The Jubilee Blog

Jubilee Sunday From the Inside Out

The Sabbath Year could not be off to a better start on the Congregations end of things! Jubilee Sunday on January 21 was an enormous success. 

After seven new congregations signed up with Jubilee USA the week of Jubilee Sunday, a bunch of the existing Jubilee Congregations that participated in a special service shared experiences on the Jubilee Congregations conference call, and I shared my own impressions of the Jubilee service I attended. The following two blogs are our Jubilee Sunday stories.

'Ready to Rise' on Jubilee Sunday
Visit the Jubilee USA site to learn about becoming a Jubilee Congregation.

I had the genuine pleasure of attending a Jubilee Sunday service at The Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, on an invitation from Barbara Johnson of the church’s social action committee. 

After spending much time promoting the Jubilee worship materials, it was amazing to see the materials come to life. The church stood and sang the Jubilee Hymn “Are You Ready to Rise?” that was distributed in our worship packet.  The song was led powerfully by Noelle Stanley. They also used the dramatic script of “Child of the World, Child of Debt,” performed stunningly by Ann Terpstra and Lance Haworth. When Reality Man dumped the dirt into Child of the World’s water glass, I almost cried. Lance told me he always gets chosen as the villain ever since he impressed everybody as the Grinch in a Christmas play. I made a mental note of that for the next “IMF stole Christmas” protest. 

The ministerial intern Archene Turner did a moving sermon and tied it to racism in America after speaking about the history of Jubilee activism as well as doing the Luke 4 scripture reading and reflection. I set up a literature and action table after each of two services. By the end of the day, I had collected about 30 valentines for our February 6, Liberia action and later received several thoughtful and inquisitive emails from folks I met that day. 

I had a wonderful day. They all invited me to come back again, and I don’t intend to pass that generous invitation up.

—post by Nate Fishman

Report Back From Jubilee Sunday Part Two

Pastor Steve Herder with St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Whittier, California, had an outstanding Sunday. The African Children's Choir, 26 talented children from Uganda, sang at the service to the audience’s delight. Steve handed out Jubilee Sabbath Year brochures to each family present. There were many guests there from out of town that particular day who were pleasantly surprised by the Jubilee Sunday service. Steve ended the day with letter-writing to Congress and making Liberia valentines for the February 6 action.

Bob Orr spoke about his inspirational ceremony at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Santa Rosa, California. He combined Jubilee Sunday and Martin Luther King Day to reflect the common theme of justice. His congregation used a chain made out of pipe covering to chain young people together. They then broke the chain to symbolize the breaking of the chains of debt. They used a chain they made last year using plastic pipe materials, black spray paint, and tape. Last year, they roped the chain around the whole church. Bob also spoke at a church in Kensington earlier this year and showed his pictures from the Nicaragua delegation he went on with Jubilee and Witness for Peace. The members were interested, and they dedicated a portion of their service this year to Jubilee Sunday. Bob also collected Liberia hearts and passed out Liberia fact sheets to his Congregation.

Nancy Johns from Aston, Pennsylvania, but recently moved in to Portland, Oregon, spoke about her discussion with her pastor. Unfortunately, he didn't use the material she gave him, or mention the Jubilee USA Network. He did read from the Jubilee scripture, though. Later Nancy asked why he didn't use the Jubilee material, and he responded, "I'm planting seeds."

Sr. Betty Kane at Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia said the material regarding Jubilee Sunday was very helpful. "You could have heard a pin drop," she reported, “as the homily was presented.” Everyone filled out the postcards, donated, and the materials were very well received. The people at Sr. Betty's church that day also included many visitors from other areas, which worked out nicely.

Darlene Krause joined the conference call briefly to say that her small congregation in Santa Clara, California, had a great time during their Jubilee Sunday service.

Jubilee staff spoke with 60 Congregations who had confirmed plans to participate in the special Jubilee Sunday event, and we hope to hear back from everyone else with their own stories.

—post by Nate Fishman and Laura Shaw

UK Chancellor talks to G8 in Supports Liberia's Debt Relief

There's a great story in The Guardian about Britain's Chancellor Gordon Brown talking with Liberia President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf about eliminating the country's $3-billion debt:

Brown Presses G8 to Help Liberia
By Larry Elliot
Gordon Brown is seeking to put fresh impetus behind debt relief for the world's poorest countries by pressing Britain's G8 partners to back the write-off of the $3bn (£1.53bn) owed by Liberia to its creditors. READ MORE

JUBILEE USA IN THE NEWS

GUEST EDITORIAL: Witness for Justice: A Different Kind of Slavery
Chicago Defender
By Sara Critchfield

Debt Relief: Advocacy group points to the Bible
Winston-Salem Journal
By Katherine Boyle, Religion News Service

Long-time Supporter Reflects on Liberia Valentines

I worship in a small Episcopal congregation (about 30 on a Sunday) in Fargo, North Dakota.

When I made some valentines and brought them to coffee hour, signing them was welcomed as an opportunity for busy people to do SOMETHING to express their support of economic justice and the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.

Also, they learned something about Liberia.

Personally, this project brought memories of the three shoeboxes of miscellaneous homemade chains which friends and I -- then living in Arlington, Virginia -- supplied for the Jubilee 2000 "Chain-in" in the spring of 1999.

I don't know how close these flurries get to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (I would like to picture his desk flooded with hearts), but some people must open them up and be impressed with the variety and individuality of those who are involved, when they see something other than mass emails or signatures on a petition (as important as these are).

Peace.

Joanne Dropper
Fargo, North Dakota

Another Perspective on the WSF

• Download Declaration On Debt from the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, sent to us from the Jubilee South listserv by Eric Toussaint, Secrétariat international for Committee for the Cancellation of the Third World Debt (CATDM).
• This is Not the World Social Forum I'd Like to Attend: Another perspective on the World Social Forum from Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Pakistan Labor Party.

Conversations, Conditionalities & Conquering

Monday, January 29, 2007

We started today with a visit to the Ministry of Finance, where we met with Pamela Kasese Bwalya.

Ms. Bwalya explained to us that since 2000, Zambia’s debt has shrunk from $7 billion to about $700 million, creating space in the budget, enabling the country to do more for its people...or so we thought We learned that debt relief will free up $40 million in the 2007 budget. The priority areas for using this money includes agriculture, agriculture, water and sanitation, education and health.

We were surprised to learn that the amount of savings was so small –- and almost all of it due to IMF debt cancellation. Based on a debt sustainability analysis by the World Bank which finds Zambia’s debt to be “sustainable,” Zambia is ineligible for more concessional credits from the World Bank. This means that World Bank debt cancellation won’t actually free up additional resources in Zambia in 2007.

In presenting the government’s priorities, Bwalya pointed to the government’s new Fifth National Development Plan, which outlines the government’s plans to meet the Millennium Development Goals. But they have a more than $750 million financing gap to reach the goals.

As we asked Ms. Bwalya what we could do, she suggested we lobby our government and other donors to provide more grants to Zambia to enable it to reach its development goals.

After the Ministry, we went to visit our friends at the Catholic Center for Justice, Development and Peace (CCJDP). There we met Mulima Kufesika-Akapelwa, Emmanuel Mali, and Namukolo Liywalli, who are working hard to monitor how the government uses the funds released by debt relief and to work to hold the government accountable for promises to increase social sector spending.

Mulima confirmed that “the need is too great compared to the monies we are receiving.”

We also talked about the role of the IMF in Zambia. Right now CCJDP and other groups we have met including Jubilee Zambia, Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection, and Civil Society for Poverty Reduction are very concerned about an IMF proposal to put in a Value Added Tax (VAT). The tax would be applied to books, mosquito nets, food, and drugs. The organizations are understandably concerned that these taxes would hit the poorest hardest.

While it is clear that Zambia needs to increase its tax revenue -– a critical source of finance to ensure its development -– many in our group wondered about corporate taxes in Zambia. We learned that many foreign companies are given five year tax holidays! Common practice at the end of five years is that the companies disband, and re-form under a new name so that can preserve their tax holiday.

We also learned that Zambia gets only miniscule royalties on the extraction of its copper. The mining companies pay almost nothing for removing the valuable metal, while charging buyers a price that more than makes a profit. The group agreed that rather than charge the poor a tax on food, it was high time that corporations paid their fair share in Zambia.

We also learned about privatization. The government, under the direction of the IMF has recently privatized the national bank. Organizations are concerned about the impacts of this privatization on small farmers and small business. Will the new Dutch company which owns the national bank extend them loans?

We’ll be meeting the IMF Resident Representative Joseph Kakzoa in Zambia tomorrow, and we have a lot of questions for him. We’ll report on how it goes tomorrow.

We ended the day with a visit to an amazing organization called Women for Change led by Emily Sikazwe. This amazing group, founded in 1992, works with more than 600 groups and more than 200,000 people in the most rural and isolated parts of Zambia. They do economic empowerment, human rights education, HIV/AIDS prevention, and advocacy.

As Emily told us, “Poverty is human made and so humans can eradicate it. Debt can be cancelled by human beings because we created it.”

Women for Change works directly in rural areas and they also mobilize. Emily told us the story of how they demonstrated outside a hotel where the IMF mission was meeting in Zambia last year. They got arrested. “We get arrested, we get bashed, we get threatened with deportation, but life goes on,” she said.

As we were getting ready to leave Emily invited us to her home for our final dinner before we depart for home on Tuesday night! We are looking forward to some great Zambian nshima with Emily and our other friends on our last night here.

--Neil Watkins

Delegation Meets With Members of Zambia Parliament

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Today, we had the opportunity to meet with several Zambian Members of Parliament.

Hon. Kambwiwi Chisamba, MP, told us, “Thanks to debt relief, we have been able to rehabilitate our schools and our hospitals. But we have made many sacrifices and we still have a long way to go.”

One of the problems we had heard about in Siavonga, Mr. Chisamaba affirmed for us: “Because of benchmarks by the IMF, we are not able to pay our nurses good enough salaries. They are going to places like Australia.”

We learned from our friends at Jubilee Zambia that the IMF is requiring Zambia to keep its public sector wage bill (wages for teachers, doctors, nurses, etc) to below 8 percent of GDP. The following paragraph is paragraph 8, Section II Medium-term adjustment strategy, from the IMF's "Memorandum of Economic & Finance Policies" for Zambia, released in 1999. The 5 percent at the end was later changed to 8 percent:
However, an updated payroll analysis suggests that such a sharp reduction in the public service cannot be realized without reducing employment in education and health care. With the assistance of the World Bank, we are carrying out more detailed work to determine the optimal size of the civil service in the medium term.

Oxfam, a member of Jubilee USA Network, assessed how IFI conditionalities hurt Zambia's education and health care systems in September 2004.

The Hon. Jacob Brighton Chongo, another Member of Parliament, told us, “When we are able to pay our teachers more, they will be more motivated. We want the government to use the proceeds from debt relief to increase wages of civil service employees like teachers and nurses. If not, we are afraid the conditions will negate the good impacts of debt relief.

Finally. Hon. Michael Andrew Nyrende talked about the need to place parliamentary scrutiny in the process of contracting new loans to avoid an outbreak of a new debt crisis. “We want a model as Members of Parliament to be able to scrutinize new loans. Let’s not make the same mistakes again.”

--post by Neil Watkins

Debt Cancellation Relieves Only Some of the Burden

Friday, January 26, 2007

On Friday, our first full day in Zambia, we drove three hours to the south of the capital Lusaka to a town called Siavonga, to witness the impacts of debt relief firsthand.

After a long, bumpy ride through the Zambian countryside, we arrived at the Siavonga Rural Health Clinic.

One of the first people we met as we toured the clinic was Grace Chibanda, a pharmacist. She showed us the pharmacy in the clinic, which was full of anti-retroviral medicine and drugs for malaria and other illnesses.

“Debt relief is a good thing,” Grace told us. “It is getting medicines for people who didn't have it before.”

In April 2006, the Zambian government abolished so-called “user fees” in all rural health clinics in Zambia, including the one we visited in Siavonga. 

This meant that while before costs may have deterred the poorest from coming into the clinic, now care was free. Nurses and doctors confirmed that they had seen an increase in patients since April.

It was good to see the reality of the impacts of debt relief firsthand. And reassuring to know that debt relief is getting to many who need it in Zambia.

But as we toured the hospital, we heard from the nurses and the hospitals sole doctor that while debt relief is a good thing, there are still many challenges facing the Siavonga clinic and the health system in Zambia more generally.

As the clinic’s only doctor on duty that day, Dr. Evanista Kunka, told us, the biggest remaining challenges include:
• Having a consistent drug supply. While they were stocked up that day, sometimes they would be out of drugs for weeks or months at a time.
• Transport. The hospital was not full on the day we visited because it is the rainy season and many people who are sick can’t get from the rural areas into Siavonga. Transportation is needed to get doctors and nurses out to patients who are dying without access to case.
• Adequate pay for doctors and salaries. Doctors or nurses often leave Zambia because they can earn higher salaries in Namibia or South Africa. The “brain drain” of doctors and nurses is a serious issue facing all of Zambia.

As we drove back to Lusaka, I thought about how encouraging it is to see progress. But the thought that overwhelmed me was how much more still must be done and the challenges that remain.

--post by Neil Watkins

For more information about Jubilee USA Network, visit us online at www.jubileeusa.org.

Beware of Big Businesses

This is a story from two Zambian women: Gloria, a business woman, and Ella, a consultant. This is a story told in their words. Not my own:

Both: They have increased the fuel costs, so now people are walking because they can not afford the bus.  The food is too expensive, people are having one meal a day. Some do not even have that meal. A loaf of bread costs  $0.70 which is prohibitive. 

The households are being run by children, orphans, who have nothing left, the eldest at 12 years of age is looking after all the other children, so they have to stop school. Because of SIMS [HIV/AIDS].

The new “investors” come in and abuse the wage structure. You are so happy to have a job, but you do not even know how much you are going to be paid. You can not even afford transportation to work, you have to walk. The job does not have a pension, so once you are off, that is it.

Gloria: What I want is to increase the salaries, take care of the doctors and nurses salaries, then they will remain with us. Create job opportunities, screen the investors who come in.  They only have the profit in mind, they will do what ever they can to make money, at the expense of the worker who will not get anything.  They are employed on a casual basis. 

Ella: The wages must be increased and the health sector salaries must be increased. The anti-retroviral drugs must be moved to the rural areas so that the people there can access it. We need more counselors so people can understand what AIDS is.