1. Global Poverty Initiative conference: the small part I attended was GREAT! Little did I know this was their very first ever conference. They were turning people away, which is a good sign that people are really interested in issues surrounding global poverty. Once I was there, I wished I could have stayed for the whole thing, but two sessions out of 96 isn't completely bad...
2. Paul Farmer was great. Pretty energetic- he's like a very incredibly smart yet sociable 20-year-old. A young woman sitting behind me had just come from breakfast and happened to run into him. She was totally starstruck! I probably would be too. He mostly spoke about our need to not make global poverty our "hobby" but to take it on seriously. He also cautioned about going out and forming our own NGOs, since everyone else is doing it. His desire is to see the public sector of impoverished countries be funded/supported. He was asked some questions specifically about Haiti, and it (shouldn't have, but it did) surprised me just how much people in this area love and support Haiti. I knew that our church weren't the only ones to take up Haiti as a cause, but wow. Hopefully we can all work together.
3. Another meeting about Haiti. We're moving ahead with our plans to visit Port-au-Prince. We'll go from there.
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2 comments:
My church goes to Haiti too! Although the women usually dont depending on the political situation at the time. I personally have been to the Dominican Republic on a Mission Trip and I loved it! My heart really just opens up because you see people in abject poverty but yet they seem happier than most people here...
I just came across your blog through via Trish Ryan's. I hope you post more on the GPI conference. I did my masters degree in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Seminary so I spent two years immersed in books about global poverty. So many of my classmates wanted to start NGO's and that frustrated me. It's nice to see someone speaking up about why NOT to start an NGO. (Especially when there are so many out there we could just back with support!)
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