1st Presbyterian Church

I accepted the invitation of my friend, Rose, to attend her church. After picking me up at my hotel we drove up the Pali Highway and through the tunnel as if we were going to Kailua. But at the first traffic light we turned left and headed Northwest on Highway 83. She soon turned left again, onto the grounds of the Ko'olau Golf Club.


To my astonishment, the 1st Presbyterian Church of Honolulu co-exists with a functioning golf resort. This clearly wasn't like any Catholic Church I had ever attended! Rose gave me a brief tour, introduced me to several friends of hers and then we sat down for the service. It didn't have the formality of masses I was familiar with but everyone seemed full of great joy, which I admired

The highlight of the service was hearing a 21 year old woman from the Philippines talk about her life growing up in poverty and how an organization called Compassion International dramatically helped her and her family. It was a pretty powerful and emotional talk she gave. She never played the victim though but just matter of factly related her upbringing, which I dare say was probably much more severe than anyone who has a computer to read these very words.

Afterwards we were invited to view info packets about kids around the world who need sponsoring. I recorded the information about 4 of them, all in Latin America. I absolutely plan on sponsoring one and perhaps even two children once I get back home. For just $384 per year you can dramatically change the path of another's life; someone who is truly in need. Apologies if this sounds like an infomercial but the whole experience had a very profound effect on me. This agency reportedly has a solid track record on transparency and not wasting money on bureaucracy, two factors which are absolutely critical to me.
The church & golf course reside directly below some pretty amazing mountains. Next time I come back to Oahu I plan to hike up one of these!

The Challenge for Black America

Jonathan Kay's latest posting refers the reader to this table about the living arrangements of American children under 18 years of age in 2006. I've done the required calculations to convert the numbers into percentages:

		White	Black	Hispanic	Asian
Living with both parents		76%	35%	66%	83%
Mother only		16%	51%	25%	10%
Father only		5%	4%	4%	3%
Neither parent		3%	10%	5%	3%

Anybody who doesn't see the obvious problem in the Black community either has an agenda or is so daft to not be worth listening to. Hmmm, might Jesse Jackson have a few things to learn from Bill Cosby?

Seniors Being Evicted Blame Gov't

Hat tip to my friend, V, for directing me to this story. It's about 10 sets of seniors on Vancouver Island who have been living in a waterfront trailer park but will be evicted next year.

Some facts:

• None own the land that their mobile homes sit on.
• Each has been paying about $3,400 per year in rent, which works out to $283.33 per month.

Of course I have sympathy for each individual senior. But to try to paint the new land owners or the government as villains is beyond ridiculousness and unfair. I think most anyone in Canada would appreciate being able to live on waterfront property for less than $300 per month. But when did renting property give one the right to live there forever?

Furthermore, saving on rent for so long, what did these people do with all the money they were saving on rent? Was it invested wisely or spent otherwise? Are the tax dollars of those seniors who skimped on luxuries and vacations all of their lives supposed to bail out those who did not?

I realize that in asking these tough questions, I probably come across as an uncaring bastard. Not so. In my work with BCDD I've come across many seniors like this. For various reasons, they've spent most of their savings all their lives and are practically impoverished by the time they reached retirement. Some may have been swindled, some may have had other unfortunate incidents occur but one has to wonder if many just never thought ahead beyond the "fun years". Now that they're in the predicament they're in, to what degree is the government (which means you & me) supposed to bail them out?

The Dark Side of Environmentalists

Environmentalism has clearly become the new secular religion. And in the same way that misguided Christian missionaries looked down upon "more primitive" peoples for centuries, so now are environmentalists looking down upon anyone who dares challenge their rhetoric.

I just finished watching "Mine Your Own Business", a brilliant, realistic documentary of how righteous, misguided environmentalists around the world are taking great strides to keep poor people in poverty for perpetuity.

If you get a chance, don't miss watching this film. Roy Innis, Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, has written an excellent review of the documentary, which you can read here.

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: Same Old Spin, Same Old Inaction

Vancouver Sun columnist Pete McMartin wrote a brilliant, cynical piece which you can read here. Fellow blogger and the best talkshow host in Canada, David Berner, beat me to the punch with this witty commentary. But I couldn't resist send this letter into the Vancouver Sun:

Pete McMartin's insightful column about the Downtown Eastside Poverty Industry (DEPI) hit so many chords that my head felt like a church bell tower on a Sunday morning! When exactly did it become acceptable for endless amounts of public money to be spent with absolutely no meaningful, helpful results being achieved? It seems that actually helping the less fortunate has been replaced with feeling good about dialoguing and conferencing with other like-minded holier-than-thou souls. With all this hot air being generated, Stephane Dion and Al Gore should declare this area an environmental hotspot!

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of one of these DEPI groups. I'm convinced that the sentiment around the room would be that if we feel good about doing something then that's more important than actually accomplishing anything. Don't worry about the fact that drug use and poverty is actually increasing. That's just a minor technicality.

At the end of the day, everything looks pretty rosy for everyone employed by the poverty industry. Their bills are paid and since things are only getting worse, they have guaranteed job security for life. They've guilted large corporations into making donations, which in turn makes them feel better on the PR front. Nobody loses, right? Well, except for the thousands of people on the Downtown Eastside who are struggling to overcome their addictions and squalid surroundings. As a recovered heroin addict once told me, "I was never able to get myself better until I hit rock bottom." That's a sad fact that no one in DEPI wants to admit.

On a personal note, hearing about more public money being wasted like this especially galls me. Contrast this with the completely volunteer organization I'm involved with, BC Digital Divide. We allow anyone to apply for a computer but are careful that we're not just giving them out to be sold on the street or replace one they've received from us before. Just today I gave out two computers, to two lower income ladies. Indeed, it cost them nothing but I'm fairly confident that they will treat them with great respect and take good care of them. Our efforts are modeled on "a hand up". It seems that all of DEPI programs are based on "a hand out". And anyone who knows they can continually receive a hand out will generally keep on taking it forever.

Reality Wake-up Call

Yesterday was an interesting one, full of educational insights. I had the great pleasure to engage in extended discussions with a woman who had recently moved here from Venezuela and a man who is just visiting from Argentina. What I heard from them vividly reminded me of how incredibly fortunate all of us in Canada and the U.S. are and how our problems pale in comparison to those experienced by so many others around the world.

Both of these people are well educated. Both are middle class. Both work hard. But both have great obstacles placed in front of them in their respective countries that will likely forever prevent them from ever getting very far ahead, owning a home, not worrying that poverty and/or imprisonment could happen any day. Do you think these last two concerns occupy the mind of most middle-class North Americans? Not likely.

Let's look at each of these countries individually:

Venezuela: Located on the northern edge of South America, this nation is incredibly oil-rich, with great wealth abound. Since 1999 it has been ruled as a virtual dictatorship by Hugo Chavez. This fellow is the great hero of North American socialists, as he's promised to redistribute the country's wealth to the poor. A lovely concept in theory, but in practice it ain't much fun when the government takes your property to help with the redistribution. Disagree with them and you get put in jail ... or worse.

Argentina: I've often heard that 100 years ago this nation, which is "more European than Europe", was the 4th wealthiest country in the world. Things have deteriorated greatly since then. The worst period was 1999 - 2002, aptly known as the Argentine Economic Crisis. Many people lost everything. The father of the fellow I spoke with lost his factory and never recovered. The reasons for Argentina's problems are numerous, but some of the more prominent ones are: Corruption and over-entitlement.

I've long said that Canada doesn't have any real problems so we invent fake problems just so we have something to complain about! One thing is for sure: When you have great prosperity, you have the luxury of worrying about the most trivial issues. Poverty and hunger tend to focus one's attention on what's really important!

The Pursuit of Happyness

Last night I saw Will Smith's new film, "The Pursuit of Happyness". It's based on the true story of Chris Gardner, a bright, well spoken African-American man who struggled through poverty in the early 1980's in San Francisco to raise his young son on his own.

This film will make you laugh and make you cry. But more than anything it will make you think - about adversity, about modern-day poverty, and about how relatively easy so many of us have compared with those amongst us who don't. This film has motivated me to forever stop feeling sorry for myself and take advantage of the huge benefits that have been given to me in this life. Highly recommended!