"I'm what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I've failed much more than I've succeeded.
And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, "Where are we going?" And it starts to get better." - Calvin Trager

With Ya, my Ga tutor in Mallam
The Rev. Mike Kinman
Executive Director
Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation
Age: 38



Check out Forsyth School ...
where Robin teaches and
the boys attend.

Since you're already blowing time surfing,
why not do some cool stuff

  • Watch the Make Poverty History videos
  • Watch Sara McLachlan's "World on Fire" video
  • Take a seat at Oxfam America's Hunger Banquet
  • Look at the "Eight Ways to Change The World" photo exhibition
  • See how rich you are on the Global Rich List
  • Make a promise to do something cool -- and get people to do it with you
  • Use your computer to fight HIV/AIDS and other diseases

    While you're at it, do these things
  • Join the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History
  • Join the Episcopal Public Policy Network
  • Join Amnesty International
  • Subscribe to Sojourners Online newsletter about faith, politics and culture
  • Sign the Micah Call and join other Christians in the fight against poverty
  • Subscribe to a great new magazine about women and children transforming our world

    People who show us What One Person Can Do
  • Liza Koerner (Teaching soccer and doing mission work in Costa Rica)
  • Erica Trapps (Raising money so Tanzanian children can go to school -- check out her photo gallery)

    What's happening in Sudan might
    surprise (and shock) you

  • Episcopal Diocese of Lui
  • South Sudanese Friends International
  • The Sudan Tribune
  • SudanReeves -- research, analysis and advocacy
  • Save Darfur
  • Darfur: a genocide we can stop

    For your daily fix on the irreverent...
  • Jesus of the Week
  • The Onion

    Interesting People Who Are Great To Read
  • Beth Maynard's excellent U2 sermons blog
  • Global Voices Online
  • Neha Viswanathan - poetry, commentary, humor, reflections

    Some interesting organizations and programs
  • Borgen Project - poverty reduction through political accountability
  • CARE
  • Center of Concern
  • DATA: Debt, AIDS and Trade in Africa (Bono's site)
  • El Circulo de Mujeres/Circle of Women
  • Engineering Ministries International
  • Episcopal Peace Fellowship
  • Episcopal Relief and Development
  • FreshMinistries
  • Global Campaign Against Poverty
  • Global Ministries
  • Global Work Ethic Fund -- Promoting philanthropy and fundraising in developing and transition countries.
  • Karen Emergency Relief Fund
  • Magdalene House
  • The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
  • Natural Capitalism
  • NetMarkAid - Humanitarian Entrepreneurs
  • North American Association for the Diaconate
  • Peace Child International
  • People Building Peace
  • Project Honduras
  • Results - Creating political will to end hunger
  • St. Paul's Institute
  • Stop Global AIDS
  • TakingITGlobal -- connecting youth for action in local and global communities
  • Tanzania Educational AIDS Mission
  • TEAR (Transformation, Empowerment, Advocacy, Relief) - An Australian Christian anti-poverty movement
  • Working For Change
  • Xigi.net -- an open-source tool to aid discovery in the capital markets that fund good.

    Some Episcopal churches and dioceses doing cool things
  • Companions of Swaziland - Diocese of Iowa's Companion Relationship
  • International Development Missions -- St. Paul's Church, Sparks, NV
  • The Malaria Villages Project - St. Paul's Church, West Whiteland, PA

    Must-read books and websites about them
  • What Can One Person Do: faith to heal a broken world -- Sabina Alkire & Edmund Newell
  • The End of Poverty -- Jeffrey Sachs

    Learn more about things you really should know more about
  • UN Millenium Development Goals
  • The Millennium Campaign
  • AIDS Matters - a resource for global AIDS professionals
  • Christian Aid's in-depth report: "Millennium Lottery: Who lives and who dies in an age of third world debt?"
  • Foreign Policy In Focus
  • Poverty Mapping
  • Solutions for a water-short world
  • Transparency International: The global coalition against corruption
  • UNICEF's State of The World's Children report 2005

    General cool and/or goofy stuff
  • Alicebot chat robot
  • Bono Quotes -- but what's really wild is that it's from a page on Boycottliberalism.com!
  • Buffy Slanguage
  • Big Bunny

    Useful web tools
  • Gcast - make your own podcast
  • Podzinger - podcast search engine
  • Orb - streaming digital media


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    Listed on Blogwise
  • Wednesday, September 14, 2005
    Opportunity Missed


    Here is an excellent piece by the Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas, who is the President of the Board of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. Please feel free to submit it as an Op-Ed to your local newspaper (but let me know if they accept it!)


    History blesses us with moments of tremendous opportunity. These moments in time afford individuals and nations the occasion to realize destinies of greatness, to fulfill the highest potential God dreams for us, to demonstrate anew the best measure of who we are as human beings and children of God.

    As a nation, we have had many such moments, and often we have risen to meet them in extraordinary ways, ways that have made this nation a beacon of hope for so many for so long.

    Such a moment was upon us this week, and instead of stepping forward in hope to grasp it, we shrunk back from its challenges and the opportunity it provided to fulfill the dream that is America. A dream carried by us as a nation for the past two centuries and more.

    This week, the eyes of the world, if not this country, were trained upon New York City, where people from around the globe gathered to assess our progress and renew our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight MDGs represent our best effort to strive as a global community to solve the great humanitarian crises of our time – eradicating extreme hungerand poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other devastating diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability – all through building global partnerships to assure that development happens in ways that benefit not just the few but all humanity.

    These are not idle dreams, but measurable, attainable goals that the world has the resources to achieve -- if only we have the will.

    As the greatest superpower on the planet, our nation has not just the ability, not just the moral obligation, but the great and glorious opportunity to take the dream of freedom that birthed this nation and work with our sisters and brothers around the world to assure that freedom for all from poverty, disease, and despair is realized as the birthright for everyone. The opportunity to show that we are indeed a great nation – not by the standard of military and economic might, but by the standard of servanthood, the force of compassion, and the power of generosity.

    History blesses us with these moments, and we let them pass at our own great peril and shame.

    This week, that is what we did.

    The current administration has made significant progress in debt forgiveness and in setting up opportunities for development aid like the Millennium Challenge Account. This week at the World Summit in New York, however, it shrunk back from the opportunity to exercise the best of servant leadership and lead the way in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It actively opposed the efforts of other nations to step forward and embrace those opportunities.

    In the negotiations leading up to this week’s summit, the United States continually and methodically shredded the document that was signed by all United Nations member states. Under pressure from United States Ambassador John Bolton, language dedicating all nations to the eradication of global poverty, the strengthening of the United Nations as a body empowered to address global crises, and the reversal of devastating global climate change was systematically weakened or eliminated.

    At one point, the U.S. demanded the elimination of all references to the Millennium Development Goals. Under considerable pressure we backed off that demand, but still we refused to live up to our twice-made promise to give 0.7% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) toward the MDGs’ achievement – the amount it would take to make them a reality by 2015. And we did this at a time when many other nations, including the United Kingdom, have re-dedicated themselves toward 0.7% GDP giving for the MDGs as a tangible reality within the next few years.

    That our stinginess comes at a time when the world is looking with compassion on our own people as they dig out from the catastrophe of hurricane Katrina adds only irony to tragedy. Hurricane Katrina gave us the bitter taste of the life one-sixth of humanity struggles to survive every day – they are hungry, without access to drinkable water or proper sanitation, they have no schools, no decent medical care, and they are imprisoned by fear in the face of violence and insecurity.

    Even as we rage over the ways aid is reaching our own people on the Gulf Coast, this week we actively prevented the same aid from reaching our sisters and brothers around the world who live lives of chronic desolation every day of their lives.

    As we stand in their footsteps for one painful moment, we still deny them shoes.

    History provides defining moments. By our actions and inactions we embrace them as blessing, or allow them to become a curse. Dedicating the tremendous resources of this great nation toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals would have written a legacy that would assure our status as a beloved world leader for generations to come.

    Instead, we write a legacy not of triumph, but of shame.

    There is still time to change course. Still time to turn back and embrace the claim of a higher destiny. But despite this hope, today we have little claim to supremacy – moral or otherwise -- and little cause for pride.

    As children of God and as citizens of this most generous of nations, we owe humanity, our children, and the founders of this Republic more than a missed opportunity and a fearful shrinking back from this challenge. We owe the best measure of ourselves as people of freedom, generosity, and compassion.

    Greatness demands nothing less. But this week, less is what we gave.

    -The Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas is the President of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation, a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to the spiritual renewal of the Church through calling the faithful to action in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals. www.e4gr.org
    |
    Mike at 9/14/2005 03:54:00 PM

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    Episcopalians for
    Global Reconciliation

    EGR is an organization resourcing a grassroots movement of spiritual transformation in the Episcopal Church to end extreme poverty on this planet.

    The structure for this movement is the Millennium Development Goals -- 8 goals committed to by all member nations of the UN and a unique partnership of governments and civil society to:

    *End extreme poverty
    *Achieve universal
    primary education

    *Promote gender equalty
    *Improve maternal health
    *Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
    *Promote environmental sustainability
    *Build a global partnership for development

    EGR resources and connects the church to embrace what one person, one congregation, one diocese and one church can do to make this mission of global reconciliation happen.

    Want to find out more ... check our our website at www.e4gr.org.

    "Christ's example is being demeaned by the church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is AIDS. The church is the sleeping giant here. If it wakes up to what's really going on in the rest of the world, it has a real role to play. If it doesn't, it will be irrelevant."
    - Bono








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    What I'm Reading
    Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
    by Doris Kearns Goodwin