg per person. And that’s just from our households. Businesses contribute a further 349, 000 ton-nes annually, meaning that over 600,000 ton-nes of food each year in NZ end up in our land-fills.

Of this there is a percentage that is unavoid-able waste. Things like bones, eggshells and teabags contribute approximately 19% of the waste.

A further 20% of that could be avoided by be-ing put to further use. Things like vegetable peelings and bread crusts often end up in land-fills, but could be used as feed for pigs and chickens, made into compost, or used in wormfarms.

Remaining is the 61% of food waste that is thrown away while still being perfectly good to eat. Food that is bought and then discarded before it even has a chance to become a meal, food that ends up growing into a new life-form in the backs of our fridges and depths of our pantries. Food that gets cooked and then left to decay slowly on pates un-der clingfilm, or in unmarked plastic con-tainers., before being relegated to the rub-bish bin.

weWasteThe

PopDining team member

Andreas EggmannLifts the lid on the wasteful food system

It is this food, almost 40kgs per year per per-son, that we personally can avoid wasting,

Just as significantly, if not more, all of that food is not going to people who are already struggling to feed themselves and their fami-lies. With so much food available, why are there still so many people going hungry? And what can we do about it?

The modern industrialised food system we rely on plays a large part, from the farmers re-quired to produce unblemished uniform crops, discarding those that don’t fit the mold, to the continuos train of food that passes through supermarkets ensuring that shelves are always fully stocked and throwing away the oldest or the excess while it’s still is fit to eat. It places less emphasis on the intrin-sic value of the products themselves and more on the financial gain. Sell the best, throw away the rest.

There are organisations tackling these issues in a proactive way. Kaibosh in Wellington works with food retailers to take the food they would otherwise discard and re-distribute it to those in need. The Auckland City mission also works with retailers and manufacturers to achieve the same results. The Freegan move-ment takes a more direct approach by taking food from retailers after they have thrown it away and eating it themselves or redistribut-ing as they can.

As consumers, we also need to minimize our food waste. Shopping smartly and buying only what we need, when we need it. Those unknown jars lurking in our fridges and pan-tries are contributing to our wastefulness.

Avoiding buying large volumes of food that then we cant eat before it goes off. Being taken by the ‘buy 3, get 1 free’ marketing ploys when all we really need is 2. A good deal is only a good deal if you aren’t throwing your food and money away. We need to embrace our leftovers, not fear them, and realize they are not a hassle to deal with but the opportu-nity to save time on our next meal. We need to eat with a new mentality, rather than what we would like to eat, we need to think about what we should eat before it spoils. And where we can, we need to transform whatever food we do waste into a product to further its useful-ness.

Food we buy in excess of our needs adds the the rising food cost worldwide. By taking out for the market, we increase the financial value of the product but not the intrinsic value. It becomes an expensive waste of resources.

In Putararu a year long trial started in 2011 offering free kerbside collections of household food waste and transforming it into compost. A simple local government solution encourag-ing residents to separate their food waste from household waste. It resulted in a greater volume of general recycling, a 43% decrease in the weight of general household waste, and an overall reduction of 25% going to the local landfill. For those living in urban areas without the ability to compost themselves this offers a very effective solution.

tonnes of food

1.3 Billion

wasted annually

Tell us more about Oxfam, Barry.

Oxfam is an international organization and Oxfam New Zealand is an affiliate of Oxfam International. That means that through affiliations we get an opportu-nity to be able to set our own kind of policies and direction from here in Aotea-roa New Zealand. So it enables us to ensure that our work is relevant to New Zealand and to the Pacific which is a major focus of our attention, the Pacific and the neighboring countries of South East Asia. It also gives us access to a powerful global organization, which is producing change internationally. One of the key things about Oxfam is it’s ap-proach towards development issues, it’s based on what we call a rights based approach. So, we don’t give aid as a form of charity, we support people to be able to realize their rights. Aid is not a process where you can help people by giving them things. Aid is, from our per-spective, good development is a proc-ess where you help people realize their rights to the things that are important to them. Generally our work focuses on livelihoods, peoples’ opportunities to have jobs and earn a decent living, that gives rise to our work on fair trade and trade negotiations and agriculture. Peo-ple have a right to health care and edu-cation and clean water and sanitation, so we focus particularly on water and sanitation from a New Zealand base. People have a right to help when disas-ter strikes, a right to voice on decisions that affect them and people a right to live free from discrimination on the basis of gender, or ethnicity or the colour of somebody’s skin. So those are the ba-sic rights, and that rights based ap-

proach, working from the grass roots to essentially the corridors of power, is what I see as the distinctive way that Oxfam creates momentum for change.

How does Oxfam approach develop-ment work?

Development is often perceived as something that we do to other people, that we help them in their development. Most of our approaches are around find-ing people who are doing fantastic work at a local level and then supporting them. So for example a lot of our work is in places like the highlands of PNG and we’ve identified there a group of women who have basically been active in build-ing a social movement to stop fighting in an area that has been absolutely blighted by clan fighting, the advent of guns coming into the community, and what its; led to is a complete breakdown of any services for the community and a lot of people moved away from the area. These women started an initiative that showed their courage in being able to stop the fighting. These women used to walk onto the battlefields and shame the men into stopping fighting

Now what we’ve done is to support these women in building a peaceful and more open, democratic society, but also a more gender aware society. This has been a fantastic story of a group of women who now have strong support amongst men, across the community, the community leaders have been re-sponsible for helping with education on HIV/AIDS, on women’s rights, on setting up mediation for areas and also being able to target some of the potential trig-gers of violence.

Oxfam’sGlobalPerspective

Oxfam NZ Executive Director

Barry Coates

‘We don’t give aid as a form of charity, we support people to be able to realize their rights.’

So our role in supporting them is not to basically undermine their work in giving them a whole lot of money, but actually working with them and finding out what it is they need in order to make their work effective in a way that supports rather than undermines their own devel-opment.

That I think is the crucial way of work-ing that we find the courageous people, we find the strong local organizations, we find the people who are working for development in their communities and we support them in ways that will build them as effective people, organizations and that enables them to survive and to be able to have far more impact over time. And one of the things about work-ing in relatively difficult societies where there is often political turmoil, social turmoil, is that the survival of initiatives is absolutely crucial. The Pacific for ex-ample is not short of good initiatives; it is short of good initiatives that survive longer than 2 or 3 years. And so sup-porting those local initiatives and help-ing them to grow over time and to be influential is one of the key ways in which we work in the Pacific and South East Asia.

How do you navigate the more con-servative elements in a society who might be resistant to some of the changes and initiatives that you are supporting?

Inevitably in a community you have a diversity of views. You have the people who are able to understand that our basic human rights and understand about gender rights and rights of peo-

ple who are otherwise marginalized and left out of development, and you have to take your choices about you interact with the communities and who you sup-port. If you support the people who, from within that community, are trying to make the kinds of changes that are consistent with the better livelihoods for people, better equity within the soci-ety and greater sustainability with the use of resources- then they will be op-posed by some of the community but that is really the process of being able to make change. Essentially the owner-ship and the empowerment has to hap-pen within the community and that is a process of change which is so valuable because the only way to overcome en-trenched opposition is via movements and change that start within communi-ties but are also taken to the National or even the international level. One of the things we do at Oxfam is not only work at those grassroots levels but to then look at how to create a national movement for change and how to cre-ate a global movement for change.

One of the things we have recently been working with a number of NGO’s around on arm control issues, including Amnesty and lots of others, is trying to get a UN Agreement on Arms Trade. So from a community level arms are a real blight an the PNG highlands have got a national program on guns control in PNG and that that links in to an interna-tional campaign to try and get an agree-ment on Small Arms in the United Na-tions. The United States and a few other countries, including Syria and Iran and others have basically blocked an agreement but we are determined to

carry on and get an international treaty that would control the flood of small arms into some of the worst battle fields in the world and that is an exam-ple of where you can’t just make change at the community level, it’s got to be linked to national and interna-tional changes that will really address the source of the problem, the cause of the problem.

So crucial for us is not only working on the symptoms of inequity and injustice and poverty but actually working on the causes, and that often means structural change where we have to overcome entrenched opposition and powerful interest groups who oppose that.

What sort of barriers do you see here in our own political landscape to New Zealand being a better ‘global citizen’ and creating greater change in the Pacific and South East Asia?

New Zealand has changed a lot over the past 20, 30 years. Once upon a time New Zealand used to be a real force for good on the international stage, we were one of the good global citizens who was pressing for interna-tional human rights and was prepared to support independent foreign policy and New Zealand was being a real force for good internationally. We are concerned at the moment that is being eroded by New Zealand acting much more on self-interest and that is particu-larly the case in foreign policy and aid policy. There is so much that New Zea-land could be doing, on our trade nego-tiations New Zealand is calling for a self interested so called ‘free trade’ but it is

far from the trade justice and the princi-ples of fair trade that New Zealand ought to be pressing for, and we’ve been acting on trying to get a funda-mental change to trade negotiations and New Zealand policy towards trade negotiations for the past 8 years. We’ve, from a New Zealand base, not only looked at some of the international agreements but particularly what’s hap-pening New Zealand negotiations to-wards the Pacific and trying to say that it really doesn’t make sense to pursue these agreements that are in New Zea-land’s commercial interests with rela-tively fragile economies of the Pacific, and what would be far better is for New Zealand to recognize that what it’s in our self interest is for the Pacific coun-tries to build up their own ability to pro-duce thing and be able to trade things internationally, rather than the usual free trade approach of opening up their boarders to a flood of imports.

So we have been working really ac-tively on those campaigns, but also working actively at the grassroots level in connecting producers at the grass-roots with opportunities to be able to join together and produce as associa-tion or something into supply chains where they can get higher prices. So heighten their domestic produce or in some cases exports. And that comes again as the sort of linking of national, regional and international advocacy with the local grassroots work is where we think we can make a real difference to peoples’ livelihoods.

Kia ora, I’m Ella Henry and I’m taking the Live Below the Poverty Line Challenge this September. I’m going to figure out how to live on $2.25 a day to show my solidarity for those who have to live on that amount of food every day of their lives. And I want you to join us. Haere mai, nau mai.

We have poverty in New Zealand and it’s a great trag-edy but it is nothing like the poverty that I have seen in other parts of the world, particularly when I spent time in Africa. We have a responsibility in this coun-try, even in our impoverished Māori communities to think about those issues and how we can contribute to making change.

Tikanga Māori, Kaupapa Māori, those are things that we know and understand really well and at the basis of them is manaaki and aroha. And we talk about those things, but this project is an opportunity to ex-ercise them, to show and uplift our mana by support-ing those who are in even more dire straights than we are.

Ella Henry AUT Professor

‘This project is an opportunity to show and uplift our mana by supporting those who are in even more dire straights than we are.’

Ella Henry is a lecturer at AUT University's Faculty of Maori Development, Te Ara Poutama. Here she discusses her take on the Live Below The Line challenge and its connection to Tikanga Māori.

‘We have a responsibility in this country, even in our impoverished Maori communities to think about these issues and how we can contribute to making change.’

What kind of work does TEARFund do?

We are working in a number of areas. We do a lot of work with child sponsorship and child development, we do a lot of work in microcredit, and we do a lot in good old community development, wells, agriculture, housing, leadership etc. We are also increasingly being involved in peace-building and reconciliation work and supporting that kind of ministry.

Our observation is that we see a major driver of pov-erty in conflict, and as Christians, we are called to be peace makers to be speaking into that area of conflict. The other area is disaster relief; we respond to most international disasters that are taking place and we are hooked into a really interesting global network called the integral network which is evangalical relief part-ners internationally that pools together to respond to disasters. Whether it be tsunami in Asia, or an earth-quake in Haiti, you name it.

Is there an extra difficulty working within a Chris-tian framework, or is that an enhancement of what you do?

No I think it’s an added extra, an enhancement. I don’t really live, and nor does TEAR Fund for that matter, in kind of a world sharply divided by secular and spiritual. We are holistic in our ministry and our world view.

How do you decide which projects TEARFund is go-ing to work on, and how do you find that balance between helping a single child, or supporting the community as a whole?

One of the things that TEAR Fund positions itself in is about choice for our donors and supporters. So if someone wants to support a single child, we have our compassion child sponsorship program and that is ex-actly what that is, you sponsor one child and that child gets the benefits of the donors charity. Now the theory behind that, and I do think it works, is that child really is given the opportunity to influence their community. So it’s kind of like a mustard seed…that by focusing on

something small and apparently insignificant you can have a great impact within a community.

Having said that, we also have very clear community development programs. And so people can look at our programmes and see that they can do a wider commu-nity based programme. For instance microcredit pro-grams, benefiting whole communities by bringing eco-nomic uplift into the community.

If you want to sponsor a single child or work with a community, if you go on the website all of that is very clear about what your donor preference is.

In terms of how we choose programs, we have a set of criteria that any proposal that comes to us has to go through at length. There are 13 boxes that have to be ticked, in short; they have to reach the poorest of the poor, they have to be inclusive of minorities and women, and the community needs to be involved in the project partnership, it can’t be just elites within the community or outside it. The environment needs to be taken into consideration, we have an expectation of good report writing so we are able to follow and track down the money well. And human rights needs to also be evident.

TEAR Fund has been operating since 1975, and over the last 40 years the dynamic within the devel-oping world has changed quite a bit. Can you re-flect on the progress you’ve seen over time?

There is a verse in Zachariah that talks about being a prisoner of hope and that certainly is me. For instance in 1982, only 16% of Chinese were over the poverty line in China. Today in China only 16% are under the poverty line. So there has been a huge change. When I came to TEAR Fund in 1995 approximately 36,000 chil-dren every 24 hours were dying from preventable dis-ease. I was just on a site a couple of weeks ago, I think it was UNICEF’s report on children, and that figure is now down to 21,000. And I’ll tell you, it really gives me impetus, we can end the worst of poverty, it is within our grasp.

PrisonerofHope

SteveTollestrupChief Executive TEAR Fund NZ

How does TEAR Fund balance the tension between the need for eco-nomic development, and the need to preserve the environment and ensure environmental sustainability?

Most of our projects to be honest with you are urban often, or they are in very low value environmental areas- they al-ready are in really rough shape. So what we try to do is really more restora-tion than protection. One of the things that we look at is in China, for example. We were working with a community in China that was wrecking their own for-est through chopping down trees to make into charcoal. We were able to help them switch away from making charcoal by making human waste and livestock waste into pits that each fam-ily could have, because they were es-sentially pig farmers or chicken farmers, to be able to collect the waste and make underground methane tanks. We got an entire village on methane and ended the deforestation for charcoal.

There is a saying in India, drop by drop the bucket is filled. So we take it one bit at a time.

With the Live Below The Line chal-lenge, you’re putting a special focus

on Human Trafficking. Tell us more about this project.

Trafficking isn’t like children being kid-napped off the streets. I mean, they are very widely tricked. Traffickers will go into a very poor village and will con-vince the parents that the child will work as a domestic servant, will get an education at the same, they’d be able to send money home. And what we might, in our Western intelligence say, oh yeah, who would buy into that? These are very clever con people, and so people give their children over to these people. How do we stop that? We’ve got to be educating local commu-nities, we’ve got to be working with po-lice and local government, which we find to be honest, very very helpful. And that’s how we go about it. The other tactic with the issue of trafficking is to bust the brothels. Because this is where its all taking place. And so we work with partners who are very very

skilled in rescuing children from these situations. There is a bit of a myth that trafficking is a western fueled activity, and it’s actually not. I mean, there is Western trafficking and there are West-ern pedophiles, but most trafficking that takes place in these countries is actually from local consumption. So we see every child is in the image of God and we are out there wanting to stop trafficking and where we’ve not been able to stop it, we are out there rescu-ing.

The funds that people raise for TEAR Fund through Live Below The Line are going straight to that particular initiative, is that right?

Absolutely. The lives that child prosti-tutes live are unbelievable. They are un-derfed, undernourished, they are 14, 13, sometimes younger, dressed as adults with make up on them and they’re drugged. Most of them by the

time they’re 18/19 they’re HIV positive. And when they’ve lost their shine they are tossed out into the street. It is the most horrible human activity and it is just unbelievable that there are adults that are making wealth off of such vile activities.

There must be times where your faith and your organization resources are tested. In such times, where do you look for inspiration?

There is a quote by Martin Luther King which kind of sums up my own kind of internal gut instinct and that is that the universe is on the side of justice. I know that we will win this, I’ve got no doubt and we are going to win it sooner rather than later. And you’re right, I’ve seen some really really terrible stuff in my life and stuff that has made me really pause and think and if I can be really honest, weep. I have held mothers in my arms who have lost their entire fami-lies in refugee camps in Sri Lanka, I’ve seen poverty at it’s worst with people living in sewers, in the sewage system of Manila, but I am a prisoner of hope and I do believe that God, the Universe, the Cosmos are aligned and on the side of justice, and at the end of the day- which is coming sooner than we think, we will end poverty.

‘I do believe that God, the Universe, the Cosmos are aligned and on the side of justice, and at the end of the day- which is sooner than we think, we will end poverty.’

Kia Ora Manu… tell us a bit about what you do.

My name is Manu Caddie and I do things in the community. I’m a district counselor, so I go to lots of meetings and organize things that will hopefully make our neigh-borhoods better places.

You did the Live Below The Line challenge last year as well. How was it?

Last year was really tough, I didn’t realize how tough it would be. I would say brutal but it was only 5 days, it was challenging trying to find food that fits into the limit and then actually eating it wasn’t that much fun.

Have you even visited develop-ing countries and seen extreme poverty for yourself? And how did this experience measure to the Live Below The Line chal-lenge?

Yeah, I’ve been to the third world. I remember flying into Kathmandu for the first thing thinking I’d landed on another planet. The smells and the sights and things were quite overwhelming, so I sorta know a little bit of what it’s like but I hadn’t experienced the hunger pangs for quite as long so that doing the Live Below The Line challenge was an eye opener.

Again it’s only for a short time, and it’s only around the food you know, I still had a house I could be warm and dry in, and people around me just carried on with life but, yeah, it was very challenging.

Is there poverty in New Zea-land?

Yeah, I mean there are certainly kids in our neighborhood who go to school hungry on a daily basis so we have our own experiences of poverty in this country but the grinding poverty around the world is something that we don’t have to endure and when people are in need here, I guess there are op-tions for support. In many places around the world that isn’t possi-ble, the government doesn’t pro-vide any kind of support for citi-zens so we are very lucky here. I think it’s good to open our eyes to have a little bit more awareness of how other people, the bulk of peo-ple around the world, live.

ManuCaddieGisborne District Councilor & lifelong advocate for social justice and environmental sustainability

‘I think it’s good to open our eyes to have a little bit more awareness of how other people, the bulk of people around the world, live.’

Will you do the challenge again this year?

Maybe. What’s stopping me from doing it this year is a bit of self interest, I know how challenging it is so I didn’t enjoy it in a lot of ways last year but I think it is still worthwhile and it’s not a big sacrifice in the scheme of things or for the cause, I think it’s a great thing to do.

Why is the Live Below The Line challenge so important?

I think part of it is that we are pretty isolated here, and insulated form the realities of what most of the world go through in terms of the challenges of day to day living. We have it very sweet in New Zealand and this challenge gives us a little window into the things that a lot of people, that billions of people all around the

world actually have to go through on a daily basis. So that’s why I think it is worthwhile.

How does Live Below The Line connect to your identity as Māori?

I see the challenge as connecting to te ao Māori and tikanga in the sense that this concept of ohaoha or generosity, it’s a really important one in the Māori world. If we are all part of a global village, everyone is part of our global whānau and hapū then it’s not just about people in our own country, it is about taking some interest and care of people in other places as well.

‘If we are all part of a global village, everyone is part of our global whānau and hapū then it’s not just about people in our own country, it is about taking some interest and care of people in other places as well.’

What is Fairly Educated?

CHRIS: Fairly Educated is a non-for-profit initiative, it began at the end of 2010 but we now have over 1000 members in 5 continents. We work to unite Fairtrade university movements around the world by providing re-sources, putting them in contact with each other, we hold conferences and we’ve now launched a new campaign to try and ignite the movement and ensure that Fairtrade will be on every campus in Australia and New Zealand by the end of 2015.

Why do you focus so much on the ‘converted’ enthusiasts? What’s so important about Fairtrade anyway?

CHRIS: I think what we do is we spend a lot of time talking to staff and students who are really passionate about FT because they believe it will see benefits to people in developing countries in terms of supplying them with a fair wage and also more sus-tainable farming methods. When we talk to these students and staff, what they are trying to do is change the na-ture of consumption and procurement patterns at their universities and if these students and staff could achieve this it would mean that every-one who comes onto a campus in Australia or New Zealand would see the Fairtrade logo and be able to buy Fairtrade products and would be there when these groups run aware-ness campaigns about what Fairtrade is and what the benefits of it are.

Is Fairtrade just a clever branding exercise? What impact does it have for people in the developing world?

CHRIS: That’s a really good question, and one of the reasons why we are so supportive of Fairtrade and literally thousands of university students around Australia and New Zealand are is because Fairtrade is the best type of certification system out there. It is much more than a green wash it actu-ally provides farmers with a minimum price regardless of what the world price is. They also get given additional money for development within their community. So some of the amazing outcomes of Fairtrade is that you’ll see schools, you’ll see hospitals, ac-cess to clean drinking water other such things that we take for granted have come out of the way Fairtrade has been designed as a system.

Ultimately however, one of the things that Fairtrade is so popular for is the fact that exploitation within the pro-duction process is, the aim is for it to be completely removed through Fair-trade certification.

That way when you look at cocoa for example, some studies guess that there are more than 1 million children in West Africa being used in the pro-duction of the cocoa we purchase, there are very tangible effects where by those kids who were working and weren’t going to school- now, be-cause of Fairtrade, get to go to school. Is it that simple, really.

FightingPovertywith

Fairtrade

Fairly EducatedChris Hoy & Victoria Dimond from

To what extent does Fairtrade alter the free-dom of the market? Is it anti-Free Trade?

CHRIS: There is a lot to unpack in that ques-tion. What I would clearly state is that currently, the market has led the world to a situation where by many children are not going to school and are being utilized in the production of goods that we eat. So, we can get a cheaper price for a commodity like coffee or chocolate because children are not going to school and are being exploited. In addition there is human trafficking where by there are people not get-ting paid anything at all and they are treated like modern day slaves.

If this is an outcome that the market as it is de-livers, as human beings we really have to ques-tion whether the market delivers outcomes that we truly value.

I would argue, and I think many people would argue, that it’s not okay that I aim to get a cheaper product regardless of the impact on those who produce it and the environment it is produced in. Fairtrade goes a step towards rec-tifying this global imbalance.

VICTORIA: I think also, when you look at other humanitarian ways of assisting or developing a relationship with people in poverty, not to dis-count the work that aid or those other charita-ble actions do, but what Fairtrade does is it ac-tually pays someone a fair wage for what they produce. So in that way it’s not charity- it’s just paying someone a fair price. So it actually uses market mechanisms to foster development and sustainable practices.

When you talk about the social premium that is given to producers, surely there is an organization that manages the use of those funds?

CHRIS: So, the decisions are made democrati-cally by the actual producers themselves. So they all make decisions about what they feel their community needs best, so this democratic aspect along side the transparency aspect that Fairtrade delivers is far in excess of the market non-certified products. Ultimately at the end of the day when we go and buy products that aren’t third party certified in any way - we don’t actually know how much of that money is get-ting to producers, if any of it is, when the pro-ducers are getting it what they are using it on, if they even got to decide, all these sorts of ques-tions are valid questions which we should be asking and we literally don’t have answers for when there is no third party certification, of which, Fairtrade is the best.

There is a lot of corruption in the world of commodities. How do we know that the Fair-trade logo hasn’t been ‘bought’ in certain areas of situations?

CHRIS: I can talk with confidence about Fair-trade as a certification system, and Fairtrade international one of it’s key roles is ensuring that producers are complying with the stan-dards that they’re meant to. In the instance that producers, and there have been instances of this, producers aren’t actually complying with the standards, there is issues, they have been kicked out, they have lost the Fairtrade certifica-tion. That has developed a culture of ‘hey, we’d better take Fairtrade seriously’, so I’d argue that yeah corruption does exist but Fairtrade would have to be one of the cleanest cut ways that money is actually delivered in developing countries- because of this third party certifica-tion.

It is in the producer’s interest to not lose it’s cer-tification because I mean they volunteer, they choose to get the certification and ultimately

not only do they choose to get it, but in the world right now there is not enough demand for the number of producers who want to be Fair-trade producers. So you’re in a situation where it is really the West, the developed countries that aren’t raising the standard and actually meeting the supplier with their demand. Fair-trade is still growing, and the producers are queuing up. So when it comes to that you’ve got producers who it’s in their interests not to lose certification, it’s in Fairtrade internationals interests to ensure that their certification is be-ing met otherwise they have no product, they have no image, they have no guarantee. And as consumers we wanna make sure the money is being used in the way we thought it would be.

So it’s in everyone’s interests to ensure the cer-tification system is kept the way it is meant to be, in an authentic way.

What are some of the long-term benefits and ripple effects of Fairtrade operating in a given area in the developing world?

VICTORIA: What Chris was originally saying about the extra money used by the community to buy what they think is best for the commu-nity can have a huge impact. Also, hopefully in the future we will start to see some of the long term effects of Fairtrade where children of farm-ers are going to school, are getting an educa-tion and don’t have to stay on the farm and keep farming- they might be able to take jobs where they can get a higher level of income and introduce things that way. Hopefully we’ll start to see greater environmental sustainability in these farming practices so that over the long term these businesses of these farmers will have greater longevity and won’t suffer some of the short term consequences that farming can create sometimes.

How did you find out about live below the line?

A good friend of mine who is very much in touch with a whole host of media and exciting and new opportunities told me about it. I went online and found out more about it, I went on facebook and just tracked a whole lot of differ-ent places I could learn more about Live Below the Line.

Why do you want to take the Live Below The Line challenge?

Because I believe it is a really pow-erful tool to remind us, especially us new Zealanders, of what we do have and it kind of it highlights an issue that we can actually have a part in solving or being apart of a solution … and that is world hun-ger. I think it is an amazing oppor-tunity to get an inside look on how it feels to be hungry, which is the main reason I got involved. It’s tan-gible, it’s real, it’s something that you can actually get a bit of an experience with while living below the line yourself so for me it is

making something that seemed a little bit unreal more real to me.

You work with some very poor communities here in New Zea-land. What’s the difference be-tween poverty here, and ex-treme poverty in somewhere like Sub-Saharan Africa?

I think our New Zealand poverty has a little bit more to do with choice. Be it bad decisions are made based on what we spend our money on, we get into a cycle of misspending or choosing bad choices like drugs and alcohol and gambling. Where as overseas you’ve got a lack of Government that actually care about peoples plights, dysfunction in the sense of democracy- it’s not working be-cause those in power or the rich have all the say and can do as they please, it’s tyrannical really. So in a lot of countries there are a lot of people that are just unheard.

Meredith Gisborne-based activist

‘What difference can I make? I can highlight the plight of a million billion people who go through day to day starvation, who miss out on basic principles of humanity.’

How does Live Below The Line connect to te ao Māori?

Well, whakawhanaungatanga and whānau and hapū and iwi.. all of these concepts were always always always about people. In fact, the whaka-taukī, the Māori proverb which says if you were to ask me what is the most important thing in the world, I would re-ply it is people, it is people, it is people. So we need to re-member these ancient rites, these tikanga practices were always about people, the next generation the next leaders. It ties us in because these are human beings we are talking about, these are people like

me and you who need some-one to say ‘this is happening and it doesn’t have to, please do something for me’. So I think it just connects, it’s a con-nection because it’s human, and across culture we know in the heart of hearts that human-ity is important. Children espe-cially, they are our taonga, they’re a treasure and we need to look after them so I think across culture, across borders, just across the globe, it’s hu-manity is what it is.

I’m Meredith Akuhata-Brown and I’m taking the Live Below the Line Challenge!

Akuhata-Brown

‘Children especially, they are our taonga, they’re a treasure and we need to look after them; so I think across culture, across bor-ders, just across the globe, it’s humanity is what it is.’

$2.25

Special thanks to all our contributors

Editor: Patrick Rose

Deputy Editor: Will Watterson

Transcription: Sam Taylor

To get involved and contribute images or articles for future issues, contact:

patrick@livebelowtheline.com

livebelowtheline.com/nz