Micah Challenge Youth

Micah Challenge Youth are an important part of the broader Micah Challenge campaign, encouraging young Christians in Australia to engage with God's passion for justice and to work towards a transformed world.

Social justice groups of young people who are passionate about God's justice are popping up in schools and churches around the country. Even before social justice became a 'cool' thing to do, it was actually at the heart of God's salvation message for the planet. If you're not part of a justice group, why not get involved in one or start your own!

This page is packed with info and challenges to show your friends and use with your group... But be forewarned, listening to radical messages from Old Testament prophets will transform your faith!

Cool Websites

Take the Challenge

1. Take the Fair Trade Challenge

Your first Challenge is an easy one related to international trade. To play your part, enjoy a Fair Trade coffee with a friend while you've got time off work and/or studies. You can go out to a café for one or buy in some coffee and make it at home.

What will it achieve?
Farmers in poor countries that produce tea and coffee for us to enjoy receive a very small proportion of the profits; an amount often too little for the farmers and their families to survive off. Fair trade tea and coffee ensures that farmers in impoverished areas receive the highest possible proportion of profits from their farming activities, enabling them to provide their families with food, access to clean water, education and medical care. All you have to do is choose which type of tea or coffee you will drink!

To find out where to get Fair Trade coffee visit:
http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/mtf/fairtrade/

To learn more about trade visit:
http://www.makepovertyhistory.com.au/whatwewant.html

2. Take the Share It! Challenge

This challenge is all about growing the online community engaged in changing the world for Jesus!

There are heaps of people out there doing stuff at school, uni, TAFE, work, youth group, church and even just with mates. You're talking about how you're fed up with the way things are and want to make a difference. You've done great stuff and got amazing ideas - so why don't you share'em?!
1. Get 10 of your mates to sign up to The Micah Call
2. Email us with info about what you've been doing and we'll put your story up on the Micah Challenge feedback page.
3. Join the Micah Challenge facebook cause and recruit your friends to join too. You could even start a discussion thread and get people networking online.
4. Buy your friends some white bands... you've got a Make Poverty History wristband, right?! You can order them at Micah Challenge if you don't.

3. Take the One Tap Challenge

One person in five of the world's population has no access to safe drinking water. Children are especially vulnerable to dying from diarrhoea, dysentery, malaria and other preventable diseases all because they have no clean water.

Practical solutions include water pumped from bore holes, which provides communal access to clean, fresh water. The water collected from the single pump is used for drinking, washing, cooking and cleaning.

Your challenge: for one day collect all the water you need from one tap (not the shower tap, that'd be cheating!).

If you want to drink, wash, cook or clean, any water you use or consume must come from the same tap throughout the day. Be glad that you don't live in Africa or Asia where women walk an average of 6kms to collect clean water for their families.

Let us know how you go!

4. Take the $1 for 1 Day Challenge

Your challenge: To live on $1.00 for one day - not a cent more!

What will it achieve?
Ever felt like the people around you just don't understand what you're going through? They don't get how hard it is for you? That's 'cause it's hard for them to truly empathise with your situation unless they've been there themselves. So, when you hear frightening statistics like "1 billion people live on less than $1 a day", it's gotta be almost impossible to imagine just how tough it would be facing that reality every day, and even harder to understand how there are 1 billion people in the world that are so poor.

So you're starting to figure out why this challenge is so important, right? Putting yourself in the shoes of a poor person, even if it's only for a day, will give you a much better idea of the lack of choices they have and their daily fight for survival. You'll have to completely plan out your day - what will you eat? How will you get around? What clothes can you buy? Will you have anything left over to save for a rainy day?

And if you're thinking "oh but 3rd world countries have cheaper products so it's not as bad for them", think again. The $1 per day is worked out on something called "Purchasing Power Parity" (PPP), which means that in their country they're able to buy the equivalent to what you can buy here in Aus for $1. Pretty scary, huh?

You can take the easy way out and mooch off your friends and family for the day to get away with spending less than $1, OR you can really do the challenge and make yourself genuinely poor for one day. You will learn a lot from it!

5. Take the Perfect Present Challenge

Your challenge: Buy a gift for a poor community as a present for a friend or family member.

Got a birthday, wedding or engagement party coming up soon? Or did someone do you a huge favour?

This means one thing: you have to think of presents to buy. So, instead of buying something they don't really need, buy a gift that will make a meaningful and long-term impact on the lives of people living in poor communities.

This challenge requires you to be counter-cultural - go against the strong current of consumerism. Jesus was a pioneer in this regard. He encouraged others to be counter-cultural, for example, he told the rich young man to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor and he showed love and kindness to prostitutes and tax collectors.

What can I buy?
You can buy farm animals, training and education, school supplies, medical provisions, health awareness lessons, bikes.....pretty much anything!

How much do they cost?
You can spend from $5 (which will get you a year's school supplies for one child) to thousands. The more you spend on your friend or family member's pressie, the greater the investment into suffering communities.

Where do I get them?
There are a number a agencies with online catalogues to give you loads of ideas and opportunity to make a difference in this way. Try Baptist World Aid, TEAR, World Vision and Oxfam.

6. Take the Film Challenge

In your holidays, get your friends together and make a short film exploring the theme of poverty (or even better, ask your school media teacher if you can do it as part of your assessment). When you're finished, let us know and we may even put it up on our youtube page.

...Otherwise, get your friends together and have a movie night featuring one of the following justice films, recommended by contributors to the former Take the Challenge forum.
- Please be aware that the descriptions and views expressed are the forum contributors' own, not those of Micah Challenge. Some viewers may find some films disturbing and a number are not suitable for younger children or persons under 15years.

-The Bank
Australian drama starring David Wenham, it touches on corporate greed and the impact on ordinary folk.

- Beyond Borders
A rich woman played by Angeliana Jolie vists Africa and has her life changed.

- Bloody Sunday
It's all shot on handheld (so you get a bit dizzy) and the Irish accents can be hard to understand, but this is a very powerful portrayal of the massacre of Irish civilians in 1972.

- Bob Roberts
Starring Tim Robbins, this is a hilarious mock-umentary about a right-wing, folk-singing politician in the US and his underhanded campaign to win an election. I've used a couple of songs from this movie to raise issues about wealth, poverty and welfare:

- Bonhoeffer
A dramatisation of the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was eventually executed by the Nazis because of his involvement in the resistance movement.

-Born into Brothels
A documentary following a woman teaching photography to kids who's mothers are prostitues in the red light district of Kolkota. Rather heartbreaking as one would imagine.

-Bowling for Columbine
Michael Moore's documentary looking at the roots of gun violence in the USA. Very disturbing and powerful.

- City of God
A story based in Rio de Janeiro following the lives of two boys who grow up in a violent neighbourhood.

- The Corporation
It's a loooong documentary, filled with talking heads giving their opinions on the role of the modern corporation in today's economy and ecology. It includes some great thought-provoking snippets, and the section where they compare the behaviour of corporations to the medical definition of psychopaths is priceless.

- Cry Freedom
Dramatization of the murder of South African activist, Steve Biko and the struggle of journalist Donald Woods to publicize the truth of his death.

- The Constant Gardener
A widower is determined to get to the bottom of a potentially explosive secret involving his wife's murder, big business, and corporate corruption.

- Dead Man Walking
Follows a nun working with a prisoner on death row in the US and with the victim's family. It is a powerful film about the death penalty, vengeance and redemption.

- Dirty Pretty Things
This movie focuses on the plight of some illegal immigrants in London, as they struggle to survive at the low-wage, no-status end of the workforce. It's a bit of a love story and a bit of a thriller and a very good movie over all.

- Gandhi
Like it says on the box - the story of Gandhi's non-violent struggle to free India from British oppression.

- The Girl in the Cafe
Lawrence, an aging, lonely civil servant falls for Gina, an enigmatic young woman. When he takes her to the G8 Summit in Reykjavik, however, their bond is tested by Lawrence's professional obligations.

- Hotel Rwanda
A powerful film set in the midst of genocide in Rwanda. It is a dramatisation of a true story about a hotel manager who housed a thousand Tutsis refugees.

- I Know I Am Not Alone
"A musicians journey through war in the middle east. Michael Franti, world-renowned musician and human rights worker, travels to Iraq, Palestine and Israel to explore the human cost of war with a group of friends, some video cameras and his guitar." Note this film has not been widely released yet.

- The Killing Fields
A film about the Cambodian genocide, it follows an American reporter trapped in Cambodia during the "Year Zero" ethnic cleansing.

- Life and Debt
A documentary about the impact of debt on Jamaica. It's a bit long, but there's some very powerful stuff in this movie.

- Lord of War
Nicholas Cage plays an up-and-coming arms dealer in a movie that follows the journey of a bullet from factory to brain of a child soldier in an anonymous conflict somewhere in Africa.

- Maria, Full of Grace
Follows a young Columbian girl as she becomes a drug mule to the USA. It's a very disturbing take on the way the global economy exploits low-skilled workers in poor countries and feeds the drug trade.

- The Matrix
Sure, it's sci-fi escapist trash, but the scene where Cypher betrays Morpheus and the others so her can be reinserted into the Matrix is a powerful parable of the seduction of materialism and comfort as a way of avoiding facing the harsh realities of injustice and oppression.

- Paradise Now
Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. A really good look at the conflict in the middle east from the Palestinian side. It is the first Palestinian film to be nominated for an Oscar.

- Promises
This is a great, and very moving, doco about Jewish and Palestinian children. Hearing their stories, their perspectives on what's going on around them, and watching them struggle to accept each other, is just amazing.

- Rabbit Proof Fence
A very powerful and moving story about how the policies of assimilation and removal affected Aboriginal families in WA in the 1930s.

- Roger and Me
Another Michael Moore doco, this one focussing on Moore's attempt to meet the Chairman of General Motors, Roger Smith, after GM closes down its plants in Flint, Michigan, with devastating effect on the town's economy and social fabric.

- Romero
The story of Salvadorean Bishop, Oscar Romero, who was murdered as a result of his opposition to the dictatorial government.

- Schindler's List
Spielberg's masterpiece about the Nazi war, the holocaust and what one person can do to oppose evil.

- Syriana
A look at oil in the world, and how complex it all gets.

- The Yes Men
Probably not as funny as it could have been, but there are some brilliant moments as these two guys pretend to be World Trade Organization officials, and highlight the injustices of global trade.

- Three Kings
A film that gives a good look at the fallout of the first Iraq war. In the search for gold 4 soldiers find people who are in need of help.

- Tsotsi
In this world... redemption just comes once." "Six days in the violent life of a young Johannesburg gang leader.

- Yesterday
After falling ill, Yesterday (Khumalo) learns that she is HIV positive. With her husband in denial and young daughter to tend to, Yesterday's one goal is to live long enough to see her child go to school.

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