You asked for it...

Hello young adult friends. Welcome to the November edition of You asked for it..., NCP's monthly mail to folks like you. Hope things are going fine. Busy times out our way—8 states and 50 presentations this fall. But hey, busy is good in our line of work.

Most enlightening moment: I was doing an enviro presentation with fourth graders at a school in Indiana last week. While showing my Alaska slides, there was a pic of a wolf we had seen and that had come outside our campground that night "howling at the moon" (the only time I've ever mentioned the moon in telling that story). At the end of the class, a little girl came up and said, "You know, wolves don't really howl at the moon—they're actually communicating." Alrighty then, first and last time for that line...  

In that same vein of sharing enlightening information, please find below:

• Cell phones, coltan and the war in Congo
• SOA protests—this weekend in Georgia!
• Back to School: Burma
• Sudan, Amazon, Arctic, Honduras, Burma—we're going there! And so can you!
• Enviro Fact: black eye for blue jeans 
• Justice Fact: bitter chocolate
• Faith Fact

Take care. Keep the faith. Share the love.

David

Cell phones, coltan, war in Congo

We throw away around 130 million cell phones in the USA every year. A key component of every cell phone is coltan, a mineral mined primarily in the Democractic Republic of Congo. Sound familiar? Yes, there's a war going on there — partly over control of coltan production. Another down-side: this is one of the last remaining habitats of the Lowland Gorilla — and their populations are falling due to habitat loss and conflict. Check out this 4-minute video for the human cost of coltan mining in Congo.

SOA protests this weekend!

One weekend every fall thousands of folks gather at Fort Benning, GA to call for closing the School of the Americans (now renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Why? It has a history of turning out graduates who go back to their home countries to use their skills to repress their own people. Get a van-full and head down! http://www.soaw.org/   (btw, SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, is in danger of losing his ordination due to supporting the ordination of women — Roy, you rock!) Back to School: Burma Last May's Cyclone Nargis struck the southwestern delta area of Burma (Myanmar) packing 130 mph winds and a 10-20 foot tidal surge. It killed over 130,000 people and destroyed thousands of homes. NCP is helping out by giving scholarships to help kids from poor families go back to school. Want to lend a hand? We're raising money on Facebook — goal of $1000 from F'book friends Could be a gift given in the name of someone at Christmas--we will send a gift card, if requested.

2009 Learning Tours!

Here's the line-up: we'll be heading to Sudan in January (African culture, war and poverty, wildlife tour), the Amazon in May (rainforest ecosystem, native culture), Honduras in July (live and work in a community), Alaska in August (Trip One: Denali/Kenai Fjords; Trip Two: Arctic Village) and will close out the summer with Burma, where you can drink in Asian culture while experiencing one of the most troubled countries on earth — complete with an imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate (Aung San Suu Kyi).

Enviro fact:

The average pair of jeans requires 3/4 pounds chemicals to produce adn created 4.5 pounds of greenhouse gases (grown on 3% of the world's cropland, cotton uses 25% of the world's insecticides and 10% of the pesticides, more than any other crop — less than .5% of cotton is grown organically — and "organic" material is still subjected to highly chemically manufacturing process) [source: Fugitive Denim by Rachel Louis Snyder] 

Justice Fact:

"Low prices are what consumers consider 'fair,' even if it means injustice elsewhere." — Carol Off in Bitter Chocolate , a history of cocoa production — and the exploitation of cocoa workers (West African children are lured away from their homes by traffickers, then "sold" to a cocoa farmer for $140 — which the child has to "work off" before being freed, sometimes years later)

Faith Fact:

"Religion may be the sector with the most potential for resistance from the outside to the (gimme-gimme-gimme) infantalist ethos and its consumer culture." — Benjamin Barber in  Consumed