Stand Up, Fight Poverty

Analysis:

This article is based upon an event held in Grand Rapids by a local chapter of the One Campaign, a campaign which aims to eliminate poverty. Grand Rapids Press religion editor, Charles Honey, wrote the story which includes comments from local people involved in the campaign. There are four people who are sourced in this article, all of which are part of the One Campaign. Some of them quote Nelson Mandela, while others cite U2 singer Bono as the inspiration for their involvement. One of the sources does cite the United Nations Milllennium Goals as a plan to end extreme poverty world wide, but nowhere in this story do any of the sources, nor the Press write bother to ask why there are so many people living in poverty around the globe. The only information on what actions the group will take is on an attempt by the group to get the US Congress to restore “$2.2 billion in US foreign aid.”

This story is the feature story in the religion section, so why do you think the journalist never bothered to ask people who are involved in the One Campaign how they are going to end poverty? Why do you think there were no perspectives presented that were critical of this campaign?

Story:

As a boy growing up in Senegal, Africa, Mark Terpstra saw the face of poverty in his friends.

They were the ones he played soccer and hunted rabbits with, and who constantly asked him for stuff: a shirt, shorts, soccer shoes.

Terpstra, the son of missionaries, sometimes obliged. But he always felt the gap between him and them.

“I’m well-fed and well-clothed,” Terpstra, 31, recalled of those days in the 1980s. “I’m running with friends that probably didn’t have a great meal that day, wearing the same clothes every day and playing soccer barefoot. I was aware of their situation, but I didn’t feel like I could do much about it.”

Now, Terpstra knows he can do something, and he is doing it.

It’s called the ONE Campaign — the effort talked up by Bono, lead singer of U2 and global anti-poverty activist. Its name has become increasingly visible on white wristbands.
But what is ONE, exactly? To Terpstra and others in West Michigan, it just may be the way to change the world.

“It’s very possible to end extreme poverty,” said Terpstra, a soft-spoken marketing strategist for the Cull Group of Grand Rapids. “It’s not just some pie-in-the-sky objective the U.N. threw out there.”

He referred to the Millennium Development Goals, a pledge by 189 countries to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

Terpstra believes in that goal and more. Thus, he has organized a small West Michigan contingent of ONE supporters he hopes will spread to campuses, churches and corporations.

He led a gathering this week at the Urban Mill coffeehouse, where supporters joined in a global Stand Up and Speak Out against poverty event. Last year, a world-record 23.5 million stood up for the cause in more than 100 countries, organizers say.

The event drew a mix of college students, members from churches such as Mars Hill and Ada Community Reformed, and workers from corporations such as Alticor and Spectrum Health.

They listened attentively as Terpstra rattled off poverty statistics and quoted Nelson Mandela: “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural.”

Then, they stood as Terpstra read, “We stand here proudly. We are the generation that intends to defeat extreme poverty.”

Among those standing was Cathy Dopp, a single mother from Allegan. Although the ONE Campaign is populated with movie stars such as Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow, Dopp said you don’t have to be a Hollywood celeb to make a difference.

“Even though I don’t have much time, I don’t have much money, (I) can still make a big impact,” said Dopp, 46, a member of the Without Walls Vineyard church in Holland. She calls the campaign “one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been a part of.

“I have no idea how to sell somebody Christianity, but I do know how to roll up my sleeves and say, ‘We can help people,'” Dopp said.

From her home, where she runs a software development company, Dopp spreads the word about ONE and takes action as she can. Last spring, she called U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow to urge a restoration of $2.2 billion in U.S. foreign aid.

She firmly believes ONE can change the world one phone call, one person at a time.

“It’s not just a warm, fuzzy, we-can-save-people plan,” she said. “It’s so ridiculously feasible. We’ve got to tell more people.”

Add her voice to the chorus calling for an end to poverty, hunger and disease. In this choir, Bono has become the lead singer.

The charismatic rock star brought his clarion call to the Economic Club of Grand Rapids in 2006. He challenged listeners to halt the “completely avoidable catastrophe” of 150,000 African lives lost each month to AIDS and poverty.

Five years ago, Bono teamed with Bobby Shriver, nephew of John F. Kennedy, and other activists to form DATA, an advocacy group fighting poverty and AIDS in Africa. From that grew related efforts including (RED), a partnership with corporations that earmarks a portion of purchases for poverty relief, and the EDUN high-fashion clothing line produced in developing countries.

With support from DATA and other anti-poverty groups, ONE was born in 2004. The campaign Web site calls on “Americans of all beliefs and every walk of life — united as ONE — to help make poverty history.”

ONE aims to do that through old-fashioned grassroots lobbying. It urges supporters to push legislators for an additional 1 percent of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. ONE wrist bands and T-shirts are sold as walking fashion statements for the cause.

Getting with the program

In West Michigan, the cause attracts everyone from a diehard Bono fan to the head of an international relief agency.

Andrew Ryskamp sports a ONE wrist band in his offices at the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, a partner in the ONE campaign. Ryskamp’s church, Madison Square CRC, also took part in Wednesday night’s stand-up event.

He recently returned from meetings in Asia as U.S. representative of the Micah Challenge, a Christian corollary to the ONE Campaign. The Micah Challenge urges churches worldwide to pressure their governments to meet the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.

Ryskamp said if the U.S. spent more on overseas development it wouldn’t need to spend as much on the military.

For Christians, fighting poverty is “a matter of biblical justice,” he added.

“As long as we have the kind of wealth that we do, and there are more than 1 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, there’s a screaming need for us to be part of setting those captives free,” Ryskamp said.

U2’s influence

Bill Bode sees the need, and he credits Bono for helping him believe he can make a difference.

The former radio executive turned children’s minister at Wesley Park United Methodist Church responded to Bono’s challenge to join ONE at a U2 concert in Detroit.

“He just puts it out there: ‘We’re looking at the generation that could put (poverty) away,’ ” said Bode, 51.

“Just that statement makes you think, ‘Yeah, why not?’ “

Bode does his part by organizing U2charist, a Eucharist service using U2 songs. He organized one in May at Wesley Park and sent a portion of the offering to Bread for the World, a ONE partner.

Future events will be posted at u2charistgr.org.

Back at the Urban Mill, where Mark Terpstra often does ONE tasks before work, the U2 song “Where the Streets Have No Name” played as Terpstra recalled his father bringing truckloads of rice to their hungry Senegal village.

That kind of generosity taught Terpstra how his Christian faith should guide his actions.

“You can’t just go in and say Jesus is the answer when they’re not eating, they don’t have medicine, and the baby is sick,” said Terpstra, of Whitehall, a member of Whitehall Covenant Church.

He spent his first 15 years in the West African country, where his parents, Jim and Jan, were missionaries for New Tribes Mission.

The Wyoming natives translated biblical verses into the Balanta language as they formed a church in a small farming village.

Terpstra remembers villagers coming to the house for tin cans. He also remembers enduring yearly bouts of malaria, delirious with fever but saved by medicine from a disease that kills 3 million children a year.

The contrast with America sickens him.

“Extreme poverty is ridiculous,” he said. “You have children dying of preventable diseases.

“If you talked about that in the context of West Michigan, that would be laughable.”

After coming to the U.S. and studying at DePaul University, Terpstra returned to Senegal to help villagers set up used-clothing shops.

He got some businesses going but lacked the capital to continue. But he never forgot the poverty of his boyhood home. When he found out about ONE, he knew it was his chance to do something about it.

“They’re not trying to raise money from you,” he stressed. “They just want your voice.”

He has taken the lead in pushing West Michigan to get involved in ONE activities, such as this week’s Global Day of Action Against Poverty. Members were urged to lobby Congress to support new debt-forgiveness legislation.

It starts small: a Yahoo group of 70-some supporters, a stand-up rally in a coffeehouse.

But Terpstra believes area residents can do their part to make poverty history.

“Everyone knows extreme poverty is an issue,” he said. “That’s the challenge — how to engage anyone and everyone to care about it.”