You asked for it...

Hello young adult friends. Welcome to the February edition of You asked for it...Special Valentine’s Day Edition. It’s NCP's monthly email to people like you.

We're just back from Sudan. Our group of 13 (including two young adults) had an incredible adventure--including visiting a Toposa nomadic tribe (they gave us a goat!); meeting girls who have received NCP scholarships for school (they told us about the challenges facing young women, including getting married off as young as 12 or 13); visiting our friends at Papula Paper, a Fair Trade group we support; and seeing chimps, elephants, hippos and Nile Crocodiles at a national park in Uganda. Pics posted on my Facebook page and on the NCP Group page.

We'll be sending about $40,000 to Sudan this year for girls' education, women's projects, reforestation. We can use any help you can give us. One college student organized dance performances before Christmas that raised over $2000 for Give a Girl a Chance. Guys at another college had a party--and sent us the $ they raised to help kids in Burma get back to school. And did you know about our Amanda O'Donnell Memorial Fund for girls' education?

In this edition of You asked for it...:
Roses are Red, Workers are Blue…
Bittersweet: the true cost of chocolates
Sugar and spice and not-everything-nice
Summer fun (if you call being deep in the Amazon, visiting Gwich'in people in the Arctic, and exploring human rights issues in Burma "fun"...)
Summer fun II (if you call living and working in a poor Sudanese community and getting your worldview seriously shifted "fun")
Summer fun III (if you call spending time on an island in the Chesapeake Bay talking about how your faith influences your feelings about the environment “fun”)
Eco Fact. Justice Fact. Faith Fact

BTW, have you joined the NCP Facebook Cause yet? We need you!

Take care. Keep the faith. Share the love—
David

Roses are Red… The US gets one-third of its cut flowers (like roses) from Ecuador. On our Ecuadorian Amazon Learning Tour last May, we visited a “green” rose operation. This means there are fewer harmful chemicals used in producing and storing the roses processed there. This, however, was one of only a handful of such operations in a country where hundreds of long, white greenhouses grow and process these long-stemmed beauties. According to young women we met who had worked in the rose industry, “normal” flower operations expose workers to enough chemicals that they are forced to “retire” at the age of 30, for fear that further exposure will result in genetic defects in their children. Still want to shower your sweetheart with flowers? Think of how Fair Trade flowers will endear you even more to her…

Bittersweet Chocolates are synonymous with Valentine’s Day—and with child labor in West Africa. According to Carol Off’s book Bitter Chocolate, tens of thousands of child workers are kept in slave-like conditions on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana, west Africa. Hungry for another option?

The truth about sugar What’s cocoa—no matter where it’s from—without sugar. Not sweet, baby…unlike the way our government treats sugar producers. Not only have sugar growers turned the Everglades into the Neverglades by draining hundreds of thousands of acres of this amazing ecosystem to grow sugarcane, but the US also guarantees a set price for US-grown sugar and taxes (puts a tariff on) imported sugar. This has a) sent US candy manufacturers (and their jobs) abroad in search of cheaper sweetener b) cost US consumers (who will each consume about 60 pounds of sugar this year in one form or another) about $2 billion c) restricted import of eco-friendly Brazilian ethanol (because it’s produced from—you guessed it—sugarcane) d) hurt Poor World sugar producers e) all of the above. More on the topic:

Summer Fun I We’re off to some pretty amazing places this summer. Start off in the Amazon rainforest in mid-May. Yes, we saw a jaguar two years ago—and yes, we are LONG overdue for an anaconda sighting. No matter what, you’ll see pink dolphins, loads of monkey, caiman, toucans—and the impacts of deforestation and oil drilling. And be led by Delio, a Siona shaman. More interested in Honduras where we’ll live and work in a poor community in the middle of July? Alaska in early August—Denali/Kenai Fjords or Arctic Village—take your pick. Close out the summer with a fascinating visit to Burma in late August, one of the most troubling places on earth—and the only one with a Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest (Aung San Suu Kyi) and where Buddhist monks may hold the key to a better future.

Summer Fun II For the third summer in a row, NCP will send Solidarity Workers to southern Sudan to live and work in Nimule, a community near the Ugandan border. This will be an incredible experience of African culture and an exposure to the poverty and resilience of a long-suffering people. We have five signed up already—could take one or two more. (read what Sarah had to say about her experience last summer…) The Church of the Brethren is looking for longer-term people to work with Reconcile, a conflict mediation group based in Yei, Sudan. Extensive background in the field not necessary, but good people skills and intercultural sensitivity are. Contact Brad Bohrer if interested: bbohrer_GB@brethren.org

Summer Fun III And there’s that little island experience in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, sponsored by the Eco-Justice office of the National Council of Churches. If you’re between 22 and 40, and you’re committed to connecting your faith and earth care, this could be for you!

Eco-fact: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.” - Aldo Leopold, author, Sand County Almanac

Justice Fact: US chocolate consumption is 25 pounds per person per year—or about $15 billion annually. The price of a chocolate bar equals three days’ wage for child worker on Ivory Coast cocoa plantation (Carol Off, Bitter Chocolate).

Faith Fact: “We have always been here. The Creator put us here to take care of this part of the world. The caribou were created alongside our people; the caribou retain part of the Gwich'in heart, and Gwich'in retain part of the caribou heart.” – Sarah James, Gwich’in leader, Arctic Village, Alaska