As we wait in anticipation of the big Enough Food for Everyone IF G8 rally on 8 June, Christina Kelling looks back on her experience at a previous mass demonstration: Make Poverty History. Join us on 8 June and help make history >
Christina Kelling works for Medair Sudan, and formerly worked in the CAFOD Campaigns team: “I was raised in a Christian family and from a young age was taught that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love other people.
Filed under CAFOD, Campaigning, UK
In the spring issue of Side by Side we’re asking:
“Thousands of people will join IF campaign rallies this summer. Do big demonstrations make a difference?”
Have you ever taken part in a demonstration? Do you think mass rallies are important or are they a waste of time? Does anyone really pay attention to them? Or does the sight of thousands of people coming together make a statement nothing else could match?
Filed under CAFOD, CAFOD Birmingham, Campaigning, Sri Lanka, UK
I love visiting my Gran. And as she lived through the war and rationing, she’s been a goldmine of information.
Gran has always been hardworking and resourceful. Like her own mum, she was great at making supplies stretch.
“There wasn’t much bread,” she says, ‘but we made soda bread. And for stew you could sometimes get a bone from the butcher. It was a good idea to make friends with the butcher, and then he’d put aside an extra bone for you to boil.”
Gran’s wartime soda bread recipe has been so welcome this Lent
One of her favourite stories is how Arthur the butcher taught her to skin a rabbit. The skin could be cured and the fur used to line a little person’s coat, and there’d be rabbit pie for dinner. Nothing was wasted.
Get Gran’s wartime soda bread recipe here>>
“We looked after each other,” she says. “Neighbours looked out for each other and we shared what we had. That’s how it worked.”
This marvel of scrimping and soda bread is my legacy. I grew up in a home where ‘waste not want not’ hung in the air alongside aromas of bubble and squeak. Like Gran, my mum learned to feed her big family on the proverbial loaf and fishes. We’d tease her for saving a few peas in a Tupperware, or turning Sunday’s veg into Monday’s risotto. But we never went hungry.
Before the rations challenge, I hadn’t thought much about what I needed, only what I’d like to eat. So I’ve often ended up throwing food out (guiltily, expecting Mum and Gran to burst in yelling ‘no-o-o-o-o!’ in a slow-motion fashion) because I bought too much.
Now, I’m working out how to make food stretch, and appreciating how Mum and Gran had to balance everything to feed all those hungry mouths.
And the food waste is disappearing! The most I throw away is carrot tops and leek bottoms. I’ve stopped peeling carrots and spuds (a good scrub does as well and wastes less). With the meat, cheese and milk I work out what I need each day and how to make it last. It’s a revelation.
Mums are brilliant. They never stop teaching us. My Mum and Gran are strong, practical women whose ability to make do and mend kept us all in shoes and coats (albeit usually hand-me-downs).
For Gran, the occasional spare rabbit must have been a fantastic gift. As a mum with scant resources, it represented a family feast. And she watched her children grow up strong and healthy, their futures before them.
So many mums don’t get to see that, because the unfair food system stops them. They can make a little go a long way, but if there’s not even a bare minimum, no amount of mum magic can make it stretch.
Sabita is a mum from Bangladesh. She struggles to grow enough to eat and sell when crops are washed away by heavy rains and sea water flooding. But our Caritas partner has helped her with simple solutions like raised vegetable beds and using home-made compost to improve the soil.
Sabita from Bangladesh
“This plot has made a big difference to my family. It’s improved our diet and given us extra income,” she says.
It takes such a small amount to get a family up and running.
Sabita features in our Emmaus meal resource. Why not share her story with your community?
We honour mums on Mother’s day. We celebrate and give thanks for them. We can also honour mums around the world, by taking action today, and making the first step to ending world hunger.
If we can make the system fair, I’ve no doubt mums can do the rest. That would be a real gift to mums everywhere.
Mother Mary,
You hold all mothers in your heart; you know their joys and sorrows. Pray that we may be inspired to create a world where every mother can watch her children grow, happy and healthy, and rejoice as their futures unfold.
About the Author: Claud Mba has worked in CAFOD’s digital communications team for three years. She lives with her husband in Kent and is a lifelong supporter of CAFOD’s work. This Lent she’s putting her love of 1940s style and culture to the test: getting sponsored to live on 1943 UK rations, in solidarity with people who don’t have enough to eat around the world.
You can read more about Claud’s challenge and sponsor her here: http://www.justgiving.com/claudonrations
Filed under Bangladesh, CAFOD
About the Author: Joseph Kabiru is CAFOD’s Media and Communications Officer for the East and Horn of Africa.
Voters queing at Kadenye polling station, in Molo, in the Rift Valley before polls opened at 6am.
It is a rainy morning in Nairobi and just like other Kenyans, I am worried, waiting to see whether Kenya’s general election will conclude peacefully.
Technical hitches mean a delay until we know whether there was a first round win for any of the eight Presidential candidates. Uncertainty leads to anxiety.
I was among the hundreds of journalists and election observers who yesterday heard the Chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Isaack Hassan, promise the wait will soon be over:
“The 290 constituencies around the country have now completed tabulating their results and they are making their way to Nairobi, where they will present the final results.
“I must say we had anticipated our electronic tallying system to be 100%, but we have had challenges and have not able to deliver the provisional results in real time.
“I am aware Kenyans are getting anxious, but I urge them to remain patient as we await the final results from the returning officers.”
The chairman faced a barrage of questions about whether the country was facing a repeat of 2007, where the country descended into chaos and violence following delays in releasing presidential results. While the electoral body chair re-assured Kenyans all was well, there is cause for concern.
Gauging by the mood of political parties’ agents, the stage is set for disputes to arise from the emerging results. One area of concern is over the large number of spoiled or rejected ballots, which by Monday evening stood at 330,000.
Should these ballots be included the total number of votes cast? If so, it will significantly reduce the percentage of votes claimed by each Presidential candidate. With the constitution requiring the winner to attain more than 50% of the total votes, this could be crucial, reducing the chances of a first round winner.
The Jubilee Coalition, whose candidate Uhuru Kenyatta is leading the provisional count, has said it will not accept the inclusion of spoilt votes in tallying the final percentages. Their rival, Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Coalition of Reform and Democracy, has also expressed concern with the way the tallying of votes has gone so far.
My hope, and that of fellow Kenyans, is that by the end of today, final results will have been declared, they are accepted by all parties, and the country remains peaceful. We continue to pray for peace.
It’s week three and I think I’m hitting my stride. In becoming a dab hand and knocking up a few wholemeal scones , making sure I divvy up my protein for each day, and I can murder a potato in any one of a dozen devilish ways.
Meanwhile my grocery bills are down, and my waste is down…even my waist seems to be benefitting from this restriction (and if ever there was a sign that I have far too much, it’s that I see a weight reduction as a bonus).
Meanwhile, thanks to the amazing generosity of friends, family, and some people I’ve never even met, I’ve already managed to raise nearly £400 in sponsor money for CAFOD’s Lent appeal! If you’d like to add to that total, please visit my justgiving page.
Maybe I’m blogging on a good day – one where the thought of one more potato doesn’t make me weep – but my thoughts for today are: it’s really not so bad. A few more eggs, and I reckon I’d be happy to adopt it on a longer term basis. Oh, and some tomatoes. An oranges…and the occasional avocado.
OK, there are definitely things I miss. But the benefit of the ration regime is that it really lets you get to grips with what’s essential and what’s a luxury. And the fact is, I’ve got all the essentials.
I’m wondering now, if I’d appreciate lots of things more if I only ate them seasonally? Most of us rarely consider if our fruit and veg is seasonal these days because you can always get what you want, but if we always get the season’s best it not only tastes better, we become almost by accident more aware and responsible shoppers.
Here is one important lesson I’ll be taking forward from the challenge: overseas food is actually a luxury, which adds variety and excitement to my diet. And if I get seasonal local produce where I can, I will most likely have enough money to get my overseas produce from sustainable, responsible sources.
What could you discover in Fairtrade Fortnight?
I do think we should keep buying our avocados and oranges and bananas because overseas producers do, after all, rely on that trade. But I do want to see them for what they are: gifts; privileges, and therefore not to be bought carelessly, or for knockdown prices.
Food that comes from overseas represents people’s livelihoods, every bit as much as buying carrots from Cambridge is supporting farmers here. So not being responsible about whom I buy from should no longer be an option.
Did you know that the 500 million women and men who produce 70 per cent of the world’s food also make up half the world’s hungry people? This is not an accident. Once again, the people who produce our food are losing out at the end of the supply chain.
And once again – it’s something we have the power to change.
During Fairtrade Fortnight, we’re all that little bit more aware of how our purchases affect other people. We can take that awareness forward to make permanent changes to our shopping habits that really support the world’s smallholder farmers who supply most of our creature comforts. After all, over 4,500 products are now Fairtrade, so we should be able to find them!
And we can keep shouting about how unfair it is that seven companies control 85 per cent of tea production globally, and three companies hold nearly half of the global coffee production. Meanwhile, the growers and producers get a tiny percentage of the profits.
At the moment I’m only able to buy food produced in the UK. But I’m going to take a good, hard look at what I usually put in my basket, and see if I’m really putting my money where my mouth is.
I like to think of it as a pincer movement: buying Fairtrade so that growers today get a good deal, and big companies have to think a bit harder about their suppliers, and taking action to change the food system for good might mean that in years to come, we’ll be able to shake our heads in disbelief at the idea that fairly traded food was ever a choice we had to make.
It’s not right that people don’t get a fair price for what they produce. Let’s make 2013 the beginning of the end of this injustice.
CAFOD is part of the IF campaign. Please take action to end world hunger for good>>
Claud Mba has worked in CAFOD’s digital communications team for three years. She lives with her husband in Kent and is a lifelong supporter of CAFOD’s work. This Lent she’s putting her love of 1940s style and culture to the test: getting sponsored to live on 1943 UK rations, in solidarity with people who don’t have enough to eat around the world.
You can read more about Claud’s challenge and sponsor her here: http://www.justgiving.com/claudonrations
Filed under CAFOD
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