Bread for the World

This is good!

Last Minute Gift Idea

Those of you still pondering what to give mom for mother's day have a great option through Kiva. Kiva is a micro-lending website that allows you to designate an amount of your choosing and offer a loan to an individual in the developing world who needs assistance in an entrepreneurial endeavor. Tyler and I have helped a single mother with her chickens in Cambodia and a another woman begin a cell phone business in Nigeria (pictured above). It's cool. Once the recipient of the loan has repaid the amount, you can either choose to recollect your funds or circulate them back out to another business person.

The Mother's Day gift works by you giving a gift certificate to your mom for the prepaid amount. Then your mom gets to choose who and what to donate the money to. It's a really neat way to give a gift in a meaningful way. 

The 11th Hour

This is a trailer for the film, The 11th Hour, which was released sometime in late 2007. Did anyone see it? Granted, the writing behind it is a bit cheesy at points, but the message 

is clear. It's narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and speaks to the environmental horrors that are left in the wake of our environmental and cultural footprints. However, I want to see this film because it looks like it speaks well to the idea of our need for new and creative design in all aspects. We need new technologies to save us from dependence on oil, over consumption 

of all natural resources, among other travesties. What is more, the film addresses the possible 

massive quantities of environmental refugees the world can expect to encounter if we do not 

begin changing our ways and living less excessively. Again, I think good design can help us see 

this more clearly, along with films such as this. If we are going to completely change this world,

and I would like to argue, save this world, like the film claims our generation has the power to do, 

first we need to acknowledge and embrace all of the issues that are currently at stake, and then 

we need to begin accepting all of the new designs that will enable us to either heal the damage 

or begin treading along new and uncharted paths of responsible living (read: caring more for 

others and consuming less junk in the meantime).



I'm still trying to figure my way around this website, but it looks fascinating. It's about

normal and professional designers working together to create dialgue about how and why

we should call upon design to begin changing the world for the better.

Consumption's Contributions to Poverty and Wealth

Click here for video access.

For the record, I post this fully loving my ipod and trendy high heels. 

My Purpose Here

This blog is going to serve many purposes. First, it is a response to a class assignment. I am currently taking a class entitled Wealth and Poverty in the New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. One of our assignments offers us the opportunity to interact with our community in an effort to serve and/or inform them about issues of faith and service. We are to amalgamate our cerebral classroom experiences with human interaction regarding issues of wealth and poverty in our consumeristic era. This blog will serve as a platform for dialogue regarding such issues. Please feel free to comment liberally in an effort to keep the conversation alive and moving forward.

Second, I hope to offer you resources. There are so many opportunities to give and places to serve locally, nationally, and internationally. I hope to call your attention to various avenues of service that you may have not known about previously.

Third, (and consider this a warning) I will rant. For those of you that know me well, here I will vent, implore, seek council, and describe various encounters I have with anything that is pertinent to the overall discussion of this blog. I will not filter my emotional or intellectual responses to what I am learning in class and how that relates to what we see on the streets.

Fourth, we will together engage Scripture as we seek to better understand what it meant to be poor in the ancient world, as well as Jesus' concern for the poor and the wealthy. How does this concern affect us and our interactions with the poor today? This blog element will be at times pedagogical, while at others, more devotional and inquisitive.