Students meet with federal MPs to seek support for the poor
Harwood Lockton
Volunteer advocacy officer, Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Australia
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Four Avondale College of Higher Education students have joined 230 Christians from around Australia at a gathering in Canberra to lobby politicians about global poverty.
Flushing away poverty: Harwood Lockton, Sonja Larsen, Vanessa Reynolds, Ketannah Hope, Jedda Britten and Avril Lockton at Micah Challenge’s Voices of Justice national gathering in Canberra.
Voices for Justice (September 17-20) brings Christians together each year to learn, pray and take action on behalf of the world’s poor and marginalised.
Jedda Britten, Ketannah Hope, Sonja Larsen, Vanessa Reynolds and two representatives of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Australia were part of small groups who met with 100 federal politicians of all parties to urge them to keep their bipartisan promise to help halve global poverty by 2015.
“Canberra’s longest toilet queue,” a feature of the gathering that highlighted the link between lack of sanitation and death rates around the world, generated media coverage. The message: “no one should be dying for a dunny.”
“We’re appalled 8.1 million children under five are still dying each year,” says Sonja. “A quarter of those deaths could be prevented if we invested money into ensuring everyone has access to adequate toilets—that’s two million kids who could be saved.”
Voices for Justice is organised by Micah Challenge, a coalition of Christian aid and development organisations, churches and individuals who take their name and calling from the words of Micah 6:8: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (NIV).
According to Vanessa, Micah Challenge has helped shape Australia’s aid program over the past six years. “There is no limit when passionate and God-committed Christians act together,” she says.
Ketannah, leader of student mission club COSMOS, says Voices of Justice has given her “a new passion for understanding global issues.”
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd endorsed at last year’s Voices for Justice the collective impact of Micah supporters, describing them as “nagging prophets” and urging them to persist in lobbying politicians to care about global poverty.