First week as a Graduate Student

Last week was my first week as a graduate student at the Campolo School for Social Change. I've been inspired, invigorated, and renewed in sooooo many ways; I'm also exhausted! We had a couple of eleven to twelve hour days in the classroom (including breaks and meals)... but we've learned so much, and had many great discussions.

I wish I could share everything that I've learned and digested this past week, but that would be impossible. I'm taking three classes this semester: Urban Issues in a Global Context, Christ and the City, and Applied Research and Evaluation. Last week I took the first two; but for the entire semester I'll be going to class every week for the research course. I'll also be doing work for the other two courses.

The Urban Issues in a Global Context course has focused on tying in urban issues here in the United States with issues happening internationally. At times it gets to be a lot-- thinking about all the injustice of the world... and I know we haven't even really delved into things. One evening we had a speaker from Princeton talk about world youth issues. Some of the stastics are staggering, here are some examples:

*HIV/AIDS is the first cause of mortality of youth, followed by violence and injuries. Ten million young people currently live with HIV/AIDS.
*Over 200 million young people, or 18 per cent of all youth, live on less than one dollar a day, and 515 million on less than two dollars a day
*133 million youth are illiterate

Those are just a couple facts from the World Youth Report, the link to this report is listed on the right hand side of this website. The four major issues facing urban youth internationally are: HIV/AIDS, Sex Trade, Child Labor Laws, and Poverty. We watched some video clips and learned some facts about each of these issues, it's so heartbreaking. It's beyond heartbreaking, really.

An article we read for this same course discussed the differences in lifestyle between a man who lived in Kentucky off of public assistance to a man who was a doctor in Congo in Africa. Here is a link to it: The Mountain man and the Surgeon. Both of these men had about the same income. The Doctor was able to take care of his family of twelve, and run his practice in the city he worked in. He was well respected, and his wages were able to pay for a four bedroom home in which his twleve family members live. The man in Kentucky could barely make it on his own, and was considered to be living in poverty. I don't neccessarily know what to make of that-- but it's crazy when you start to compare American poverty to international poverty. It's definitely not the same. A quote from the article says,"A Congolese doctor, a man most other Congolese would consider wealthy, is worse off materially than most poor people in America." I came across a quote in one of my books that Mother Teresa made when she visited New York City-- she said she hadn't seen such horrible poverty before, even in Calcutta. The author of the book I was reading said that she was saying this based on relative poverty. Because there is so much wealth and abundance in the United States, when you see the poverty in inner-city New York, it's striking. To me it feels complicated; it's like a hiearchy of injustice or something. I look around Philadelphia (which was just said to be the poorest city in the US of it's size) and I see poverty all over the place. I see discrimination, an inadequate school system, urban blight, and newspaper headlines that say "City of Blood" because of all the shootings that happened last week. But yet I know if I were in Bangladesh with my friend Cicely right now things would look drastically different.

All I know is that injustice is certainly all around us in this world. That's what makes me thankful that I'm studying from a Christian perspective, and able to remember that we serve a God that cares about justice. He not only cares, he actively pursues it with love through his people. We've just got to be willing to let him use us in the process. We've got to allow our eyes to be opened to what's really going on in our world around us, and in the city we live in or live near. We've got to allow ourselves to care, and feel the pain that comes with that. All these stastics and things definitely overwhelm me. But this is reality. And as much as this world is a reality; Christ is a reality as well.

Anyways, I didn't even know I was going to go on and on like that. I am truly enjoying the many things I'm learning in my new grad school program. I'll share more another time, and fill you in on my ministry & position soon too! One step at a time.