I’m not sure why, but when ONE asked me to walk into the offices of senators and members of Congress during a lobbying day on Capitol Hill last month, it never once occurred to me to be nervous.

In hindsight, my confidence was probably rather premature. I’d never been on Capitol Hill before — for lobbying or any other reason — hadn’t even stepped foot inside the District of Columbia in more than a decade, and am far from a seasoned politico. But as I sat across the table from top D.C. officials and their high-ranking staff members, asking them to do whatever it might take to preserve foreign development aid in their negotiations over the fiscal cliff, there never came a moment where I was prompted to rethink that confidence, either. And to a great extent I owe that to the genuine interest each office showed in the concerns of everyday citizens like you, me and the other ONE Moms who joined me that day.

Before I even returned home, I wrote on my own blog how struck I was by the degree to which each and every official and staff member I met that day genuinely cared about the experiences, ideas and opinions we shared with them. And even now, almost a full month later, it remains one of the highlights of the day. If for no other reason, it was because we met with a variety of offices — both Republican and Democrat, from states representing every geographical region in the country — and each showed an equal amount of concern for the issues we were there to discuss. To see that kind of cooperation, universal concern for the world’s poorest citizens, and ubiquitous respect for the investments and strides we’ve made against extreme poverty and preventable disease first hand was refreshing and inspiring. It gave me a renewed sense of hope that our lawmakers can and will work together, and that we may even be able to avoid the severe ramifications of falling over the fiscal cliff come January. Which is, perhaps, the most important issue our generation will face in the foreseeable future.

After all, nothing has changed since I first wrote in early November about the decidedly non-partisan nature of the prospects we face. Losing foreign development assistance is not a partisan issue, and there are no partisan fixes. And as much as that’s true, it’s also not just a third world issue waiting for a first world fix. It will not have just a significant effect on those people in the countries who directly benefit from the aid, but a marked effect on families right here in the US.

Hunger has always been one of the greatest catalysts for social instability, and social instability in the world’s poorest regions remains an every present danger to our national security. It is estimated that going over the fiscal cliff would plunge as many as 1 million families back into food insecurity, which we can only presume would increase the chances of having to send our sons and daughters to more and more stations around the world in an effort to keep the peace militarily, something that could not just cost us American lives on top of the African lives that would be lost to begin with, but also a tremendous amount of money above and beyond what we might save by cutting that funding. From a purely fiscal standpoint, wars are notoriously more expensive to fight than to prevent.

And from a purely budgetary standpoint very little stands to be gained in our own messy financial affairs from cutting foreign spending at all. Foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the overall budget. It’s a measly drop in the bucket when it comes to balancing our budget, especially for a drop that literally comes with life and death consequences. Which is why today, as we very rapidly approach the fiscal cliff, no more than a few days left before our lawmakers head back to their home districts for the holidays, I’d like to encourage you to reach out to your senators and members of Congress.

Remember: if there’s anything I can tell you for sure, having just talked to many of them, it’s that they desperately want to hear from you. They and their staff are there to serve and represent you. Their office contact information is readily available for a reason and that reason is you. Use it!

We’re staring down one of the biggest deadlines of our time, now is the time to make your voice heard. Sign the ONE Fiscal Cliff Petition and Become a ONE Member, and then call, email, snail mail, tweet and Facebook your lawmakers today and throughout the next week.

That agreement — known officially as the Budget Control Act, and unofficially as The Sequester – combined with impending tax hikes as a result of congress’ inability to come to any other notable agreements since, are what is now collectively known as The Fiscal Cliff. So appropriately named, because — when the mandatory across-the-board budget cuts that make up The Sequester collide with the substantial tax hikes that will sucker punch virtually every American family — it will so drastically affect the political and economic landscape in the United States (and by extension the world) that it will look and feel as though we’ve fallen over a cliff. An event, I might add, that is coming directly to you in less than two months.

If our legislators don’t take action we will run full-tilt off The Fiscal Cliff on January 2, 2013. Less than eight very short weeks from now.

Since I’ve already written about the tax hikes that are awaiting us at the edge of the cliff*, today I’d like to talk more about the sequestration side of things. Specifically, the part of it that will affect our foreign aid expenditures. Similar cuts and their consequences will be felt domestically, and I plan to write about them in the coming days, but as most of you know I just returned from a trip to Ethiopia as a guest of the ONE Campaign and foreign aid is fresh in my mind.

The truth is, the irony of the precarious position in which I’ve found myself is not lost on me; a right-leaning writer advocating for the preservation of foreign aid in a time when even expenditures for domestic aid and entitlement programs are an especially embittered topic on my own side of the aisle. As I review the discussions we’re having about the cliff, our options for avoiding it, and what will happen if we don’t, I keep coming back to just one thing though: this is not a partisan issue and there are no partisan fixes.

Even if we take those programs that are traditionally thought of as pet programs of one party or the other, drastic cuts to them will have a marked effect on issues that are of cornerstone importance to us all. And this is, perhaps, no truer than when considering foreign aid.

Though foreign aid is often thought of as a left-leaning budget line item, its integral role in two of the right’s dearest priorities is undeniable. As much as we spend investing in both our national security and the viability of the private sector economy, the relatively paltry sum that is allotted to foreign aid is likely the single area in which we get the most bang for our buck in both of them.

Read the rest of Diana’s article on her blog Righteous Bacon.

Since returning from Ethiopia I’ve felt a bit like my wheels are spinning. I have a lot to say, but am unsure how to say it. I have a lot to do, but am unsure how to do it. I’m so small and the world is so big. And yet, I’m so big and the world is so small.

It wasn’t until just recently that I realized my problem, I feel as though the peak of 2012 is over. It’s hard to keep running forward when your mind is stuck at a checkpoint three miles back, thinking it was actually a finish line. It was not a finish line, but the race from here on out seems bigger than me. I trained for a 5k and was somehow accidentally entered into a marathon. While my legs are happy to keep going my mind is carrying on about how this was a huge mistake and someone should pay. My mind is a whiner.

Of course, much of this has led to thoughts about next year. Somehow it’s easier to imagine continuing in a different calendar year. (My mind is also OCD.)

I’ve thought about whether or not I’ll do a Reverb this year, and what I’d like 2013 to look like. But I’ve also noticed a change in my thinking about the future since returning, a greater awareness about the state of mind in which I enter things. As I look through pictures from the trip, I’m struck by how the tiny details, the shots of places we passed by, are what take me back. How this picture of benches at a secondary school remind me of the way the dry grass on the school grounds crunched under our feet, how the teacher in the math classroom we visited tossed the chalk to and fro between his hands as he paced the room, the smell of the tiny room they called a library, the way its shelves held technology books published in 1992, and how Liz’s scarf framed her face.

Somehow I feel as though this year’s Little Things practice helped put me in the right frame of mind leading up to the trip — leading up to all of this year’s experiences and opportunities, really — and so, as I look forward, I can’t imagine a better way to get myself in the right frame of mind for the coming holiday season and new year than a month of Little Things practice. Today, the little thing I’m grateful for, is the tiny details and somewhat obscure scenes from Ethiopia, those that take me back. Tomorrow I’ll share another little thing, and then another the day after that, and another the next. I hope you’ll come back throughout the month and share the little things you’re grateful for, too.

:: :: ::

Thirty Days of Little Things is the daily incarnation of my (mostly) weekly gratitude practice. It will run everyday throughout the month of November. It also (conveniently) coincides with NaBloPoMo. To join in tell me what you’re grateful for today in the comments, or write your own post and leave me a link so I can check it out. I’d love it. No really. Of course, you can also read about more of my Little Things while you’re here. Because I’d love that, too.

It wasn’t until just recently that I realized my problem, I feel as though the peak of 2012 is over. It’s hard to keep running forward when your mind is stuck at a checkpoint three miles back, thinking it was actually a finish line. It was not a finish line, but the race from here on out seems bigger than me. I trained for a 5k and was somehow accidentally entered into a marathon. While my legs are happy to keep going my mind is carrying on about how this was a huge mistake and someone should pay. My mind is a whiner.

Of course, much of this has led to thoughts about next year. Somehow it’s easier to imagine continuing in a different calendar year. (My mind is also OCD.)

I’ve thought about whether or not I’ll do a Reverb this year, and what I’d like 2013 to look like. But I’ve also noticed a change in my thinking about the future since returning, a greater awareness about the state of mind in which I enter things. As I look through pictures from the trip, I’m struck by how the tiny details, the shots of places we passed by, are what take me back. How this picture of benches at a secondary school remind me of the way the dry grass on the school grounds crunched under our feet, how the teacher in the math classroom we visited tossed the chalk to and fro between his hands as he paced the room, the smell of the tiny room they called a library, the way its shelves held technology books published in 1992, and how Liz’s scarf framed her face.

Somehow I feel as though this year’s Little Things practice helped put me in the right frame of mind leading up to the trip — leading up to all of this year’s experiences and opportunities, really — and so, as I look forward, I can’t imagine a better way to get myself in the right frame of mind for the coming holiday season and new year than a month of Little Things practice. Today, the little thing I’m grateful for, is the tiny details and somewhat obscure scenes from Ethiopia, those that take me back. Tomorrow I’ll share another little thing, and then another the day after that, and another the next. I hope you’ll come back throughout the month and share the little things you’re grateful for, too.

 
Thirty Days of Little Things is the daily incarnation of my (mostly) weekly gratitude practice. It will run everyday throughout the month of November. It also (conveniently) coincides with NaBloPoMo. To join in tell me what you’re grateful for today in the comments, or write your own post and leave me a link so I can check it out. I’d love it. No really. Of course, you can also read about more of my Little Things while you’re here. Because I’d love that, too.

Our group had just come from a USAID ENGINE farm training center in the same village, not a mile up the road. There, we’d learned about the new vegetables female farmers in the area are learning to grow — lettuce, swiss chard, beet root, carrot, and cabbage among them — and this stop was the next incarnation of that program.

Since visiting Ethiopia I’ve become increasingly aware that we, here in the U.S., sometimes fail to realize a few things of great importance to the effectiveness of social enrichment programs. Among them, that you can teach a man to fish, but if he has no idea how to cook a filet his children will still starve; something that is not at all lost on the people there. To grow beets and chard is one thing, but to use them effectively is another. And here again we were greeted by the incredibly holistic approach of the organizations on the ground in Africa.

At one point a member of our group enlisted the help of a translator to ask the women which of the new vegetables they were learning to use were their favorites. After a little chatter we couldn’t understand, but a lot of body language, smiles, and nodding we could, cabbage and carrots were the (seemingly unanimous) answer.

To be honest, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around a life in which carrots and cabbages were exotic and new ever since. A life in which those vegetables we consider most basic and affordable are key to unlocking the future of a culture that is otherwise trapped in a cycle of hunger and poverty; a cycle that is, in and of itself, difficult to grasp.

Six-point-eight million Ethiopian children under the age of five are physically and mentally stunted as a result of malnutrition. That’s roughly equivalent to 82 percent of the population of New York City. It is almost twice the population of Los Angeles. Almost two cities of LA filled to the brim with malnourished children. And that statistic says nothing of their adult counterparts — many of which came to age during the famine of the 1980s.

Six-point-eight million Ethiopian children are only now learning what carrots and cabbage taste like. The mothers of roughly 6.8 million Ethiopian children are only now learning how to cook with cabbage and carrots, what doing so can mean for their country’s future. I’ve been allowing that to sink in for the better part of a week and a half and I’m still not sure how well it’s settled.

On the way home, on the flight from D.C. to Detroit, I was seated next to an English gentleman who — among other topics of conversation — asked me what I’d been doing in Ethiopia. When I told him I’d been there with ONE, as an agriculture and food writer trying to shed light on the programs on the ground there and what is still needed to combat the extreme poverty and hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa, he responded with a deep sigh. “I thought what I did was difficult, but that,” he shook his head, “is far beyond my ability.”

At the time I thought it an odd reaction. I’m just telling stories, after all. But the longer I allow what we’ve learned to settle in my mind, the more it all makes sense. It’s beyond my ability, too. And yours. We cannot nourish 6.8 million children today, or tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. It’s a daunting task at best, one that is well beyond the ability of even the greatest thinkers and doers of our time.

What we can do however, what is entirely within reach for each and every one of us, is to teach a woman to grow cabbage, and then, how to cook it. She will nourish a child. She will teach her friends how to do the same. Her daughters will grow up in a world in which cabbage and carrots are not exotic and new, in which cooking with them is not a barrier to being nourished by them.

What we can do is to teach a man not just how to fish, but how to eat fish. And that, I think, is making all the difference in the world.

All images courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

ONE Mom Diana Prichard traveled with ONE to Ethiopia this October. This piece, originally published on Righteous Bacon, is part of our ongoing coverage of the trip.

It’s not until you find a man, tucked into the picturesque folds of an Ethiopian mountainside, threshing Barley by hand, a veritable scene straight from the Bible, that you realize exactly what it takes to feed a family in the rural areas of a third world country.

And it’s not until the day after you return, the one on which you trek to the grocery store to replenish the stocks your children and husband ravenously devoured while you were gone, that you realize how very far removed it is from what it takes to feed your own.

At one point last year, during one of many perusals in a local antique shop, I found a tattered and worn cook and home-keeping book. Its cover was long gone, the spine so used and abused not a word could be made out. On the top page there was a drawing of a sheep, and as I flipped through those beneath it I found more; of cows and deer and pigs and birds and fruits and the proper ways to set a table.

I bought it for the pictures, I had planned to frame them, but as I read through it at home I began to realize how old it really was. Well more than a century and a half had passed since its publication. And yet, the methods by which I was able to date it were product mentions within the text. Not handmade bowls and twig brooms and the value of a breeze in removing chaff, but store-bought products. Canning jars and tea pots and ladies journals.

It’s not until you find a man, tucked into the picturesque folds of an Ethiopian mountainside, using twig brooms and the power of a light breeze to feed his family that you realize how far behind the agricultural practices of an entire country really are. It’s not until you stand there, thinking of a book you bought at an antique store for its novelty, and realizing how very advanced its contents would be for the people here, that you realize the amount of lag is measured in thousands of years, not hundreds.

Which is something we Americans would probably find rather quaint, if only it were a choice, if only more than forty percent of the country’s children were not so chronically malnourished they will never mentally and physically recover.

I asked him how much Barley he’d thresh in an average day. In Amharic and gestures he responded; each day he’d thresh just one of the four or five piles that surrounded him. From the looks of the result, the final product was less than a bushel. Less than a bushel a day.

Photo credit: Diana Prichard

I just returned from traveling in Ethiopia as an expense-paid guest of the ONE Campaign to report on how American-supported programs are improving and saving lives. ONE is a non-partisan organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease by pressing political leaders to support smart programs that do just that. They’re also launching a new initiative to focus specifically on Agriculture, which is where I’m most excited to join in. ONE doesn’t ask for your money, just your voice. It’s something I can get behind and I hope you can, too.

I don’t think I’ve ever traveled somewhere where coming home felt anything but familiar, but that’s not what’s happening now. This is home. It’s home, but it feels different. There’s something not quite right the same.

In Liz’s post on re-entry she wrote that she doesn’t know where this is going, just that it’s going. Somewhere. Something. Sometime. I don’t know how she’s in my head, but it’s precisely how I feel.

I don’t know what this is, this feeling I can’t quite pin down. The way it’s almost as if I’m still dreaming; as if I’ve been dreaming for the whole of the month of October and it just won’t stop. I don’t know what it is or where it’s going, but it feels transformative. And probably not in the way you’d expect, I’d have expected.

I don’t have an insatiable urge to do without, to eschew material comforts, to send everything we own to the other side of the world; in a word, to give. What I have is an insatiable urge to do.

I’m not sure if that’s right or wrong, or if it even matters how one is supposed to react to these things. All I know is that it is; that I feel consumed by it and that, if nothing else, this alone is very clear to me.

Over the next few weeks I’ll share more about the trip, about whatever manifests of this feeling. I probably won’t write about every single thing we saw and experienced while there — as Karen pointed out, to do so would have me writing about it every day between now and 2013 — but I will share a lot, especially about the food and agriculture visits. For right now though, as I try to figure out what this is and how to put it to work, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite scenes from the trip.

I won’t be able to post all of them, but you can always find more on Flickr.

They’re in no particular order, except, maybe, the order in which I manage to download, process, and then upload them.

They are scenes from farms and “factories” and health clinics and homes. From schools and monasteries, towns, cities and rural areas.

They are of people and things and animals and joy.

If you have a question about one, I would love for you to ask it; just be prepared for a long and animated answer. I didn’t realize until I walked out of the mill today how much I lit up when I was telling them about this trip. Now that I do, I can warn you. Be prepared, friends. Very, very prepared.

I just returned from traveling in Ethiopia as an expense-paid guest of the ONE Campaign to report on how American-supported programs are improving and saving lives. ONE is a non-partisan organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease by pressing political leaders to support smart programs that do just that. They’re also launching a new initiative to focus specifically on Agriculture, which is where I’m most excited to join in. ONE doesn’t ask for your money, just your voice. It’s something I can get behind and I hope you can, too.

ONE Mom Diana Prichard is traveling to Ethiopia with ONE this October. This piece, originally published on Righteous Bacon, is part of our ongoing coverage of the trip.

For the past few days in Ethiopia, I’ve been struck by the recurring theme of complexity in the issues we’re encountering. If there’s anything I can tell you absolutely for sure it’s that there is no simple fix to the problems plaguing the people of Sub-Saharan Africa, and most especially Ethiopia.

Though the organizations on the ground here are doing incredible holistic work with the resources they have, the hurdles they continue to face are those that will have to be carefully maneuvered over and around, rather than leapt.

Ethiopia is the single most populated land-locked country in the world, and the second most populous country in Africa. Inhabited by more than eighty-four million people and with just over four-hundred thousand square miles of space this means they’re packed in at roughly two hundred people per square mile. Which is, if you can imagine it, quite astounding in and of itself.

While here we’ve seen over and over again how the tremendous population and high density living circumstances complicate the cycle of poverty. With so many people needing help, scalability is especially important for the organizations working here, but expansion can be slow and difficult. Meanwhile, infrastructure is not what it could be.

Over the past week our group has expressed surprise at the quality of the roads we’ve traveled. Many have been in far better condition than we would have expected — I’ve even observed that the paved roads are far better than many of the roads in my home state of Michigan, of course Ethiopia doesn’t deal with the freeze-thaw cycle that causes potholes either. But as we spoke with entrepreneurs here in Addis during a dinner meeting we were also surprised to find out that even the middle class families routinely lose power and that even in the bustling hub of the their capital, Addis Ababa, they’ve only been able to move away from dial-up internet in the last two years.

At the same time farmers struggle with market access for their products (something I’ll write more about later) and one textile company expressed distress over the world’s perception of Ethiopia and how trust in business relationships — or rather a lack thereof — has cost her company contracts, and, by extension, prevented her from hiring more employees, enriching more Ethiopians’ lives. In fact, while visiting Primary and Secondary Schools in the town of Mojo we were greeted by the difficulties of getting supplies and supporting people where they need to be first hand when we asked if we could donate books to the kids’ very lacking library and were told it was unlikely anything we sent would make it to them.

Meanwhile, in some areas — both geographical areas and areas of need — political red tape and cultural pre-conceptions rail against change in such a way that progress seems virtually impossible. We’ve heard stories of donated medications and supplies being confiscated despite all proper protocols having been followed, and while the Ethiopian people who have been willing to really open up about their government are few, those that have mostly expressed frustration and skepticism. Outside cities, in areas tightly bound by tradition and history, ideas about how to do things are deeply ingrained and difficult to manuever around. Change is coming, but slowly.

It has been difficult to wrap my head around the onslaught of information and experience we’ve been able to gather in the seven days we’ve been here, but as I come to terms with what I’ve seen and heard I’m slowly formulating ideas about ways in which these complex problems could be addressed. While I think Ethiopia and other developing countries like it need continued support in the form of governmental and NGO aid — those programs we’ve seen working wonders on the ground here already — I also believe big ideas and really revolutionary investment will have the most impact on her future.

And on that note, I’d like to leave you with the hopeful sounds of an African children’s school. Because, despite the complexity, hope continues to be what I feel most for Ethiopia.

*All photos by the incredible Karen Walrond.

Coming into this trip I knew I would walk away a changed woman. I prepared myself as well as possible for the extreme poverty, the hunger, the disease. I tried to learn a little Amharic, the most common of the more than eighty languages spoken here. I even tried the traditional food of Ethiopia. And I came ready to report back to you on all of those things. I came ready to tell you what was needed, but as I settle in tonight after a full day of site visits withFashionABLE and the Hamlin Fistula Hospital all I feel is hope.

This isn’t to say there isn’t need here. The need is tremendous. I have met adult women who are smaller than my own eleven year old daughter. I have seen bodies frail from malnourishment. I have met children so intense, so thirsty for affection they are everything you might imagine of orphans and so much more. And we haven’t even left Addis Ababa yet.

But I have also witnessed the most vibrant spirit I have ever seen. I have met people whose work is lifesaving in more senses of the word than I knew existed. I now understand why one of ONE’s greatest missions is to support local organizations on the ground. It’s because these people know what they’re doing.

At both the FashionABLE Scarf factory (which is so far from what you might imagine as a factory) and the Hamlin Fistula hospital I was deeply inspired by how holistically these organizations are approaching the unique problems they face.

FashionABLE’s partner organization, Women at Risk, has developed a comprehensive one year transition training program for the women they work with. One that begins with the simplest things; like teaching the women, former sex workers, to sleep at night and be awake during the day. They complete regular market need assessments in and around Addis Ababa and match the women’s natural strengths and interests with industries where there is need, jobs that can provide them and their children with a living wage. And at the Hamlin Fistula hospital, they don’t treat just the physical complications that arrive from Fistula, but the emotional trauma that the patients experience and the social constructs that lead to Fistula to begin with.

So, if there were just one thing I wanted you to know about today, about this experience so far, it’s that there is hope. There are organizations who are doing the work that needs to be done, those that are servicing a need with tremendous success and in such a way that it is scalable, so it can be extended to help even more women and children. And they’re not just changing the lives of the women with whom they work directly, but the lives of all women and children in Ethiopia. They are shaping social mores, erasing stigma that would previously leave women alone, homeless, and at risk. And, above all, they are well known in their communities for the work they do.

And, since I whole heartedly believe that if you stuck with me through those last six hundred words you deserve something amazing (and, yes, fine, because I would love to raise even more awareness about FashionABLE leading up to this holiday season) I’m giving away a scarf to one lucky reader who will be chosen at random when I return.

The scarf is the Ethanesh in Grey/Green. It came with my briefing packet before the trip and is a little extra special in that not only was it made here in Ethiopia by a woman who was liberated from dangerous and degrading sex work, it’s also travelled back here with me to meet the women who made it.

If you’d like to be entered in the drawing, leave a comment on Righteous Bacon and share this post on one (or more) of your social media networks; Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest — you choose, but I recommend all of the above.

I am currently traveling in Ethiopia as an expense-paid guest of the ONE Campaign to report on how American-supported programs are improving and saving lives. ONE is a non-partisan organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease by pressing political leaders to support smart programs that do just that. They’re also launching a new initiative to focus specifically on Agriculture, which is where I’m most excited to join in. ONE doesn’t ask for your money, just your voice. It’s something I can get behind and I hope you can, too.

*All photos by the incredible Karen Walrond.

I wish I had something profound to tell you, but I’m still mostly speechless. We arrived yesterday afternoon after a five hour flight delay in DC and thirteen hours in the air and immediately headed out to Mary Joy Development Association.

The kids put on incredible shows for us, dancing, tumbling, and juggling. There were traditional Ethiopian coffee and tea ceremonies, and so many intense, vibrant kids to connect with. Mary Joy helps community children with education, health care, and housing. It’s a program that allows orphaned kids to stay in their communities, and grow to be good citizens who can, in turn, enrich that community as adults.

After that we capped off the night with dinner at Yod Abyssinia.

The environment, live entertainment, and food was incredible. It was a great way to immerse ourselves in Ethiopian culture on the first night.

More tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t be as speechless.

* Last three photos by our awesome trip photographer, Karen Walrond.