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Category: Focus

‘Hill Tribes’ Blood is in My Veins.’ – An Advocate Walking Alongside Marginalised Hill Tribes

Written by: Lai Ka Chun In mid-2018, a junior football team and their assistant coach were rescued after 18 days in Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. Their 25-year-old coach’s care in the cave was indispensable. This incident made the coach a hero in Thais’ hearts. However, this coach was originally stateless, as well as the other 3 boys, who had no Thai citizenships. According to UNHCR, there are about 480,000 stateless people in Thailand, and most of them were living in remote mountainous area near the border. As they belonged to no country, they could not enjoy the rights of education, healthcare, employment, and social security as other citizens. Even though they lived

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Education on Helping the Poor Starts from a Young Age: Interview with the Rev. Eugene Leung of E.F.C.C. Jachin Church

Written by: Edward Lai How many clothes do you have in your wardrobe? You probably don’t remember the exact number, and you’d probably say: “I don’t know.” The truth is possibly that there are numerous items. Like many people in Hong Kong, The Rev. Eugene Leung owns more clothes than he needs. When a staff from CEDAR raised the question at a church gathering, The Reverend, who was present, realised that he owned the most clothes. That said, isn’t it normal to own more than what you need? The Rev. Eugene Leung Eugene Leung said, “I’d never thought about whether I needed that many clothes. The way the fashion industry works these days is that when I’m replacing

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Uprooting Poverty: The Perspective of Christian Faith

Written by: Raymond Kwong (CEDAR’s Chief Executive) and Jady Sit In recent years, the international development sector began to emphasise the importance of human inner transformation for uprooting poverty. For instance, Cornell University Professor Kaushik Basu, who serves as the chief economist of World Bank from 2012 to 2016, shared in a public lecture, that no matter what kind of models of poverty alleviation is, one of the key factors to its success is whether people are willing to let go of some of their own interests or economic benefits and seek higher purposes, with which human being in general are common, and so, he advocates strengthening values education in society. This is about changing hearts and minds.

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The Answer to Disaster

Written by: Jady Sit Every time there is a disaster, we feel sad and anxious for the suffering victims. While some people would pray for them, others would donate generously or organise a fundraising campaign, and some people would form a volunteer team to serve the devastated survivors through humanitarian work or counselling support. Although we try to give what we can, in the face of a natural disaster, we still feel helpless and powerless, because what could we do to stop tragedies that are not of our control? In 2015, the massive earthquake in Nepal brought irreversible destructions: close to 9,000 casualties, 3.5 million people lost their homes, and Kathmandu Durbar Square, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

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Will You Make Things Right?

Written by: Jady Sit “Where are you?” “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” The above scene (Genesis 3:9-12), well-known by every Christian, documents the event when men and God’s relationship went from perfect intimacy to complete distant. As Adam accused “the woman you put here with me”, relationship among humans had also become distorted. Then, men and land were cursed. Sin made the world a broken

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From Desolation to Community

Written and edited by: Jady Sit, Jojo Poon At noon on 25 April 2015, Nepal was hit by the strongest earthquake in 80 years. Countless families lost their loved ones, homes, and properties. Approximately one third of Nepal’s population, 8 million, was affected by the quake. In the midst of ruthless disaster, people responded with love. Shortly after the earthquake, the world quickly pooled their resources to help. Yet, when global news coverage died down and emergency relief phased out, this was when we began to walk with the affected communities, helping them to rebuild and recover their communities sustainably for the long run. In the last decade, CEDAR has been supporting partners’ community development work in mountainous

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Local Churches – the Local Power of Community Development

Written and edited by: Tsun Wan Yan, Jojo Poon The act of poverty alleviation often gives the impression of aid workers carrying with them gifts of livestock and funds sponsoring children and their education to some remote villages. However, have you ever considered that the local churches are better suited in bringing continued and sustainable development and support to the people in need? To address the root causes of poverty for the poor, we must help the poor learn how to fish instead of relying on outsiders’ help. To prevent dependency on foreign aid, which would consequently hinder community growth, the average span of a development project is usually five to 10 years, and the development organisation will

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Human Trafficking

Author: Jojo Poon Martha (obscured) spent her early years with her mother who worked as a sex worker in the red-light district of Mumbai, India. “At the age of 16, my mother met a guy when she was in Nepal. He said he could refer her to work at better places in the cities, and she ended up being sold to work at the red-light district in Mumbai.” With the help of a generous woman from her hometown, Martha was spared from having to suffer the same fate as her mother’s. “Every one of us could fall prey to human traffickers with a tiny change of situation,” as expressed time and again by the frontline workers serving sex

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The Dwelling of God is with Men

Written: Lincoln Chong, Jojo Poon In September 2015, the image of the body of the Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on the shores of Mediterranean Sea, drew the attention of the globe to the European refugee crisis and the wars in Middle East. Just a month ago in April, the equally disheartening image of a Syrian father holding the bodies of his little twins died from chemical attacks has once again stirred people’s sentiments. “Now the dwelling of God is with men,” (Revelation 21:3) This promise was not only applicable to the early Christians under Roman suppression, but also to the victims today who seem to have suffered an unending stretch of tortures and hidings because of

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Environmentally Sustainable Development in Thailand

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

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