I’ve uploaded some photos from Slum Survivor 2006 into the photoalbum

Enjoy.

Some of the Slum Survivors, and TEAR’s own Steve Bevis were interviewed on ABC Sydney’s Sunday Nights program.

It’s the Postcard feature for Sunday 8/10/06: http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s1758960.htm

Sadly, I don’t think the interview made it into the audio stream of the program. They only stream the show’s first 2 hours.

Southern Cross has this (focusing on the Anglicans among the Slum Survivors):

A week ago I was trying to stop myself from falling asleep in the supper club after having spent several hours building our lovely home for the weekend. Like Jimmy, I can’t really say that I’m a different person this week - the experience didn’t change who I am, but I learnt a lot.
(more…)

A few of the Slum Survivors are going to be featured on John Cleary’s Sunday Nights program on 702 ABC Sydney, after 10pm this Sunday night.

Slum Survivor will feature in the Macarthur Chronicle soon, but I’m not sure when the new edition is out.

The SMH article gets a headline mention at Crikey.com.

There was no moment captured in time that changed my perspective about global poverty. Nothing shocked me about the way my body felt after eating dhal and rice for 3 days. Sleeping in a slum on a piece of cardboard to me felt the same as any other camping trip. Listening to story after story of the hardships people living in extreme poverty experience every day made me stop and think…for a little while, until inevitably it gets lost in the thousands of other stories and images we hear and see of that place we call the ‘third world’. To be honest having done slum survivor I kind of feel the same as I did before, but with one profound difference… I now am more disgusted at myself knowing that I have become so desensitised through living in this culture that I don’t feel grief for the state that the world is in.

When you hear news that 30,000 people die everyday in poverty, that 1 billion people live in slums and just as many don’t have access to clean water, and that out of those 1 billion, 250 million are Christians. How easy is it in your head to justify it because after all it’s just another statistic? How is it we it that I can feel more devastation for the swannies losing by a point then for the 2 million displaced Sudanese refugees or the plight of thousands of refugees around the world seeking asylum into Australia? Why is it that we are all so cold, so desensitised, so happy in our own little existence that even the thought of making the tiniest contribution at our own expense gives us a dumbfounded facial expression and an excuse to stare at the ground?

We live in a profoundly unequal world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and many Australians would like to keep it this way, or at least be ignorant to the fact that the world is this way. We live in a culture where our whole corporate purpose is based around our need to satisfy ourselves. I was lucky enough to make it to all of John Smith’s bible studies on the weekend and he was able to describe with great clarity how post-modernism in our society has re-programmed us from a culture where values and ideas were passed down through generations to today where our own individualism and desire to better ourselves dominate our motives and actions. John described how our own personal need to increase our self-esteem and feel better about ourselves is ultimately taking away from our responsibility to the wider world, or as he puts it, “We’re so wrapped up in ourselves we have no idea how the other half live”.

We live in a time where we are richer, more technologically advance, fitter and stronger and healthier and better educated then we have ever been in the history of humanity. Even the people we consider poor in Australia can walk out their front door and find a maccas across the road. We have more peace and freedoms then the majority of the earths population could quite possibly not even comprehend and yet what do we have to show for it? Depression, suicide, divorce, obesity, social isolation and domestic violence have all been increasing at epidemic rates.

It was this great need for self-perfection and satisfaction that I had the greatest trouble overcoming at slum survivor because I think right from the start I had the objective doing it to first better myself and when that was over with it wouldn’t hurt to create some awareness about poverty as well. But its kind of funny in how through all that God has a way of creeping up on you and saying, ‘Get over yourself!’ Hearing Mike Pilaviachi say that God doesn’t exist to make us feel better about ourselves kind of laid the icing on the cake (or the dhal on the rice). Christianity isn’t about self-satisfaction or personal gain but its about Jesus and his loss for our lives. Its this message of love and sacrifice that needs to behind out every action above every desire we have for ourselves.

Though slum survivor may have not changed my perspective of world poverty a great deal, it has completely shattered the way I see the world around us and how us as Christians need to respond to the realities we face. We live in a very fallen world and its going to take a lot more then us to better again.
God Bless
Jimmy

Every year at blackstump God always challenges me about stuff. This year God challenged me before I even got there….to participate in slum survivor. I came up with every excuse not to ‘slum it’ but when I considered that one billion people actually live their entire lives in slums my needs for one small weekend became very small.

So prior to stump I was feeling very nervous. For me to sacrifice my coffee, my warmth, Baptist tent donuts, my husband, my cleanliness, my bed, my personal space, and so on seemed a really big deal.

You know what; it is not a big deal. This year at stump I have come to a greater understanding that it is not about me it is about God.

So from amongst the cardboard, the dirt, the rice and dhal, the chai and the amazing people who I experienced slum survivor with, God has called me.

I walk away with a broken heart, feeling so uncomfortable that people live this way. But I walk away even more uncomfortable with the way I live.

After experiencing this reality you cannot ignore poverty.

I had a really interesting experience today… but, I’ll start at the beginning. As many of you already know all weekend all we were able to eat was rice, and Dahl and drink water or boiled chai tea (apart from the rewards of chocolate, slice, drinks or apples for some).

I was feeling so over the same repetitive meal of rice and Dahl that I had decided not to eat it on Monday morning and wait to eat until I got home on Monday afternoon. However, we were blessed with COFFEE or tea and Raisin toast, cornettos, chocolate biscuits, donuts and chocolate.

I must say I was so grateful I dived into that raison toast and coffee! It tasted so great! Later Monday I was planning to head home with Tim, and unknowingly to me. He had ordered a pizza… which the Supper Club gave us for free – thanks guys! And also we had a garlic bread between to two of us…. Melted butter has never tasted sooo good, and a little Greek salad also. That was all I ate. It probably equated for all the uneaten food I hadn’t eaten that weekend!
So this is where my interesting experience comes in today… I decided to go light on the food…. Considering what I did and didn’t eat over the weekend to make sure I didn’t make my self sick…. But as my body learnt. By not eating I became sick. I couldn’t understand why I became bed bound due to severe cramps in my stomach with the thoughts of which end my cramps were going to escape me… After trying herbal remedies… and Mylanta, I felt a little better… but then I had some pasta and the pain went. Completely!

I was in pain from not eating enough for about 3 hours tops today… but it made me wonder if people who do not eat enough experience the same pain. It wasn’t the pain of ‘ohh I’m hungry or hey, that Maccas I just saw on TV would go down well’ or that 40-hour famine pain it was like some form of gastro.

Dad offered me a thought about what I was saying.. I was always saying things along the lines of how I was sick of eating the same food and wanted variety and the chance of going back to all my “1st” world luxuries! but this is what my dad said…” We should all live the way the 1st world live, they (the 3rd world) should not have to live the way they do!” And that is so true.. so what are you going to do to change it? and more importantly…. what am I going to do?
So how is everyone else feeling?

Love your sister Steph! xoxo

Hey. I’m mellowing all the experiences that I had over the weekend. Thinking them through. My heart is changed. I have learnt from this experience of the ‘reality’ of the third world. Whilst I can DRIVE home 35 kilometres to the shelter and safety of my family’s large home I realised the comparisions which this has to the weekend I just experienced.

The one tap we could use 100 metres away from the slum vs. around 5 taps in my house.

1 change of clothes vs. hundreds of options at home!

1 cardboard bed vs. 6 matresses in my house

one choice of meal, rice and dahl, or drink - water or chai - whatever is made for me! vs. what ever I feel like drinking or going to the shop and buying.

A chance of eating and apple! vs. would you like a choice of our fruit bowl - mango, kiwi, oranges, apples, grapes?

A bucket bath with soap vs. A hot shower, ENDLESS RUNNING WATER and shower gel!, washing my hair!

After going to bed yesterday at 4.30pm for my NANNY NAP, i woke up at 9am this morning from my comfortable, 3 pillowed bed inclusive of matress, sheets and looked at my electric alarm clock. Then realised I’d slept for 16 and a half hours… a new self record for which i am not proud.

My point is… these are things I take for granted every day. I did’t have them over the weekend. Slum dwellers can’t say we’ll all go home tomorrow, they are home! This is injustice.

I was just listening to my CD and especially put on my favourite song - PINK, ‘Dear Mr President’. Read the lyrics through:

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not better than me
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestlyWhat do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street ?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep ?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror ?
Are you proud ?How do you sleep while the rest of us cry ?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye ?
How do you walk with your head held high ?
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why ?

Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
How can you say
No child is left behind
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind
They’re all sitting in your cells
While you pay the road to hell

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye

Let me tell you bout hard work !
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work !
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night
How do you walk with your head held high
Dear Mr. President
You’d never take a walk with me
Would you.

…This song this afternoon gave me a new message, it made we ache inside, it made me cry. I have come away from the weekend and I believe more passionate for our world. What we have, what others don’t and evening out the justice and classes in the world so our Lord no longer has to weep at the state of what man has done to his ‘good’ creation, making it full of war, famine, disaster, pollutants.

I would love to aim that as an Individual that “I can help bring heaven to earth”… I mean this in a way where we all have the same access to resources that I take forgranted - water, health care, food, transport, safety, and a home which does not leak and to which all can feel welcomed!

Today, I’m eating basics..not the stir-fry my parents made me.. but toast and butter with a little cinammon. Instead of using a knife and fork.. it’s either fingers or teaspoons for me.

I challenge you, if you haven’t already done so to go to the MICAH CHALLENGE website: www.micahchallenge.org.au
once there, scroll down, on the right it will say ’sign up’ click on that!

The Micah Challenge is about making a christian stance upon ensuring that the Millennium Development Goals from 2000 are advocated and acted upon in the right way to ensure that by 2015 they are met.

We are almost halfway to 2015 already! - your voice and your time (it will take you about 1 minute to fill out your details.) WILL make a difference!

I need to go collect my thoughts again, and rejoice for what I have learnt, and pray some more.

Thank you to everybody from Tear, Lizzie for your beautiful letter, and my fellow slummies for what I have learnt, what I will act upon and also be praying for how God can use this group from this year. He has already blessed us with two extremes - The SMH yesterday, as well as The ABC radio on Thursday.. what can you and I do to ensure our experiences can be used for his grace and good?

God Bless, Love your sister Stephie!