Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1264

Dan O'Neill, President of Mercy Corps, sends along the following

Dear Board Members,

I wanted to send you a quick update on the leading role Mercy Corps is taking in response to the Horn of Africa crisis. We are presently helping more than one million people to survive and are ramping up to help even more.  While we move to provide humanitarian assistance to drought affected families in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, we have also mobilized in the United States and Europe to lead policy advocacy and fundraising efforts at home.  Our humanitarian response is driven by the worst regional drought in 60 years, which has created a severe food crisis affecting 12 million people.  The United Nations has declared five areas of southern Somalia famine zones.  Meanwhile, U.S. officials announced that an estimated 29,000 children under five have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia and that another 600,000 are at risk.  

Our Humanitarian Response:  Mercy Corps has been working in the Horn of Africa for years and has teams up and running in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.  Our primary goal is to intervene in villages and towns to keep people from having to flee to camps in desperation.  This approach saves both lives and limited financial resources.  Our drought response work in the region includes: a) programs in 20+ Kenyan villages providing life-saving support to 120,000 people; b) assessments in Somali regions of Ethiopia to be followed by the provision of water, cash for work, and plastic sheeting for shelter; and c) programs in Somalia aiding 260,000 drought-affected Somalis with lifesaving essentials such as water and food, as well as preexisting work in education, governance, and peace-building.  As with all of our work, we are also keeping an eye toward building communities back better so as to prepare for, if not prevent, future crises. 

Our Policy Advocacy:  The crisis in the Horn of Africa is not only a natural disaster, but also a man made one.  The effects of drought have been compounded by insecurity, slow and inadequate support from funders, and legal restrictions limiting aid to areas of Somalia.  Effective humanitarian response therefore hinges on strong advocacy to increase institutional funding, ease legal restrictions on aid in southern Somalia, and enhance media coverage driving private giving.  Mercy Corps has successfully positioned itself as a leader in Horn of Africa advocacy through media pieces on CNN, the Huffington Post, and other national media; on-air interviews with NPR's Morning Edition; and Congressional testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee on African Affairs (starting at minute 58).  Mercy Corps' advocacy has helped create an additional $105 million in U.S. funding for the Horn of Africa as well as a much needed easing of the restrictions on humanitarian assistance to civilians living in Al Shabab-controlled southern Somalia. 

Our Fund-Raising:  Mercy Corps has also led in fund raising for the Horn of Africa, although we would be among the first to concede that families in the Horn of Africa both need and deserve much more.  As is so often the case with slow onset humanitarian emergencies, both private and institutional support have room to improve.  Despite a difficult funding environment, we have already raised $2 million in private funds for the drought and have another $1.2 million in institutional funds pending grant approval.  Mercy Corps' has also succeeded in stoking early media coverage of the crisis, leading this week to feature stories on the Horn of Africa in most major media outlets.  Our advocacy breakthroughs in this area are encouraging, as enhanced media coverage of the drought is critical to growing private giving. 

Looking forward, Mercy Corps will continue to expand its lifesaving drought response programs in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.  We will also continue preexisting work on livelihoods, food security, governance, education, and peace building, as these programs are critical to building resilient communities capable of surviving, if not preventing, future crises.  As always, we greatly appreciate your support of our programs as well as your efforts to enhance our advocacy through your own network of influencers.  To those ends, attached please find a brief factsheet on Mercy Corps and the Horn of Africa that I hope you will share with your professional and personal contacts.

You can donate to Mercy Corps here.

Some Concerns about Theology of the Body

from the Secretary for the Pontifical Council for Family.

It seems to me that TOB is a double-edged sword. It can use sex and marriage as a doorway into talking about human persons and the family as an icon of the Blessed Trinity (basically what JPII did), or it can start by talking about God and wind up talking about sex. That can be done right, but it's a very dangerous and tricky curve to negotiate and both concupiscence and our culture marinated in sex make it highly unlikely we will succeed. If we start with God and wind up talking about sex, the odds are pretty high that we will make the same blunder as the pagans and wind up worshipping sex.

Contents under pressure. Use with caution.

646 Followers!

The typically perceptive Steven Greydanus writes a typically perceptive piece about our (maybe it's just Hollywood's?) fascination with superheroes and what the current crop reveal about us.

I naturally loathe superheroes since they are the mortal enemies of we supervillains.

That is all!

If you are jittery about Mary...

...read this.

Still in Wenatchee. Back tomorrow!

Greetings from Wenatchee!

Two things:

1. If you are Thomas Tucker, please give us a call at the Drollmans! We'd love to see you!

2. I am a Cosmic Killjoy!

3. That is all! Playtime!

Prayer Request

If you could, please keep the Church in China in your prayers. I just spent a month there, and it really means a lot to our Chinese brothers and sisters to know that Christians in other countries are praying for them, and that they aren't forgotten.

And pray for me, too...I hope to move back next year, and need to work pretty hard to make it happen!

Father, we pray for the Church in China that it would grow and thrive. We pray also for your servant that he would return safe and sound to his home. Mother Mary and St. Francis Xavier, pray for us! We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen!

G.K. Chesterton's Distributism

In which my friend Dale Ahlquist sketches the common sense of Chesterton's outlook on things economic and, as is his custom, makes infinitely more sense than the tribal yak yak of our polarized politics.  He will, of course, by shouted down as a socialist by the dogmatic and close-minded wingnuts of the "Capitalism is Sacred Tradition" Right and shouted down as an archaic reactionary by the dogmatic and close-minded wingnuts of the "Sexual Libertinism is Sacred Tradition" Left.  He's still right.

And with that, I'm off.  We are are heading out to Wenatchee tomorrow to see some friends and I will be back on Tuesday.  Till then, you kids don't put no beans up your noses.

Forget Michael O'Brien...

If you want a really smart piece of literary criticism regarding Harry Potter, not to mention some very interesting insights about the psychology and theology of belief in magic, you can't do better than the fantastic John C. Wright.  I would be particularly interested to see John and Steven Greydanus have a conversation about this, because both have very interesting things to say about magic.

Vapid Narcissist to Resume Pointless Tour

MSM poised to obsess over empty meaningless self-promoting publicity glutton all over again.

They should all be put in a giant jar, like spiders, and the jar should be shaken every hour or so, just so they will all eat each other.

Hopefully, he's serious

Those of us familiar with this guy (one of those criminal jerks the public inexplicable turn into folk heroes) are glad the entire $1.3 million goes to restitution to his victims.  I can only hope he's serious about wanting to atone.