For A Change articles from December 1996

For A Change archives from December 1996

Safer world for our children.
December 1, 1996... Revelations of the atrocities by and against children around the world have caused much soul-searching. In recent months, Britain has agonized over the massacre of 16 schoolchildren and their teacher in Dunblane, and the fatal stabbings of...

Friends in deed: for over 300 years the Quakers have been working for peace and acting as mediators.
December 1, 1996... `Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed,' states the preamble to UNESCO's Charter. Many groups and organizations claim to address this issue, including the United Nations...

Cambodian who faced his past.
December 1, 1996... Throughout the 1980s and '90s the facilities offered by the Moral Re-Armament conference centre in Caux, Switzerland, proved a useful neutral meeting ground where Cambodians of different factions could find a degree of trust with one another....

Inner-city `energy'.
December 1, 1996... When Monsignor Osmar Ribeiro started work as parish priest of Our Lady of the Conception Church in Salvador, Brazil, he was immediately confronted with the problem of the `street children'. The Beach area, where his innercity church is...

Project playground.
December 1, 1996... Seemeen Ikramullah is concerned about the state of education in Pakistan today. `So many still have no education at all,' she says. So she initiated a project in her city `to help create an awareness of the importance of education in our...

Win-win chicken and egg story.
December 1, 1996... When it comes to chicken and egg stories, John Wood's is hard to beat. His `small-is-beautiful' economic ideas have transformed the lot of Malaysian farmers--and created a whole new `finger-licking good' taste in chickens for the Malaysian...

News that motivates (Solutions-local).
December 1, 1996... The difference between Todd Souza's community newsletter and the regular news is clear. `After reading my first edition of Solutions-Local, I noticed my blood pressure had not risen a bit, yet something was happening... yes, it was my heart...

Man they couldn't silence: Jamaican trade union leader Eddie Bailey is mot afraid to stand up for what he believes in.
December 1, 1996... The first bullet slammed into his chest barely missing his heart. The second grazed his left index finger and tore through a pouch in his hand. The third, aimed at his head, grazed his eyebrow. A contract killer was shooting to kill Eddie...

Mission non-colonial: Swiss theologian and playwright Walter Hollenweger calls on Christians to adopt a humbler approach to evangelism.
December 1, 1996... For many centuries European Christian evangelism was, with few exceptions, `colonial'. This is most clearly seen in the invasion of Latin America and the enslavement of the native people by the Catholic Church. One missionary said that if the...

Australia's biker priest: possibly Australia's most unconventional priest, John Smith is increasingly taking his message to his country's centres of power.
December 1, 1996... At the age of 54, John Smith has gone back to college, and is studying for a doctorate. At the party to send him off from Melbourne, his daughter said, `I've known you do many brave things, but this is the bravest.' Smith is brave. Most of...

What's hiding under the bed? Fear can save your life -- or stop you living it.
December 1, 1996... The big scary monsters under the bed may have changed shape, colour or size, may have grown more sophisticated and complicated, but they are still there. Each one of us knows our own secret fears--of growing old or dying young, of spiders or...

Footprints of the northern saints.
December 1, 1996... The year 1997 will be the 1,400th anniversary of two landmarks in the coming of Christianity to the pagan English: the arrival of St Augustine in Canterbury and the death of St Columba on Iona. Columba is the best known of the Celtic...

Recovering the past: Celtic and Roman mission.
December 1, 1996... The year 1997 will be the 1,400th anniversary of two landmarks in the coming of Christianity to the pagan English: the arrival of St Augustine in Canterbury and the death of St Columba on Iona. Columba is the best known of the Celtic...

Green turbo-boost.
December 1, 1996... Picture an empty shopping mall in Perth, Western Australia. There is nothing particularly inspiring about the place. It is not the majestic Himalayas or rugged Dartmoor. In fact, for an environmentalist, it could be said to represent much...

Life in pictures.
December 1, 1996... Santa Barbara landscape artist Eric Parfit feels a calling to use his art `to interpret for people the amazing wonders of God's creation'. Although he discovered at school that he had a talent for painting, it was only later in life that...

Fighting racism at 100.
December 1, 1996... A friend of mine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has just celebrated her 100th birthday. She is Edith Blair Staton and she was born in Washington DC's Blair House, the last baby born there when it was still the Blair family home. Now it is...

Refections: 3-D living.
December 1, 1996... IS uperficiality is the curse of our age' wrote Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline. 3-D pictures have been made popular recently in a series called Magic Eye books. What appears to be one sort of design at first reveals something...

Call for honest conversation: social cohesion is the result of open, honest public debate (US election).
December 1, 1996... At the height of Athenian democracy and creativity 2,500 years ago, vital issues of the day were thrashed out in the public square. Thousands of citizens--albeit free males only!--would gather beside the acropolis up to 40 times a year to...