Several years ago we asked people to describe Off The Map.
This is what they told us
Off The Map is a place to belong, space to think and a way to grow
With that in mind watch this outrageously brilliant video.
Author Steve Johnson explains where good ideas come from
Off The Map – the best is yet to come
If you live in the Orange County area, I will be speaking and signing copies of The Outsider Interviews along with co-authors Todd Hunter and Craig Spinks at Vanguard University this Wednesday evening. We will be interviewing three college age Outsiders, asking them for feedback on their experiences with Christians. This interview is part of Todd Hunters class at Vanguard University and is a rare opportunity to get all three of the authors together in the same place. It is free and open to the public.
Location Vanguard University / Needham Chapel
Wednesday, November 10 · 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Institutional racism is alive and well in India.
It’s called The Caste System.
And America supports it.
This article points out the divide between the haves and have nots
It boils down to toilets.
800 million people in India live on less than $2 a day.
It just so happens that the vast majority are also part of whats commonly referred to in India as OBCs (Other Backward Castes).
Many of these OBCs have a cell phone but not a toilet. U.N. figures show that only 366 million Indians have access to a private toilet or latrine, leaving 665 million to defecate in the open.
“Since there are no water pipes or wells here, residents are forced to rely on the water mafia for water for cooking, washing clothes, bathing and drinking. The neighborhood is rife with skin infections, tuberculosis and other ailments.
A large blue barrel outside a home is filled with murky brown water, tiny white worms and an aluminum drinking cup. To fill up two jerry cans costs between 40 ($.90) and 50 ($1.10) rupees a day, about one-third of the average family’s earnings here.
“If the government would give us water, we would pay that money to the government,” said Suresh Pache, 41, a motorized rickshaw driver.
Instead, it has issued demolition notices throughout the slum, which sits illegally on government land. Pache, whose home was razed 10 times, jokes that the destruction is the only government service he can count on.
Yet the world of technology has embraced the slumdwellers with its cheap cell phones and cut-rate calling plans that charge a sliver of a penny a minute. Pache bought his first phone for 1,400 rupees ($31) four months ago. Since then, his wife, a ragpicker, found two other broken models as she scoured the garbage dump, and he paid to have them repaired.”
Apparently we know how to provide cheap cell phones to the worlds poor but but not cheap toilets.
With President Obama visiting India soon this is Americas opportunity to end a 5000 year old slavish system which is rooted in Hinduism by telling their mostly Brahmin (read privileged) leaders that America can no longer support one of history’s worst human rights violators.
My friend Sunil Sardar and his organization Truthseekers is working to destroy the caste system and we should join him
This is America’s rare opportunity to tell India, if they want our business they’ll have to flush their cruel caste system down the toilet
