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This month: Phones ring-fenced
for Christian Aid - Friend appeal -
Islamic insight into
the recent terror attacks - One small step
Phones ring-fenced
for Christian Aid
Mobile phones are everywhere these days - and, seemingly, are being used
by everyone.
Using mobile phones may not be a problem but disposing of old mobile phones is.
In the EU alone, 100m mobile phones, weighing some 250,000 tonnes, will be
thrown away this year. The toxic chemicals that they contain pose a threat
to the environment and to health.
The people at UK firm Greener Solutions have an answer. For every
mobile phone they receive, they will contribute £3.50 to Christian Aid’s
development work.
One old phone will provide a ten litre drum of water to supply an entire
school with clean water for a week. Six phones will provide lunch for more
than 100 children at a school in the Dominican Republic.
Rona Armstrong, from Bearsden, near Glasgow, collected 50 phones from the
congregation of her church. This raised £175 - enough to pay for a water
pump in Sri Lanka.
If you want to contribute to this work, you can send your old mobile
phone to Greener Solutions in a freepost envelope - which you can request by
phoning 08700 787788. Alternatively, you can hand your old mobile phones
to Julia Clarke, who will forward them to Greener Solutions en route to raising
money for Christian Aid.
From Christian Aid News and supplied by Graham Clarke.
Top of page
Friend appeal
Open Door, the emergency night shelter and day centre in the heart of St
Albans, which has been offering respite from the streets to homeless and
badly-housed people since 1993, is looking for people to support this work by
becoming ‘Friends’ of Open Door.
Open Door currently helps over 400 people in the night shelter and more
than 700 in the day centre - and the need for its services increases each year.
Open Door hopes that its new ‘Friends’ will provide the funding to match this
increasing demand.
Becoming a ‘Friend’ costs between £8 (for students) and £60 (corporate
members) a year, with individual friends paying £12 a year.
Friends receive copies of ‘The Door’ newsletter, an ‘Open Door gift’ and
invitations to the trustees’ AGM, open days and ‘Friends’ Open Sessions’ at Open
Door.
For further details, contact Graham Clarke (tel 01727 857786).
Supplied by Graham Clarke.
Top of page
Islamic
insight into the recent terror attacks
The Muslim community in Britain finds itself at a crossroads. The news
that those who perpetrated the London bombings have come from our midst forces
us to face an uncomfortable fact.
There can now be no hiding from the truth that there is a minority among us who
view themselves as living in a state of war - seeing the British people as their
enemy, rather than their friends.
As British Muslims, we must take a hard look at ourselves. Now is
the time for us to confront those who preach hatred, violence and terror.
We must also ensure that we, as a community, fully embrace the country
that has become our home - its institutions, laws and diversity.
For too long we have turned our back on Britain and what it means to be
British. The reasons for this are historical, political and economic.
Those who came here first didn’t embrace English culture. They
expected to go home eventually - but many didn’t. As a result, many of
their children were betrayed - being neither fully Indian, Pakistani,
Bangladeshi nor properly British.
While there are many British Muslims who have achieved success in this
country, far more have poor qualifications - exam success among Asian Muslims is
significantly lower than for the population as a whole. They live in
deprivation and isolation and see no way out.
They feel a pull from their parents to speak what, for them, is a
‘foreign’ language while they see the freedoms that English children have - and
want the same for themselves.
As a result, many of these young Muslims feel estranged both from Britain
and their parents’ tradition. The failure of mosques and the older Muslim
community is that they did not recognise this. They mistook their children’s
arguments for the vocal teenage culture of the West but a new breed of
politically motivated ideologies, mainly from the Middle East, recognised these
young people as a fertile recruiting ground.
People with hatred in their hearts can take words from the Koran - as
they can from the Bible - and bend them to their own ends. This they have
done, using the name of Allah to justify cold-blooded murder.
As Muslims, we must open our doors to our neighbours and let them know
that ours, too, is a religion of tolerance. We need to get back to the
idea of the mosque as a place for socialisation - as churches promote fellowship
and reach out to the community.
We need to look outwards, not inwards and play a full part in all walks
of British life. By doing this we can truly become part of Britain and
ensure that future generations of British Muslims feel they have a stake in our
society.
Abridged from an article by Britain’s first Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed of
Rotherham, first published in The Mail on Sunday and supplied by Cathie Songer.
Top of page
Another ‘fact that should change the world’.
One small step
For most Kenyans, a request for ‘kitu kidogo’ - ‘something small’ in
Swahili - is an almost daily occurrence. Apparently, it is difficult to
get anything done without paying bribes in that society.
Getting a child into a particular school, getting medicine or a hospital
bed, getting birth or death certificates, jobs, and business licences - all
these involve paying a bribe.
No wonder, then, that Eric Wainaina’s song ‘Country of Bribes’,
cataloguing the daily bribery that has become part of the Kenyan way of life,
has proved to be a huge hit.
In August 2001, Wainaina sang the song to an audience including the
country’s vice president and a host of government officials. His
microphone went dead as he started to sing the second verse - but the message
got through. Kenyans were beginning to realise that the corruption at
every level of their society was something they didn’t just have to accept.
The Kenyan Urban Bribery Index details how much average people pay out in
bribes. The January 2001 report found that people paid an average of 16
bribes a month, accounting for a third of their income.
‘Corruption’ is defined as ‘the misuse of entrusted power for private
gain’. It covers a wide range of activities, from multinational companies
paying bribes to get preferential access to government contracts to police
officers who stop drivers at road blocks to ask for money to supplement their
meagre wages.
When corruption becomes endemic in a society - as in Kenya - something
subtle happens to the way people feel about it. People may not like having
to pay bribes but they come to accept them as part of daily life - and, when
they have the opportunity, they extract bribes themselves.
In 2002, Mwai Kibaki became president of Kenya on an ‘anti-corruption’
platform. On taking office, President Kibaki told his country’s parliament
that: “Corruption has undermined our economy, our politics and our national
psyche. It is time for change - and that change is going to start at the
top.”
Weeding out corruption is imperative for any society but, for the developing
world, it is vital. Kenya, once considered an ‘African success story’ is now the
tenth most corrupt country in the world.
The World Bank calculates that Kenya’s poverty rates grew over the 1990s
at a time when global rates were declining. Growth rates had slowed from
four per cent in 1990 to one per cent in 2001. Infant mortality rates rose,
primary education enrolment fell.
When more than half the population live in poverty, corruption means that
they are denied access to the things they need: education, healthcare and jobs.
Meanwhile, bribes and kickbacks add an estimated 20 to 25 per cent to the cost
of government procurement. Resources, already scarce, may not be allocated where
they are needed.
The market becomes distorted and inefficient and people’s basic needs are
ignored - thus worsening the cycle of poverty.
A bad record on corruption deters foreign investment in key projects,
which then further slows development. The possibility of state
interference and requests for kickbacks introduces an element of uncertainty
that, in today’s climate, few business are willing to risk.
Until 1999, there were no international conventions to prevent companies
based in one country from using bribery and inducements in another.
The OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in
International Business Transactions came into force in February 1999 - but, so
far, none of the signatory countries has brought a prosecution.
This is despite studies that have shown ‘very high’ levels of bribery in
developing countries by corporations from Russia, China, Taiwan and South Korea.
Corporations from the USA, Italy and Japan - all signatories to the Convention -
are also seen to have a high propensity to bribe.
In Kenya, the Kibaki government embarked on a clean-up of the most
corruption-prone sectors of society.
Stories emerged of Kenyans not only refusing to pay ‘something small’ but
frog-marching the errant official to the police station seeking punishment.
According to Mrs Gladwell Otieno, Transparency International’s Kenya
director, countries like Nigeria and Kenya, which have become bywords for
corruption, don’t get an easy ride when they try to clean up their act.
The window of opportunity for tackling bribe-takers is 18 to 24 months. After
that, public confidence in the clean-up starts to wane. Yet those who are
corrupt have enormous resources and can keep court cases going on for years.
The West has a part to play. Shareholders should push
multinationals to reject the culture of bribery, and governments need to make
sure that they punish people who transgress the law. The World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund, which have been criticised for being too lax in
setting standards for transparency and accountability, have realised that aid
must go hand-in-hand with good governance.
Seen individually, cases of corruption may only be ‘something small’ but
when they’re standing in the way of development, they are large indeed.
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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