Do you see Orange?
11 March 2008 MEMORANDUM FOR A.S. SENIOR VP / SENATE
FROM: Social Justice Ministry
SUBJECT: Do You See Orange? Week
1. Proposal: “Do You See Orange? Week” is a nation-wide event occurring on dozens of college campuses during the week of April 7th-11th, where 5% of each campus wears orange tee-shirts that say “ORPHAN” on them, to visually demonstrate to each campus the reality that one-out-of every twenty children in Sub-Saharan Africa is orphaned by HIV/AIDS. This year, the Social Justice Ministry is going to do this event on Biola’s campus. We have ordered 175, to roughly represent 5% of Biola’s undergraduate school. Once we have recruited 175 people to buy and wear the shirts for that week, we will train them on the basics of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the orphan crisis, so they can each have a good answer when their friends ask why they are wearing the shirt. Last year, through this nation-wide campaign, over 100,000 students were visually exposed to the reality of the HIV and orphan crisis in Africa, and this year SJM plans on adding over 3,000 Biola Students and Faculty to that number by doing this activism week. Biola needs to take part in Do You See Orange? Week because the orphan crisis is one of the issues on the forefront of God’s heart, and the first step towards Biola students and Christians in general getting involved to bring an end to this devastating situation is by becoming aware of the problem, and the ways that they can be effective parts of the solution.
2. Amount Requested: 175 Tee-shirts cost $5 each = $875 Students asked to pay $2 for each. Total Request= $ 525
3. Problems with Status Quo: Today, there are 23,000,000 people in Africa living with HIV. Every day, over 3,000 children are orphaned by AIDS in Africa, adding to the 12 million AIDS orphans that already exist on the continent. That means that in Sub-Saharan Africa, 9-11 happens over and over and over again. Last year, AIDS claimed the lives of 1.6 million Africa, tripling the number of people killed so far in the Darfur genocide. Christians in the more-developed countries in the world have the resources and therefore, the responsibility, to do something about this, but most of us are unaware of the reality of the problem itself. This global crisis seems to us so removed from our lives that we forget that it’s even happening, we don’t do anything, or when we do, it’s not relevant or helpful.
4. Miscellaneous: Though our total costs for the shirts will be $1,000, we are only asking for $700. This is because we plan on selling the shirts at $2 per, so that the students who wear the shirts not only have a time commitment, but a monetary sense of ownership for the whole campaign. Along side the tee-shirt aspect of the campaign, we are planning on have a 24-hour prayer room set up that week for students who want to pray about the orphan crisis and other global issues. We are also attempting to show a documentary about the HIV/AIDS and Orphan crisis during the week, as well as put on a meeting that the campus will be invited to, possibly with chapel credit, with a speaker from an organization in South Africa called Acres of Love, which currently takes care of 130 children who have been abandoned or orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
Chris Reeder
(1) Comments
This sounds like a great idea and should be passed.
Keith Swafford
Wednesday, March 12, 2008