Articles of this issue
Written by: Jojo Poon What is “development”? What kind of development will lead to better living? In what way will go by contraries? We might be able to find out more from the experience of the farming tribes in Northern Thailand. The aftermath of the Green Revolution The Lahus settled in the mountains in Northern Thailand as a result of a multi-generational search for farmable lands in the areas spanning across Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. They were caught in the Green Revolution[1] in 1960 when the Thai Government encouraged the farmers to focus on growing new types of valuable plants with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that boosted their yields. The Lahus started to homogenize the crops they grow and…
Author: Dr. Bernard Wong (Assistant Professor (Theological Studies) & Associate Dean, China Graduate School of Theology; CEDAR Board Member) “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not…
Traditionally, our impression towards children ministry might involve sponsoring a child or orphan in their daily expenses or education, but did you know that we could now combine children ministry with community resettlement and agricultural development? There was a rapid increase in the number of homeless and orphaned children in Myanmar due to civil wars and natural disasters in the past 60 years. CEDAR’s partner, Full Moon, started building children’s home 20 years ago to take care of the children affected by wars, disasters, and poverty. However, God has instilled a vision in Full Moon’s founder, U Ba Hla, that urged him to not only provide for the children, but to also fight for the welfare of the…
Interviewer and Editor: Tsun Wan Yan In Hong Kong, we would often hear someone tell a person to “Go back to farming at your ranch” to tease one’s lack of wit. Now people don’t need to farm at a ranch, nor are they foolish to be a farmer. We found a perfect example of that in Wu Ying Luen, Hand—a young, humorous, and radiating farmer—from the Society for Indigenous Learning (SoIL) in Hong Kong, who differs greatly from our traditional image of a farmer. Hand did not grow up in a farming family, and he was just like any office young adults 4 years ago who would work in front of a computer every day from 9 to…