Voices for Justice

This past weekend I took part in a conference called Voices for Justice. The focus of the gathering is to lobby politicians around the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to halve world poverty by 2015. This conference is an initiative of the Micah Challenge which rallies Christians around Micah 6:8 – "what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humble with your God". We trained for two days and then spent two days on parliament hill meeting with MPs.
We started with a breakfast in the great hall where the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition spoke. This breakfast was to launch the poverty and justice Bible – a Bible that has all of the passages about justice highlighted in it (over 2000 references).

Then we moved outside to the lawns of parliament and held a rally. As part of this we presented an offering of letters to the Prime Minister – 5612 letters from people all over Australia.

One of our specific asks this year was around child and maternal health. To highlight this we looked at how many children never reach their 5th birthday. The school children in our group held these bears to represent kids who never make it to five years old.

The speakers at the rally rode in on a rickshaw.

I had the privilege of meeting with three politicians and letting them know that people do care about international aid and that we are not doing our fare share here in Australia.

We ended the conference with a 5th birthday party, both celebrating those children who do make it to 5 years old and commemorating those who die before their 5th birthday. As part of this gathering we ask MPs to sign a 5th birthday card that was given to the Prime Minister.

We were honoured to have several leaders from the pacific join us for Voices for Justice this year. They told stories about their home communities and how they are affected by poverty and climate change. I was amazed at their bravery to come and join us and their poise in telling their stories.

One of the many blessings of the conference was that I had 4 wonderful women stay with me. We talked for several hours in the evenings, sharing about our faith, our churches, what we think of calling, how we are working for justice, and also praying and singing together. What a gift!