i hate my blog

So not so long ago all of us Urban Promise staff and interns flew to Camden to attend to the annual Urban Promise Summit. Its basically a fancy word for "lets have all the UP's meet together for 2 days and we'll have lots of boring sessions and workshops while your jetlegged". Though obviously some fun was had, and i did get to see some old friends and visit the city i fell in love with a few years ago. After the Summit we booked it up to the newist york for a couple days and went hard trying to see everything, while rushing and not stopping to enjoy any of it. It was awesome, i highly recommend such a strategy for travelling and for life in general.

Me and Ryan in Vancouver before we left

This is a shot of the Jehovah's Witness's WatchTower headquarters...but some bridge jumped in the picture at the last second.


Me and Matt Street agreed that our goal in life was to take a picture in front of a "wall street" sign in new york, with each of us under our corresponding last names....thats it...our entire life goal. Well i did it. I had to ditch street cause he was slowing me down...and now i don't know what to do with my life


New Yorks Chinatown kicked Vancouver's Chinatowns butt. This is both the original Chinatown street and an historic site known as "blood angle" because it was notorious for gang war or something. Anyways, i took it just in case i run into the Triads and i can pull this out


Heres a funny story. On our ship ride home we wanted a nice picture in front of the sea, but when we got the picture back some stupid squid and the whale got in the picture, totally ruining it. Though it would make a good movie name.

The most latest issue (november 07) of the BC Christian News ran an article about urbanpromise vancouver. The paper said they would've used my picture in the article except they said i was too "lustfully good-looking " for it...their words, not mine
Anyways, heres a few stats from the article, if you can trust evangelical propaganda...

-1.2 million Canadian children live in poverty.
-In 2000, 32.7% of immigrant families in Canada for less than 10 years were living in poverty, compared to 15.5% of non-immigrant families.
-Aboriginal children living in urban areas are twice as likely as non-aboriginal children to live in poverty.
-In a recent survey of the vancouver area, 45% of residents said they moved to vancouver because of "matt wall" or "matt wall related activities", followed by "livability" at 23%, "beauty and opportunities" at 18% and "this is a stupid survey" at 7%

check it out
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/bc/bccn/1107/04urban

(the last stat may or may not be made up)

For all those who didn't know, October 16/17 was international Stand Up Against Poverty Day, a worldwide event with the aim to eliminate absolute poverty: www.standagainstpoverty.org
We decided to participate with the other 43 million standing up against poverty around the world. The stand up campaign is mostly about raising awareness by physically standing up and declaring that you will personally not accept poverty. Then you can put pictures and movies online and stuff.
But the question has to be asked...does poverty have to be so ugly and boring? Why can't poverty be fun?

This is our commitment to stand up against poverty. We sign our names to symbolically say we will follow it, kind like God and the people of Isael. The ancient Hebrews had a name for such a commitment, they called it "a poster"

This is our Poverty Pinata...which for some reason closely resembles a cloud. But like most clouds, we hardly notice it...we go about our normal lives like they don't exist, yet they are always around....


But we all know the destructive power of clouds...and in fact if we sit ideally by and do not actively oppose clouds, we become no better than them...so we must destroy them to release their precious cargo...


And like all clouds, its filled with candy... Fresh, life giving, crop replenishing, wet candy....And if that doesn't explain poverty, then i don't know what will


Though not in absolute poverty, many of our kids do live in poverty. I'm impressed with them, i think many of them realize how there are so many in this world with even less than them, and they realize that it's not right. The kids came up with a solution too. One thats fair, doesn't involve violence and is achievable. They said, "why don't all the people with lots just give to those who have none, so that everyone would be even?"
...thats a good question. Why don't we?

I hope that they can grow up hating poverty as much as they now hate clouds...