The NCP Neighborhood

NCP is committed to building relationships with our global neighbors at the margins of society—people at special risk due to poverty, gender, ethnicity, location, economic exploitation, or environmental factors such as climate change.

Meet some of these neighbors, and see how NCP is joining with them to create a better future. 

Indigenous People Millions of the world’s native peoples live at the margins of areas they once ruled. Their ecosystems are under threat from mining, logging, oil drilling; their knowledge of the land is being lost; their cultures and languages are slipping away.

NCP response:
• Learning Tours to the Arctic and the Amazon to build relationships with and learn from these neighbors
• Assistance in preserving ancestral lands through advocacy campaigns (Arctic) and rainforest preservation (Amazon)
• NCP staff make dozens of presentations every year on the Amazon and Arctic in schools, colleges and congregations
Other resources:
•Visit our Native Communities — Lost Treasure page
• Mongabay is a great source of info about the rainforest

Young women  “To be born a daughter is a lost life”- Nepali proverb. It’s difficult being a girl or woman in many parts of our world. For girls, they are often kept from school due to poverty, safety concerns, lack of hygienic materials, and simple bias. Without an education, early marriage and a life of carrying wood, water and babies often await them.

NCP Response:
• Our Give a Girl a Chance fund provides school scholarships and hygienic materials for nearly 200 girls in South Sudan, Nepal and Burma
• We visit these girls on our Learning Tours to show support and to be inspired by their efforts
Other resources:
UNICEF provides its annual State of the World’s Children along with other fine resources

Women  In many parts of the world, women are treated as little more than property—and often not allowed to own property themselves. In many cases, they have been left to raise and provide for their families by themselves—their husbands having abandoned them or been ruined by war or alcohol. Often husbands that remain treat their wives with contempt or violence. To support themselves and their families, these women are reduced to doing difficult or dangerous work, such as wood or water gathering, laboring in sweatshops, or making homebrew. A telling number: 1 of 25 of the world’s women who should be alive, aren’t—simply because they were conceived a female (gender-based abortion, infanticide, neglect, or violence).

NCP response:
• Give a Girl a Chance also supports women’s empowerment through skills training, microloans, and gardening projects in Sudan, Nepal, Burma, and El Salvador
• Our Learning Tour groups visit these women in their communities to build relationships with them, show support for their work, and learn about their struggles and successes
• NCP markets Papula Paper products through its network. This Ugandan-based nonprofit provides eco-friendly paper products made by AIDS victims, single mothers and disabled folks.
Other resources:
• The National Labor Committee shines a light of truth on sweatshops and other troubling conditions for the world’s workers. Responsible Shopper helps us make choices based on how companies treat their workers. Equal Exchange or SERRV provide fair wages for women’s work.

Climate-at-risk communities  Climate change is a clear and present danger to millions of the world’s poor. Their already-tenuous lives will be made more so in the coming decades as crops fail, sea levels rise, water sources diminish—or deluge due to more violent storms—and soils erode.

NCP response:
• Our Sustainable Living Center practices and teaches about energy efficiency, bicycle advocacy, organic agriculture and changing the culture of consumption
•  Our carbon footprint calculator let’s you know where you stand—and what you can do better!
• We offer climate change workshops and energy audits, along with print and web resources
• Our Reading List includes many titles related to climate change
• If a Tree Falls… purchases and preserves carbon-sequestering rainforest while replanting tens of thousands of trees every year in Sudan, Burma, and the Amazon
Other resources:
• 350.org is a leading advocacy group for putting the brakes on climate change