World Ark Magazine - September/October 2008 - (Page 33)

By TOM PETERSON Heifer Senior Vice President of Communications & Marketing aiting with my younger son in the elementary school auditorium for the holiday program to begin, I ask what he learned in school that day. “VCCV,” he says. “VCCV? What’s that?” You know, Vowel, Consonant, Consonant, Vowel. He then looks at a banner on the auditorium wall that reads “Progress!” “Like O-G-R-E,” he says. \ I laugh; I had never noticed the “ogre” in “progress.” But there it is, right in the middle, big as, well, an ogre. In fact, ogres are always in the center of progress. Ending slavery, the civil rights advances, women’s suffrage, improved labor laws and other social changes have never occurred without taking them on. Sometimes ogres literally have attack dogs, guns, prisons and sophisticated propaganda machines. They may kill us if we make trouble. Other times, the ogre is inside us—an emotional block or the need to change a habit. But taking on ogres is something we avoid. Even when it is to our advantage, change is hard, uncomfortable. Ogres are not new to our world. A good parallel for the enormity of ending poverty today can be found in the 19th century struggle to end slavery. In the 1830s, most citizens north of the Mason-Dixon Line avoided facing slavery for many of the reasons we avoid today’s poverty. They didn’t want to stir up trouble. Those brave enough to preach against slavery, from Pennsylvania to Ohio, risked being ridiculed, tarred and feathered, beaten, run out of town or even killed. Imagine a jumbo jet filled with children, crashing before our eyes. Think of the response: Emergency crews descend on the scene, the world watches on CNN, a frantic search for survivors, but there are none. Everyone feels helpless and a day of mourning captivates the world. Now imagine that jet full of children crashing every 21 minutes all day long, day after day, and night after night. In the 1980s, when UNICEF’s James Grant first used the crashing-plane image, 40,000 children under age 5 died every day from mostly preventable diseases, especially malaria. Thanks to efforts of UNICEF and many others, today that number has fallen to 29,000 children a day. But at one death every three seconds, this is still not acceptable. One needless death is too many. We can end global poverty and hunger, but only if we overcome the ogres of apathy, fear, cynicism and paralysis by analysis. www.heifer.org September/October 2008 | WORLD ARK 33 http://www.heifer.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Ark Magazine - September/October 2008

World Ark Magazine - September/October 2008 Contents Letters For the Record The Good Life Asked and Answered Digging Up the Past Not a Drop to Drink Facing the Ogres of Progress Mixed Media Heifer Bulletin Heifer Spirit World Ark Market Calendar First Person

World Ark Magazine - September/October 2008

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