The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Live Below the Line for Christian Aid
Christian Aid is challenging the public to live on just £1 a day for 5 days to raise £500,000 to help some of the world’s poorest people.
                       
Live Below the Line is a new campaign run by the Global Poverty Project and fronted by actor Hugh Jackman, which aims to recruit 5,000 people across the UK to take up the challenge of spending just £5 in 5 days on all their food and drink.  Get your friends to sponsor you!

1.4 billion people live below the poverty line, surviving on just £1 a day to cover all their living expenses.  That’s why Christian Aid is supporting Live Below the Line, to raise awareness, and to raise money to help people in poverty get out of poverty.

Street Collecting
We will be collecting in the High Street and Heath Street on Saturday 21st May and would welcome volunteers.  You need only do 1 hour though are welcome to stay out longer of course.  Tins can be collected from and returned to the church.  Please sign up on the list on the church noticeboard.   Can’t pretend it’s fun but it is worthwhile.

Christian Aid pays tribute to award winning photojournalist
Photographer Tim Hetherington was killed on 20 April, in the Libyan rebel stronghold of Misrata. The rocket propelled grenade attack by pro-Gaddaffi forces also killed US photographer Chris Hondros of Getty Images and injured two other photographers.  Tim had dedicated his life to highlighting humanitarian issues as a result of war and conflict, and was highly esteemed by fellow journalists and aid workers alike.  He worked with Christian Aid in 2005 in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami to produce some of the most insightful images of the disaster and its impact which formed the interactive exhibition Every Time I see the Sea: Life After the Tsunami in 2006.

Joseph Cabon, Christian Aid’s Senior Photo Editor, said: “He was a man of intelligent conversation, strong mental resources, and had a deep curiosity about the world. He felt strongly that it was important to try and understand what was going on, and communicated  that understanding imaginatively and passionately.”

He will be much missed by all and our thoughts are with him family and friends at this time.

Trace the Tax – our campaign explained [in $ but it applies to £ too]
Did you know that for every $10 given in aid to the developing world, $15 slips out through tax dodging?

The situation is stark and urgent. Christian Aid estimates that tax dodging costs poor countries $160 billion a year. This is money that should be spent building schools and hospitals.
$160bn is:
☞    Enough to reach the UN millennium development goals several times over.
☞    Enough to save the lives of 350,000 children aged five or under every year.
☞    Almost twice the amount poor countries receive in international aid.
In the West, tax revenue pays for basic healthcare, roads and schools.   Many poorer countries struggle to do the same – sometimes because lack of infrastructure prevents them collecting revenue efficiently, and sometimes due to corrupt and unaccountable government.  However, the cloak of silence under which so many corporations are able to operate means billions of dollars leave developing countries without anyone noticing.

Doing it by the books
To put a stop to tax dodging by unscrupulous multinational companies, Christian Aid is asking for greater transparency about how much profit multinational companies make – and tax they pay – in the countries that they operate in.
   
It would stop money being taken out of poor countries like Zambia and poured into rich tax havens such as Switzerland.

What do we want? No more secrets
While the rich world counts the cost of the global economic crisis it is glaringly obvious that the collapse of international markets and the drain on poor-country riches share a common cause: secrecy.
☞    Secrecy allowed banks to hide their toxic assets until it was too late.
☞    Secrecy continues to prevent us from knowing in which countries multinational firms truly make their profits – and how.
☞    If the West is serious about poorer countries helping themselves out of poverty, the secrecy has to stop.
☞    We need a new global financial culture. Governments need to ensure that every multinational declares in which countries it makes its profits and how much tax it pays.
☞    We also need the accounting rules which companies must abide by to change so that there is no more financial secrecy.
Take action!
Act now! Call on David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Nicolas Sarkozy to end tax haven secrecy at this year’s G20.
Act now! Write to TUI, Vodafone, Unilever and IHG, and urge them to help people in poor countries trace the tax.

You can contact all these people and businesses through the Christian Aid website www.christianaid.org.uk – it will even translate your message into French for you.