This month: Support for the bereaved - Protect and succeed - at others’ expense - Model help - BMS prayer requests

Recently, as part of our After Eights series, Dr Mary Groves was a guest speaker. Here, she writes about...

Support for the bereaved

Although the idea of providing support for the bereaved was raised in 2001, it was only two years ago that we started to co-ordinate the network of care for the bereaved.  Using existing community and church projects we have set up a management group, enlisted and trained volunteers, rented office space from Marlborough Road Methodist Church with a dedicated phoneline and have appointed a part time co-oridinator.
The need for this work has far outstripped our initial plans.  We now offer:
* a help line answered by trained volunteers from 10am to noon and 1pm to 3pm,
* trained listeners,
* social groups for those finding life on their own difficult. We have three groups currently meeting - led by trained volunteers.  These are not therapy groups but a place where the members have a shared experience and enjoy being together.
* volunteer professional counsellors who help with more complex needs,
* an extensive resource library and
* evolving work with children and families - six per cent of children will have lost a parent by the age of 16.
So the work we started - almost casually - has grown out of all proportion.  We are deeply indebted to our two first class co-ordinators.  We also have a wonderful group of over 100 volunteers and, in the past two years, we have received over 300 referrals from GPs, nurses, teachers and so on, along with a number of people who have responded to our leaflets. 
We are available to the whole community and, while we are not a Christian organisation, many of us feel this work is an expression of our faith.  We are looking to continue our work and would value help in the following areas:
* Volunteers to work with grieving children - we would particularly welcome those who work with children or who are young themselves.  Training is, of course, provided.
* Help in management and finance.
* People with office skills.
* Those willing to train and help with phone answering.
If you feel you could help, please call Mary Groves or Colin Rowe on 01727 856474/ 01727 841841 or email m.c.rowegrov@ntlworld.com or help@sabn.org.uk

By Dr Mary Groves.

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The start of a series of ‘facts that should change the world’.

Protect and succeed - at others’ expense

The European Union (EU) budget is, again, grabbing the headlines, with France and Germany attacking Britain’s long-standing budget rebate and Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland suggesting that the time has come to scrap the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
As a result of the CAP, every cow in the EU attracts $2.50 a day in subsidies.  In other words - according to the Roman Catholic aid agency CAFOD - for the money that the EU spends protecting its farmers, each of the EU’s 21m cows could go on a round the world trip each year, touching down in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Hanoi, Siem Reap, Brisbane, Rarotonga, Los Angeles and San Francisco - and have £400 spending money.
What makes this even more remarkable is that the EU’s cows are not the most heavily subsidised cattle in the world. According to the world Bank, that honour goes to Japanese cows, which receive the equivalent of $7.50 a day.  Perhaps Japanese cows could afford to fly around the world business class.
The CAP lies at the heart of the EU.  Agriculture was a key element in the EU’s precursor, the Common Market - launched in 1958.  At that time, it was thought vital to guarantee food supplies at affordable prices and secure a fair standard of living for farmers.
In the 1960s one in five people in the then six member states worked on the land.  By 1998, that had declined to fewer than one in 20 people across the then 15 member states.
The CAP has become an expensive way to secure ‘cheap’ food and fair wages.  It costs some £30bn a year - or around 50 per cent of the EU’s total budget.
These costs are passed on to consumers.  According to the organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), food prices are 44 per cent higher in the EU that they would be without the CAP.  Milk costs 70 per cent more, beef costs 221 per cent more and sugar costs 94 per cent more. However, average yearly incomes in Britain’s farming sector are falling and, in 2002, 52,000 farmers left their land - more than double the figure for the previous year.
Aid agencies are increasingly concerned that Europe’s farm subsidies are hurting the developing world.
Farmers produce more food than European markets need; so they sell their subsidised excesses to the developing world at a cost far below that of production.  Local producers can’t match these prices - with devastating effects for farmers who do not enjoy the subsidies of the rich world.
According to Oxfam, the EU’s sugar regime provides ‘one of the most powerful and unambiguous examples of dumping’. Although the EU is one of the highest-cost sugar producers, it subsidies mean that it is the second largest sugar exporter in the world.
One of the countries most seriously affected by Europe’s low-cost exports is Mozambique.  There, sugar is an export crop and the sugar sector is the major employer in the country’s economy.  Yet the EU exports hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sugar to African markets - to countries that would be natural importers from Mozambique.  The World Bank estimates that the EU sugar regime has caused world prices to fall by 17 per cent.
At the same time, ‘escalating tariffs’ - duties that are low on raw or unprocessed materials and rise sharply with each step of value added - stop countries developing their manufacturing and export sectors.
Europe is not the only offender.  America, under President Bush, has increased subsidies and other aid to its farmers by an additional $180bn up to 2012.  Europe’s response was to claim that the US had ‘lost any claim to be a credible force for farm policy reform in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agriculture negotiations’.
However, when a number of the world’s most populous nations - including China, Brazil and India - styling themselves ‘G21’, joined forces to push for change, the EU reached a bilateral agreement with the USA to change (but not reduce) the nature of payments to farmers.
At the resulting meeting of the WTO Lee Kyang-Hae, a former head of South Korea’s federation of farmers, stabbed himself to death during protests.  A statement from the South Korean farmers confirmed that Mr Lee killed himself ‘after seeing how the WTO was killing peasants around the world’.

Abridged from ‘50 facts that should change the world’ by Jessica Williams (ISBN 1-84046-547-6) and supplied by Aneurin Little.

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Model help

A Christian organisation set up to give spiritual guidance to some to the world’s most successful models is growing in the USA - with groups in Manhattan, Los Angeles and Miami. Models for Christ was founded by former Ford agency model Jeff Calenberg in 1984 to help stem the ‘casualty rate’ of models working in an industry famed for a culture of drink, drugs and casual sex.
Models for Christ offers a support network, a mentoring service and gives time to community projects.

From The Independent and spotted by Robert Little.

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BMS prayer requests

Please pray that religious freedom will remain in Kosova.  In November 2004, legislation was presented to the government that would potentially restrict freedom for religious communities in the region and violated international human rights conventions.
Since then, the Law on Religion working group has corrected and agreed the proposal and it's presently going through parliament, awaiting approval.
Recently, there have been attempts to form an 'alliance' between members of the Kosova Protestant Community - prompted by the Law on Religion.  The group has been meeting with thoughts of a possible alliance, but this is not always an easy process and needs much prayer.

From BMS World Mission.