Simple, spiritual life luring more to mission work

from the North Jersey Record

This shows that there are benefits to doing charity work. This article from the North Jersey Record profiles a man who has had enough of the rat race. - Kale

BY JOHN CHADWICK

During his days working in corporate America, Doug Garofalo may have seemed an unlikely candidate for the Franciscan religious order and its embrace of voluntary poverty.

But even as Garofalo worked as an accountant for chains like Saks Fifth Avenue and Aeropostale, the River Edge native maintained a strong connection to his hometown church, St. Peter the Apostle, and kept a decidedly modest lifestyle.

"I had a very modest house in Hackensack," Garofalo, 46, said. "I was living as simple as possible in the retail world of Bergen County."

His preference for simple, spiritual living and his yearning for a new direction led him in 2002 to the Franciscan Mission Service, part of the Catholic order founded by St. Francis of Assisi.

But Garofalo, who by his own description is a good dancer who enjoys dating and maintaining a wide social network, didn't see himself as a priest.

So he became a lay missioner - a role in which he wouldn't have to take religious vows but could embrace the Franciscan ethic and participate in overseas projects to help poor communities. Lay missioners are prevalent in the Catholic Church, and function like missionaries, though they typically travel to Catholic areas and focus more on relief work than evangelization, Garofalo said.

"I felt I was called by the Holy Spirit," Garofalo said during a recent telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he now lives. "I knew I was being called to do something more concrete for the church. I knew it was not a call to the priesthood."

A growing number of Catholics are hearing a similar calling.

Jim Lindsay, executive director of the Maryland-based Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, said the number of Catholics participating in some form of lay mission work in the network has steadily increased and is now at about 10,000 per year. There are some 200 organizations, from religious orders to universities, offering lay mission work, up from about 160 a decade ago, he added.

The missions can range from one week working in an inner-city soup kitchen to spending several years overseas in an impoverished nation. The common element is that volunteers leave their homes, work full time and frequently live communally.

"Certainly priests and sisters and brothers have been doing this work over many, many years," Lindsay said. "Laypeople now have a greater realization that they are part of the mission of the church itself."

One of the people Garofalo consulted with about his decision was Julie Burkey, an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University who runs a program called Christian Employment Outreach, or CEO.

"I'm seeing people all time who reach a level of success, in terms of the how the world defines it," Burkey said. "Then they turn around and say, 'Is this all there is?' "

Garofalo signed up for a three-year program that included two years in Brazil, where he lived with Franciscan friars, worked in a day care center and helped administer a micro-credit loan program for the working poor.

After returning last year, he has been serving as the development director of the Franciscan Mission Service.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

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Poverty still plagues Brazil

from Reuters

Brazil is a booming economy. This report explores the economies expansion on the poor. - Kale

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Brazil seeks help from Prof Yunus to develop microcredit programme

from the Daily Star

Brazilian President Lula da Silva has sought assistance from Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus to develop microcredit programme for the poor in Brazil, particularly for the poorest regions of the country.

He also focused on the poverty alleviation programmes of the Brazilian government when Prof Yunus met him at Alvorada Palace in Brasilia on Thursday, says a press release.

During the meeting, Prof Yunus briefed the president on the Grameen Bank programmes.

Prof Yunus, who visited Brazil from June 11 to 14 at the invitation of the Brazilian Senate, also addressed the plenary session of the Senate where he spoke of the activities of the Grameen Bank.

The speech was telecast live throughout the country on the Senate TV Channel.

Following the address at the Senate, Prof Yunus was received at Alvorada Palace by President Lula.

During the two-hour meeting attended by cabinet ministers and senators, they discussed development issues ranging from poverty alleviation, healthcare, food crisis, ways of increasing agricultural productivity, climate change and the environment and other common issues facing both Bangladesh and Brazil.

Prof Yunus briefed President Lula on healthcare intiatives of Grameen and sought his advice and assistance based on Brazilian experience to bring healthcare to the poor in Bangladesh.

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Brazil's Lula: food riots are alert to fight poverty

from the Guardian

BRASILIA, April 16 (Reuters) - Foods riots in Haiti and elsewhere are a wake-up call for the world to fight harder against poverty, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday.

"It was necessary to watch dramatic scenes for the international community to wake up to the urgency of finding a definitive solution to the challenge of poverty," Lula said during a lunch with visiting Indian President Pratibha Patil.

Protests in Haiti over high prices for rice, beans and other staples ousted the government on Saturday.

Rising food prices showed that the world "was poorly equipped to face and solve the worst evil of our times," namely hunger, said Lula.

Across the globe bread, milk and other foods have become more expensive, fueling inflation in some countries.

Patil, whose 3-day visit to Brazil was her first foreign trip since taking office last year, praised Lula's flagship social welfare program "Zero Hunger."

Experts blamed price rises on strong Asian demand, adverse climate in some producer countries and increased use of corn to produce fuel in the United States.

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization during a conference in Brasilia warned this week that rising prices threatened to increase malnutrition in Latin America.

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Brazil unveils $6.4 billion poverty plan

from the International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva unveiled a multibillion-dollar anti-poverty initiative on Monday to provide much-needed infrastructure and jobs in Brazil's poorest regions.

Targeting some 24 million people, including about 1 million small farmers in nearly 1,000 towns across Latin America's largest nation, the government plans to spend some $6.4 billion under the program in 2008 alone.

The program, which must still be approved by Congress, seeks to benefit the 60 regions of Brazil with the lowest rankings on the U.N. Human Development Index.

Speaking in the capital of Brasilia, Silva called it "the second step to ending poverty," following his Family Allowance initiative that since 2003 has paid monthly stipends to more than 11 million poor families with young children.

That program has been credited with reducing poverty in Brazil and secured Silva the loyalty of the nation's poor, but also drew criticisms that he was buying votes.

Silva also vowed to continue the stipends until Brazil does a better job of easing one of the world's widest gaps between the rich and the poor.

University of Brasilia political scientist David Fleischer said the new initiative, dubbed Territories of Citizenship, shows the government recognizes the value of investments in things like schools, clinics and job training, instead of only handouts.

Silva's administration also has its eye on this year's municipal elections and the 2010 presidential vote, Fleischer said: "It's half and half. Half development, and half electoral."

The announcement came a week after Brazil announced that its foreign reserves had exceeded foreign debt.

At the time, Silva said the country could now incur fresh debt to improve crumbling infrastructure and boost employment.

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Brazil-Education and the path out of poverty

from the Brown County Democrat

By MARYLIN DAY

Early in January 2008, a group of students from Franklin College visited Brazil to further their education in cultural and sociological studies. I accompanied the group led by professors, Dr. David Chandler and Dr. Jason Jimerson. We learned a great deal about this vast country and it’s history, society and people.

Brazil is a tapestry of colors, textures and music. As a relatively new republic (1889), the history of Brazil, since the Portuguese came in search of gold and silver, has been a turmoil of dictatorships, monarchies and coups. Today the mix of peoples constantly influences this emerging, growing country. The current economy is increasing, dramatically and chaotically, almost like a child learning to ride a bike for the first time.

With the influx of many different peoples, few countries can match the diversity of religions evident in Brazil. While Catholicism is the dominant formal religion, there are multitudes of other religious practices. There is an historical and cultural mix of religions. Afro-Brazilian Christians may incorporate some ideas of the West African religions brought over during the slave trade times. It has only been four or five generations since slaves were used by the large landowners, and “black magic”, soothsayers and witches are still involved and respected.

The city we visited with the most diversity was Salvador in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The largest slave trading market in South America was located here until slavery was abolished in 1889 and it has the largest population of Afro-Brazilians. Nearly 50 percent of the population is poor with 75 percent of the poor being descendents of the slaves.

Huge favelas (or slums) with conditions unbelievable to us have millions of inhabitants that barely survive. Drug dealers and gangs may “own” a favela and fight for the right to sell drugs to the rich people in the city center. Our guide led us through a favela and discretely pointed out several local drug dealers, usually young men in their 20s or 30s.

As heard numerous times through missionaries, guides, books and newspapers, the way out of poverty is through education. Although Brazil has a booming economy (particularly in manufacturing) the poor lack educational opportunities. Today’s manufacturers require skilled employees to operate computers and robotic equipment.

The Brazil state of Brasilia is a sister diocese to the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis. While I was unable to visit this diocese directly, the Brasilia Bishop, Mauricio Andrade, gave us the name of a local missionary who would help us contact the Episcopal/Anglican priest operating an after-school educational program supported by the Episcopal /Anglican Church in the Salvador Diocese.

According to our missionary contact in Salvador, Mara Manzoni, Senior Programme Officer of Christian Aid — an ecumenical British and Irish agency, 5000 families (from the original Portuguese settlers) control 75% of the wealth in Brazil. The government caters to this segment with the improvements in the infrastructure rather than caring for the poor. Highways, internet, and electricity benefit these wealthy landowners. However, these improvements do nothing for the poor – public hospitals are dismal, sanitation in slums is nearly non-existent and children are provided a public education only two or three hours daily.

Since there is little support for the poor by the government, many underground economies and grassroots movements are emerging. Daycare facilities and educational programs supported by churches and other local initiatives are increasing in the slum areas. We visited Paroquia Anglicana Cristo Salvador church on Itaparica Island run by a local Episcopal/Anglican priest, Rev. Bruno.

The small church was also a school, meeting house, kitchen, and community room. Children are provided a hot meal daily, a further two to three hours of school and homework assistance. Many of their parents cannot read or write, so after school help is imperative. Additionally, healthy living habits are encouraged and women are instructed in local craft making for items to sell at market for more income.

Locally, based in the Indianapolis Episcopal Diocese, another grassroots organization called the Tri-Parish Coalition — St. Paul’s, Columbus; St. David’s, Bean Blossom, and Trinity, Bloomington — has joined together to support the Millennium Development Goals and specifically education in Brazil.

Collaborating and pooling the necessary funds, we are able to send $2,400 annually to our sister diocese and a parish in Anapolis, Brasilia to aid with the cost of a similar after-school education program. Originally intended to help 30 to 35 children, the program has expanded, with support of the local government, to 90 children. Public officials viewed the curriculum and saw its success and agreed to commit funds to the project. It has become a model for other areas of the country.

Education will enable these children to succeed. Already, since the program’s inception, children educated with the help of such programs are returning to mentor a new group of children. The Tri-Parish Coalition has committed their support to this program for three years. Working together, we can help all those in need of the basic necessities.

Marylin Day is the Tri-Parish Coalition representative from St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom. She may be reached via e-mail at bcdguest@bcdemocrat.com. The opinions voiced there are those of the author, not the newspaper.

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Brazil President Says Rich Countries Keep Trade Benefits To Selves

from Nasdaq

PRETORIA (AP)--Brazil's president accused rich countries of keeping world trade benefits to themselves, and called for greater reform in the U.N. and international treaties.

The Doha round of World Trade Organization talks are looming large over a South Africa-India-Brazil summit Wednesday that followed U.S. accusations developing countries were putting the talks in peril by refusing to open up their manufacturing markets.

"It is useless for us to be invited for desert and not the powerful countries' banquet," Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said as the summit opened. "This Doha international negotiations cannot be simply and purely about the agenda of the small number of developed countries."

The three countries, all regional powerhouses, came together in 2003 to strengthen ties between developing countries and to form a powerful bloc in world trade negotiations.

Efforts to liberalize manufacturing trade have hit a rough patch less than a month after the U.S. breathed new life into the trade talks by agreeing to limit trade-distorting farm subsidies to a range between $13 billion and $16.4 billion.

The round aims to add billions of dollars to the world economy and lift millions of people out of poverty through free trade. But it has repeatedly stalled since its inception in Qatar's capital Doha in 2001, largely because of wrangling between rich and poor nations over eliminating farm subsidies, and more recently, barriers to manufacturing trade.

Lula, who is on a tour of a number of African nations, said he believed a " fair and balanced resolution was not only desirable, but possible."

However, he warned: "This commitment must above all benefit the poorest. After, all this is a development round."

Lula called developing countries to maintain their unity and deepen efforts to help weaker countries as well as pushing for greater reform in the United Nations and the expansion of the U.N. Security Council.

His bloc with South Africa and India "is a tool to shorten the physical and political distances not only between our countries but all humankind," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also emphasized unity among the three countries to ensure the voice of developing nations was heard.

"All developing countries have difficult job balancing the need for more rapid growth and problems of social inequality," he said.

Singh also pushed for greater economic ties and the establishment of a free trade area between the three nations.

President Thabo Mbeki was the least committal on what he was hoping from the meeting, where leaders are expected to sign a number of agreements in various sectors such as education, energy and technology.

"We must expedite process and produce deliverables that must make an impact o the lives of people of all our countries," he said.

He said the trade talks "must be address issue of global transformation."

Cracks are beginning to appear in the united front of India, Brazil and South Africa as they come under pressure from the U.S. and the European Union.

Some developing countries are starting to breaking ranks with Brazil, India and South Africa, making their own proposals that support a reduction in manufacturing tariffs.

Such cuts would affect South Africa and its vulnerable textile and automotive industries, more than India and Brazil because of the way their economies are structured, said Philip Alves of the South African Institute for International Affairs.

"South Africa is making a logical sensible argument," Alves said. "But the big question is if India starts softening and Brazil does the same, what kind of pressure will South Africa come under in the next couple of weeks?"

Part of the reason the Doha round has sparked such fierce and prolonged debates is that the final treaty must be agreed by consensus and will be legally binding on all countries.

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Michelin plantation an oasis in sea of poverty

from The Globe and Mail

The Ouro Verde co-operative is researching a unique type of rubber tree 'cancer'

MICHAEL BETTENCOURT

ITUBERA, BRAZIL -- It may have taken three planes, a bouncy bus ride and about 18 hours of travel time to get to Itubera, Brazil, but it took only about two minutes of staring into the mouth of a thundering waterfall at Michelin's rubber plantation in the Atlantic rain forest to realize that this place was much more than a rubber factory.

Set in the middle of a largely unknown jungle, one that happens to produce lots of rubber trees, the waterfall is the centrepiece of Michelin's Biodiversity Research Centre in this remote Brazilian area about 200 kilometres south of Salvador, near the Atlantic coast.

When the waterfall wasn't drowning out conversations, its misty fog soon soaked visitors who ventured out on a narrow observation dock to witness its power close up.

The falls marked the spot where, in late 2003, Michelin went from being a rubber producer in the Bahia province, to a community builder of the area, one of the poorest in Brazil. That's when Michelin embarked on its Ouro Verde co-operative, literally "green gold," a project that encompassed developing new low-cost housing and medical facilities for the plantation's workers and families, furthering advanced research into a unique type of rubber tree "cancer" that is globally feared outside its native South America, and promoting scientific study of the Atlantic rain forest, the virtually unknown southern neighbour of the famed Amazon rain forest.

Three-thousand hectares of the Atlantic rain forest is a natural reserve that Michelin has protected with security forces from poachers, and opened up to study by scientists from all over the world. It promises new discoveries of plant life and even small mammals, as well as its own local ecological research efforts.

The plantation also is organizing some leading-edge social development efforts for both Michelin employees and others contracted to local rubber producers, many of whom are now partners with Michelin, which supports them with loan guarantees and tree-farming research.

If that "green gold" project name has the cynic in you assuming that it was simply Michelin's way of making more money in the area, think again. "By 2001, there were so many dead trees in this region, it caused Michelin to question whether the project was sustainable," said Gerard Bockiau, the director of Michelin's Brazilian plantations.

At the time, and to this day, the rubber trees in the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests were being hard hit by a plant disease called microcyclus ulei, or South American leaf blight, which not only killed many trees, but also made the remaining rubber trees much less efficient, producing about half the latex per tree of that which Asian rubber trees produce.

So even with numerous advances in disease resistance, it would still have been considerably less expensive to shelve the project and get on with more efficient sites elsewhere in the world.

"The first and most obvious solution would have been to sell it all," Bockiau said. "But selling it wouldn't guarantee the preservation of this part of the rain forest, and simply wouldn't be the Edouard Michelin way," citing the former Michelin co-chairman, who died in 2006 in a boating accident at the age of 42, but whose legacy remains as a social and environmental leader in an industry often maligned for its environmental practices.

The project also serves as a template for various Michelin projects in developing nations around the world, including in Africa and Asia, where more than 90 per cent of the world's rubber is produced. It's in nations such as China, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as well as parts of Africa, where the great fear is that this fungus will spread to those hevea (rubber) trees, which would spell major upheaval for Michelin, the rubber and tire industry as a whole, and the global economy, environmental experts say.

"If it passes to Asia and Africa, it would be an ecological and economic disaster, affecting three million jobs," said Dominique Garcia, a researcher with the global agricultural consulting group CIRAD, the Centre for International Co-operation in Agronomic Research for Development, based in Montpellier, France.

"With the globalization of the transportation industry, it's only a matter of time that this fungus passes to other parts of the world."

Research into fighting the leaf blight has been going on for 15 years, with the facility evaluating new mixes of native and resistant seedlings every year; the most promising of these are grown into a new type of rubber tree hybrid, which takes a full 20 years.

The research is helping local producers to increase their incomes as well as their rubber production, and will become a key global initiative should the fungus reach southern Asia in particular.

"One tree here makes about five kilograms of rubber per year," said Bockiau, "which is about the rubber needed for one tire on a small car."

Living on the plantation is a relative oasis in a desert of poverty for the 3,500 workers, as the co-operative town effort is a joint project by Michelin, local governments and private NGOs (non-government organizations).

So far, the project has set up a school, a medical clinic and a dentist's mobile office in the area, none of which existed prior to Michelin's purchase of the plantation from Firestone in 1984.

"This village had no water systems or electricity, no phone service," Bockiau said. "In three years, we'll have offered 264 excellent-quality houses [which cost about $7,000], a day-care centre, a shopping mall and recreation facilities - even mobile phone companies are now covering this area."

The $292 (U.S.) a month income that most of the tree tappers receive may be paltry, but it's considerably higher than Brazil's minimum wage of $133 a month, or $1,600 a year. Neither figure would be enough to live on in fashionable Rio or Sao Paulo. But with incomes growing through the planting of secondary crops such as cocoa that produce more quickly than the seven-year startup cycles of rubber trees, workers are literally harvesting the rewards of their productivity growth.

The natural riches of this part of the rainforest are also being discovered now, said Dr. Kevin Flescher, Michelin's director of the Biodiversity Research Centre in Brazil.

"We're in the Stone Ages when it comes to knowing the Atlantic rainforest," said Flesher, an ecology and evolution researcher who specializes in studying medium- to large-sized mammals. "Everybody's discovering new species here."

The facility has about 35 researchers studying various plants, insects, birds and wildlife, with Michelin providing both accommodations and research grants. "We have about 1,000 years of research yet to do."

Those black gumballs that hold up your car may not look very interesting to you, but if you know the years or decades of research, planning and people stories that go into getting them to you, while preserving the natural environment they come from, all of a sudden they become much more interesting.

globeauto@globeandmail.com

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Brazil's President Calls for Action on Climate Change, Fighting Poverty

from The Voice of America

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called for urgent action to address climate change, poverty and social inequality.

At the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, Mr. da Silva warned about the growing risks of what he called the "unprecedented environmental and human catastrophe" if the groundwork for global development is not rebuilt. He said the dispossessed of the Earth should not have to bear the costs of irresponsibility by those he described as the "privileged few."

The Brazilian leader also urged nations to pay greater attention to fighting hunger and poverty, saying there will be no lasting peace if inequality is not reduced.

He called for countries to develop new energy strategies that include the use of biofuels, and for nations to fully comply with their commitments to the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.

President Bush, who has long opposed negotiated limits on greenhouse gases, has rejected the Kyoto pact of 1997.

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Six Million Brazilians Lifted Out Of Poverty In 2006

from the World Bank

“Six million Brazilians were lifted above the poverty line in 2006, said the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in a study released on Wednesday.

The number of Brazilian citizens living below the poverty line dropped by 15 percent in 2006 compared with 2005. The FGV stressed that it was the best result since the entity started carrying out the study in 1992. … This is the first time the population living in extreme poverty represented less than 20 percent of the country's population.

[FGV economist Marcelo] Neri also stressed that the incomes of the country's poorest 10 percent of citizens rose by 57.4 percent in the period, while those of the wealthiest 10 percent increased by 6.8 percent, which helped attenuate income distribution inequalities. …” [Xinhua (China)/Factiva]

EFE adds that “…Brazil is going through ‘an historic period’ in terms of poverty reduction, said Neri… who added that in 2006 the number of people living in extreme poverty in Brazil fell by 6 million.

He said that a large part of the advance in the fight against poverty has been due to government aid programs like the ‘Bolsa Familia,’ …and investment in education from previous governments that is now beginning to bear fruit.

He said that those programs have less electoral impact because they benefit children, but at the same time they help to improve the standard of living of families with much greater efficacy than increases in the minimum wage. …”

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