The issue
A household is considered food secure when the family doesn’t live in hunger or fear of starvation, so food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. Poor households often have a consistently difficult time affording quality food and typically end up with poor diets characterized by lots of starch and refined sugar. And as one expert put it, “…it's fair to assume, these people are not loading up on brown rice and quinoa [an organic grain]. So, we're talking about empty calories that predispose people to becoming overweight and definitely increase the risk for heart disease and diabetes.”   Read more...

What comes to mind when one hears the word poverty?

Scarcity, shortage, paucity, deficiency, dearth are words that are in the Thesaurus. Yet, the word confuses me in the way it is commonly used.

I live in Sri Lanka, a developing country with GDP of about US $1,000 per capita. In western terms, this is a poor nation. I became a resident of Sri Lanka in 1988 having lived in Canada for 15 years. Economically, Sri Lankans have less material wealth than an average person in the west. In happiness, I am not sure.   Read more...

October 14th is a significant anniversary. On this date, the Peace Corps was proposed by then-Senator John F. Kennedy. On Tuesday, the Peace Corps will be 48 years old. In its time, the Peace Corps has sent nearly 200,000 volunteers around the world to fulfill its three-point mission:

• To help the people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained workers
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

Poverty is such a pregnant term. Probably the first image that comes to mind is physical. We can so easily visualize people alive, but virtually skeletons. Sadly, thousands today are burdened with malnutrition and the anguish of not knowing where their next meal will come from. In the mind’s eye it is easy to envisage beggars, shantytowns, inner city slums, and refugee camps. Associated with those come images of crime, violence, and danger. In fact, who anywhere can say they live in safety?

But there are other less apparent dimensions of poverty, too. Emotional, for example. How many people live in the abyss of emotional starvation? How many cover up their echoing hollowness with excessive drug use, selfish sex, constant stimulus, violence, or greedy relationships? How many live in the grip of existential loneliness and despair?   Read more...

Poverty in Africa is predominantly rural. More than 70% of the continent’s poor people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food an livelihood, yet in recent years, many rural areas have suffered from a decline in the capacity of agriculture to provide livelihood for their inhabitants and development assistance to agriculture is decreasing. In sub Saharan Africa, more than 218 million people live in extreme poverty.

In many African economies, the rural situation is characterized by continuing stagnation, poor production, low income and increasing vulnerability of poor people. Lack of access to markets is a problem for many small scale enterprises in Africa. The rural population is often isolated beyond reach of safety nets. They are vulnerable to diseases like HIV/AIDS which has put an unbearable strain on poor rural households where labour is the primary income earning asset. In addition, health care services are often inadequate or non-existent.   Read more...

Glenn Kibble my Thermodynamics lecturer at the Seneca College Mechanical Engineering course in Ontario back in 1980 said there are three “T”s in life. Thermodynamics, Tennis and the other “T” he got away with as it was an all male class.

At that time I was mostly interested in the unmentionable “T”, yet I took the fundamental nature of the thermodynamic laws to the existence of our physical universe for granted as true. However, as I live a life of inquiry, study human nature and spirituality I am beginning to question the laws of thermodynamics as final scientific truths.   Read more...

The current financial market troubles have led me to look more closely at our economic ideas and rules. Capitalism is based on so called growth, which means the economy is stuck if you don't grow or if it grows too slow. In a certain way it makes sense: if you sell more you can enjoy more material things, which generates more spending and therefore more money for others as well. That way a huge amount of people benefit from those 100 USD that you spend. Even if you just put it in the bank it contributes to society because the banks can't stand the temptation of writing a loan to the first person who wants to buy anything ... even an overvalued house.

Here's the problem with investments: If the market for cars will grow 10% next year as the economy is going well (this is not now by the way) and every car maker wants to own those 10%. For that they need to invest heavily in marketing, production, etc. So as everybody is investing to grow faster than all the others, the market has to grow 20% to justify the total investment made by the sector ... so big surprise ... many are going to loose money. That's capitalism: everybody borrows money in the wave of positivity and greed and then ... what a surprise, the growth wasn't sustainable!   Read more...

Muriel Lester, tireless peaceworker, wrote, “The job of the peacemaker is to stop war, to purify the world, to get it saved from poverty and riches, to heal the sick, to comfort the sad, to wake up those who have not yet found God, to create joy and beauty wherever you go, and to find God in everything and in everyone.”

Only that?   Read more...

Quality time together
Many couples already spend considerable time apart because of career demands and other responsibilities, but the need for quality time together often increased dramatically when preparing for a wedding. What was once free time is now spent picking out invitations and meeting with vendors, so they are looking for ways to stay connected. Having a scheduled workout appointment with a personal trainer is a way to guarantee that they’ll have at least a bit of bonding time every week.   Read more...

Whenever I read the articles sent into www.odemagazine.com, I am always struck by several things. The first, of course, is the hopefulness. Also there is creativity and imagination. The focus is not on greed or grabbing, but rather on openness, generosity, and trust. Plus the diversity of expressions, projects, and happenings are very titillating. And like icing on the cake, there is often a touch of humor and fun, too. Just the fact that so many souls from so many backgrounds and outlooks contribute is very exciting indeed.

The prism of perspectives, creativity, and hope-filled endeavors are magnificent, but there is a deeper dimension, too. And that is an underlying theme or pattern that holds them all together. That unifying principle might be compared to a white light that bursts forth into a spectrum of many colors, or the reverse, where the many return to their common source, the light. From the Buddhist perspective it could be seen as the integral relationship between emptiness and form.   Read more...