For A Change articles from August 1996

For A Change archives from August 1996

(Strasbourg Cathedral, tramway and youth councils).
August 1, 1996... One spire or two? Visitors I showed round Strasbourg last winter thought our cathedral ought, like Cologne's, to have two spires rather than just one. But neither the foundations nor funds would have allowed it. During a debate on this...

Paradise missing.
August 1, 1996... The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has spoken of his fear that Britain has become a society `in which unbelief has become the norm'. `We are in danger of becoming a shallow society,' he warns. Politicians, he told The Independent,...

Ukraine - five years into freedom.
August 1, 1996... Grim realism has replaced the euphoria of 1991 in Ukraine, as in most countries of the former Soviet Union. On a recent visit to Ukraine, Mike Lowe discovered that democracy must start at the grassroots. In the late Eighties, the Soviet...

Chess, choices and citizenship.
August 1, 1996... Joy Weeks asks whether schools can impart the values which undergird free society. In the late 1960s I met a young man who had started a school for several hundred children in the Harijan (formerly known as untouchable) community where he...

Education sans frontieres (link between British and Ghanaian schools).
August 1, 1996... The Sixth formers at Hethersett Old Hall School, near Norwich, England, have a personal interest in development issues--because their friends are involved. The girls exchange letters regularly with students at a school in a remote part of...

Christians apologize for crusades (Reconciliation Walk).
August 1, 1996... Nine centuries after the First Crusade, hundreds of Christians are again on their way to Jerusalem -- this time with a message of apology to Muslims and Jews for the atrocities committed as their predecessors murdered, raped and pillaged their...

Self-help in Khonoma (how villagers solved the problem of environmental crises).
August 1, 1996... The thick mountain forests of Nagaland, in north-east India, provide a sanctuary for rare species and protect the sources of important rivers. Recently logging around Khonoma village has put them under threat. By 1994, some 200 young local...

Leaven of the business world: Britain's Institute of Business Ethics ... has put values onto the agenda in many boardrooms.
August 1, 1996... Britain's Institute of Business Ethics, which marks its 10th anniversary in October, has put values onto the agenda in many boardrooms. It's chairman, Neville Cooper, talks to Michael Smith: Mention business ethics and too many people think...

Taking steps to recovery ... British initiative (Arise - Addiction Recovery in Supportive Environment).
August 1, 1996... Kenneth Noble looks at a British initiative aimed at helping people who suffer from any form of addiction. A 1989 cartoon depicts a convention of the Adult Children of Normal Parents. The banner across the back of the room welcomes all...

Rising above race politics (Call to Community).
August 1, 1996... Hope in the Cities and their partners launched their Call to Community at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on 23 May in the presence of national figures and city leaders from 16 communities around the USA. The Call invites every...

Cambodia: video for peace (Serene life).
August 1, 1996... A new Khmer-language video about the link between peace and the inner life was launched in Cambodia on 9 May. The Serene Life features a leading Buddhist monk, Maha Ghosananda, and is produced by David and Alan Channer of Grosvenor Productions,...

Agenda for a new Japan (International Dialogue on the theme `An Agenda for Reconciliation and Kyosei - living and working together for the common good').
August 1, 1996... An International Dialogue on the theme `an Agenda for Reconciliation and Kyosei (living and working together for the common good)' took place in Tokyo on 20 May. It was co-hosted by the Keisai Koho Center of the `Keidanren' Economic Federation,...

Good boatman: a portrait of Gandhi.
August 1, 1996... This is an extraordinary book, defying categorization. Biography? The narrative is given is six masterly pages. Portrait? Mural would be a better indication of the countless portraits of men and women crowding Mahatma Gandhi's life. This...

Railway man.
August 1, 1996... This award-winning book is not only remarkable for the horrendous account of the suffering that the author and his friends endured in building the Burma-Siam Railway during World War II, but also for the honesty with which he tells of the...

Islam & the myth of confrontation: religion and politics in the Middle East.
August 1, 1996... The next `clash of civilizations', it is often claimed, will come between Islam and the West. In this refreshing book, Halliday challenges the social scientists who have tended to strengthen the myths of confrontation. They have regarded the...

Through the dark cloud of depression: more people suffer from depression at some stage in their lives than is often recognized. Here we print one person's account.
August 1, 1996... More people suffer from depression at some stage in their lives than is often recognized. Here we print one person's account: In the late 1970s I suffered from clinical depression which went undiagnosed for nearly 18 months. It was the...

Out of prison.
August 1, 1996... About 45 years ago Berkeley Vaughan, a doctor in Australia, delivered a baby girl, `Joan'. Her mother, a single woman, died of an uncontrollable haemorrhage. Joan was brought up by her elderly grandparents. In her teens, she had a baby boy...

Bells, the bells.
August 1, 1996... The key thing about bell-ringing is to keep your feet on the ground. Those cheery cards which show monks swinging from ropes are all too possible--but the reality is more likely to end in a broken arm than a Merry Christmas. One of the six...

Must blood lead the TV news?
August 1, 1996... Our local TV news could be dubbed `crime watch'. We can be sure that at least the first ten minutes every night are devoted to murder or rape or kidnapping or abuse or violence or tragedy of some kind. By all accounts it is the same all round...

Laid open to love.
August 1, 1996... `For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all...

Snapshots of the city of peace.
August 1, 1996... I thought the man was going to hand me a shopping basket: that's what he does at the entrance to my local supermarket. Instead, he wanted to search my bags, in case I was planning to bomb the store. I was in Jerusalem ahead of the recent...