One of the strongest earthquakes on record shook central Chile on February 27. The disaster killed more than 700 people, caused extensive damage, and affected an estimated 2 million people.

Sam Martland, who is board chair at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Terre Haute, Indiana, and assistant professor of history and Latin American studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, was in Santiago, the Chilean capital, when the earthquake struck. He and his family are fine; Santiago was not as severely damaged as other cities, namely Concepción. Martland reports that his friends in other areas have had homes and workplaces destroyed.

Martland shared his observations in the aftermath of the quake in an e-mail to a colleague. "[S]everal events in the last few days show the importance of a prepared citizenry," Martland says. "When the navy mistakenly said there would be no tsunami, many people headed for the hills anyway because the harbormasters and police and regular folks knew that was what to do after an earthquake.

"There are many people trained in rescues who live in the affected areas because Chile has highly trained volunteer firefighters (men and women) even in big cities, so the fire departments are large. One neighborhood in Concepción is drinking from a well that an older resident dug after the earthquake of 1960."

Martland has observed, and also been involved in, the kinds of impromptu relief efforts that always arise after a disaster. "Aid is slow getting to many smaller towns and certain neighborhoods, so people are on their own resources for a while. Some friends in Santiago are getting up a supply mission to a hospital . . . in the affected area — getting a list of needs and collecting money, partly from friends in the U.S. — a well-organized unofficial effort."

"Equal rights, equal opportunities: progress for all." That is the 2010 theme for Monday's International Women's Day. First celebrated in 1911, the occasion offers an opportunity to reflect on the wide-ranging achievements of women throughout the world and recommit to supporting women's equal rights.

This year, International Women's Day comes with recent reports that, in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, some relief agencies are distributing supplies only to women, in hopes that aid will be more effectively and fairly distributed to those in need. Especially in the wake of disaster, inequalities are deepened and often women are excluded by traditional relief strategies — even as they contend with greater safety risks(as do elderly, sick, and youth populations).

In Haiti, UUSC is working with the Regional Coordination of Southeast Organizations (CROSE) and the Platform of Community Organizations of the Port-au-Prince Metropolitan Zone (COZPAM), two grassroots coalitions organizing camps for internally displaced persons. CROSE and COZPAM are not only using UUSC funds to purchase food and other essential items especially for women and children, they're also making sure that women are included in camp coordinating committees, which help ensure relief with dignity by managing food distribution, water access, and more.

UUSC partners with organizations throughout the world that are actively working with women to achieve and exercise equal rights. In Pakistan and India, Barakat Inc., a Cambridge-based UUSC partner, is operating schools to help ensure that women and girls have access to quality education. And in Kenya, UUSC economic justice partners Rock Women Group and the Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders (KENASVIT) are helping women in the informal economy to achieve respect and financial security.

International Women's Day is a day to celebrate, honor, and empower women. Every day is a day to celebrate, honor, and empower women. How are you going to celebrate?

Myrna Greenfield, director of UUSC's Outreach and Mobilization Department, filed this report after traveling recently to Ecuador to learn how grassroots movements are organizing youth and helping to ensure the human right to water for all.

Twenty years ago, the people of Guasmo Sur — a low-income neighborhood of about 40,000 households in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city — started working together to address the poverty, inadequate education, substandard housing, and lack of water and sanitation services in their community; today, the neighborhood is still poor, but living standards have improved and people brim with a sense of pride and possibility.

I traveled to Guasmo Sur last month with a delegation of UUSC members and supporters to observe and learn from the extraordinary progress that this community has made. At a time when the political stalemate in the United States is forestalling efforts to create change, it was inspiring to see the impact that people organizing together can achieve.

They call themselves El Movimiento Mi Cometa (the "My Kite" movement). Over the years, Mi Cometa has developed a variety of dynamic social services, such as a Head Start–type program for preschoolers, an after-school enrichment program, a women-led housing construction co-op, a microenterprise loan program, and music and computer programs for all. Mi Cometa's programs are developed to meet community needs and are largely headed up by women and youth.

Youth activists

Over a simple, healthy lunch, our delegation was regaled by a pint-sized band performing a spirited rendition of "Oye Como Va," the Tito Puente song popularized by Santana. In addition to developing children's creativity along with their ABCs, Mi Cometa strives to educate people about human rights. For example, if they have a parade, each child carries a sign about a specific right, such as the right to education and the right to vote.

Ecuadorians are eligible to vote at age 16 and are required to vote at age 18 through 65 or they may be subject to possible government sanctions. The leader of Mi Cometa's School of Leaders for the New Millennium, an energetic 24-year-old named José Luis Echeverría, told us that youth have an important voice in shaping Ecuador's future. "Age doesn't make you mature," José Luis told us. "It's the supposedly 'mature' people who are responsible for the state our country is in!"

During their campaign to develop and eventually help pass a new Ecuadorian constitution in October 2008, youth from Mi Cometa traveled around Ecuador by bus, soliciting ideas for the constitution from other young people; 9 of the 40 articles they submitted were adopted into the constitution. Mi Cometa, which is not affiliated with any political party, is now working on a program to train youth to run for public office.

Constitutional right to water

In addition to the youth provisions, Mi Cometa informed our group that the Ecuadorian constitution states, "The right to water is a fundamental and inalienable human right." Hearing that the human right to water (access to safe, sufficient, affordable water for daily human needs) is actually written into the constitution was really moving. I thought of my colleagues in Boston, who are campaigning to ensure that low-income people won't get their water shut off if they can't pay their bills, and wished they were with me to hear about this remarkable accomplishment.

Although Mi Cometa successfully campaigned to get the human right to water included in the constitution, the struggle to make sure it is implemented is still under way. As with low-income communities around the world, one of Guasmo Sur's most pressing problems is the lack of access to safe, sufficient, affordable water. As of August 2009, only 90 percent of the residents had potable water piped into their homes, and only 75 percent had sanitation services. People without running water must purchase water from water trucks called tanqueros. Industrial and home waste is dumped into the Guayas River without effective treatment.

Our delegation met with Jose Luis Santos, the general director of ECAPAG, the Ecuadorian regulatory agency that has oversight responsibility for Interagua, the former Bechtel Inc. subsidiary that was granted the concession contract in 2001 to provide privatized water and sanitation services to Guayaquil. Santos reported to our delegation that ECAPAG had fined Interagua $5.6 million dollars for failure to install the requisite number of water and sanitation hookups required by the contract.

Citizen watchdogs

Mi Cometa realized that people from other neighborhoods were experiencing similar problems with poor-quality services and lack of responsiveness to customers, so they formed a coalition of 40 organizations, called Observatorio Ciudadano de Servicios Publicos (OCSP, or the Citizens Observatory on Public Services), to serve as a watchdog organization for water, sanitation, and other public services in Guayaquil. OCSP has tested water quality, gathered testimony documenting how citizens' needs have been ignored, attracted the media to examine the problems, and brought its case to local, national, and international courts.

In fall 2009, the World Bank's ombudsman responded to OCSP's claim on behalf of 3,500 Interagua customers who had unresolved complaints about their bills. Through mediation, the ombudsman got Interagua to form a negotiation table with OCSP and the customers. During our visit, OCSP and the customers were engaged in daily negotiations to resolve these 3,500 cases.

"This is the first time we've been able to get Interagua to talk," attorney Augusto Parada, one of OCSP's leaders, told our delegation through our translator, UUSC Environmental Justice Program Manager Patricia Jones. "It wasn't easy. It has happened little by little, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. It was so difficult that at one point we thought the negotiations would break down!"

By relying on a clause in the Ecuadorian constitution during negotiations, OCSP was able to get Interagua to agree to cancel the unpaid water debt for people in extreme poverty, and to reduce 50 percent of the debt and forgive penalty fees and interest for those who didn't qualify as extremely low-income.

"When we started the negotiations, conversations broke into arguments," Parada told us. "After 15 days of negotiations, the combativeness has diminished. There's a different dynamic for the customers. You can see in their eyes that they now have hope that they'll be able to resolve these issues."

While many in Guasmo Sur criticize OCSP and don't believe that Interagua is truly concerned about responding to low-income people's needs, Parada and others are optimistic. "The power relationships have changed," Parada continued. "People feel we can speak together to dialogue, investigate, and come to a resolution. This is a completely new experience here in Guayaquil! We'll see what the results will be."

For more information about UUSC's Environmental Justice program, visit www.uusc.org/environmentaljustice.

UUSC and Investors Against Genocide (IAG), a colleague organization in the anti-genocide campaign in Sudan, are celebrating the February 18, 2010, announcement that another major financial investment company has joined the growing divestment movement. Following a November shareholder vote, American Funds has divested its extensive holdings — almost $190 million — in PetroChina, a Chinese oil company that has been identified as a major financial and military supporter of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

As related in IAG’s press release, Eric Cohen, chairperson of IAG, welcomed the news and reiterated the desire for future American Funds investment action: "We congratulate American Funds for divesting from PetroChina. Their action is a positive affirmation of their human rights policy. We trust that, going forward, American Funds will promptly apply their human rights policy to avoid other cases of investments that substantially contribute to genocide." American Funds is the largest mutual fund company to date to divest from PetroChina.

This news comes on the heels of the successful campaign to urge TIAA-CREF’s divestment, announced January 4, from several Asian energy companies that failed to adequately address the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Together with IAG and several other human-rights organizations, UUSC has urged major U.S.-based financial-services companies to divest from companies linked to the seven-year-old Sudanese genocide.

Learn more about UUSC’s response to the genocide in Darfur.

• Shop in our store for fair-trade products.
• Green & Black’s organic chocolate recently announced it would source all of its cocoa through fair trade. With Kraft Foods’ recent acquisition of Cadbury, Green & Black’s parent company, some fair-trade organizations are concerned that Cadbury’s new ownership may jeopardize its commitment to ethical sourcing. However, Kraft Foods has publicly stated that it will honor Green & Black/Cadbury’s commitment to fair trade.

Valentine's Day is a time to get cozy with the ones we love, showering them with heart-warming gifts like flowers and chocolates. In fact, about 50 million pounds of chocolate candy will be sold during the week of Valentine's Day. Perhaps it's the belief that chocolate can coax your sweetheart into a state of bliss through its decadent, seductive qualities. Indeed, with more than 1,500 distinct flavor characteristics, chocolate is one of the most complex food compounds — you might even detect undertones ranging from blackberry to hazelnut to tangerine in your chocolate bar. But do you know where your chocolate comes from? And what about the flowers, one of the most sublime symbols of pure beauty, which encapsulates how much you appreciate your significant other — do you know who grows and picks those roses?

Currently, the $13 billion chocolate industry is heavily consolidated, with just Hershey's and M&M/Mars controlling two-thirds of the chocolate-candy market in the United States. While the vast majority, about 90 percent, of cocoa is grown on small family farms, giant chocolate companies pay so little for the cocoa that farmers resort to running their operations on cheap labor. Over two-thirds of the world's cocoa is produced in West Africa, with Cote d'Ivoire accounting for more than 40 percent of global production. Thousands of children in West Africa and other cocoa-producing regions are forced to work on these cocoa farms, with some children being trafficked into forced labor under the guise of an opportunity for a good job to support their families.

Harvesting cocoa is dangerous work with long hours. Children laboring on cocoa farms must cut cacao pods down from high branches with machetes, split them open, and scoop out the beans, while they are also exposed to harmful pesticides without the necessary protective equipment. What's more, the children who labor under these conditions are unable to attend school or to pursue other avenues for safe and sustainable work that could bring them and their families out of extreme poverty.

A similar picture emerges when it comes to flowers. Many of the roses and carnations grown in South America are exported to be sold in American florist shops. In many of the flower plantations in countries with big cut-flower industries, such as Colombia and Ecuador, pervasive problems include poor health and safety conditions (especially pesticide exposure), the use of child labor, sexual harassment, and targeting of union organizers.

When it comes to fighting for economic justice in the chocolate and floral industries, the most viable solution we have at the moment is fair trade. UUSC's colleague organizations Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Forum have taken leadership on the issues of child labor in the cocoa industry and the rights of cut-flowers workers. Fortunately, these organizations, along with other human-rights organizations, faith-based groups, and fair-trade chocolate companies, are working to ensure that big companies that sell products like chocolate, coffee, and tea uphold their obligations under international labor standards.

So, what can you do to support fair trade and economic justice? International Labor Rights Forum has a resource on buying flowers [PDF] that gives suggestions on which ethical-sourcing certifications you should look out for, and Global Exchange is once again holding a National Valentine's Day of Action for teachers and religious educators to bring the topics of fair trade and child labor in the cocoa industry into the classroom.

To support UUSC's efforts to promote fair trade, you can shop for gifts, including bundles of fairly traded chocolate, tea, and pecans from Equal Exchange. Or, for a fun and delicious dessert activity, try a chocolate and coffee pairing inspired by Equal Exchange's recommendations of which fairly traded chocolate and coffee flavors best complement each other. No matter how you celebrate this Valentine's Day, making a personal commitment to fair trade is one way you can show someone what a gift of love means, by supporting the workers and producers behind your gifts.

© Sophia Paris/United Nations

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Browsing the New York Times the other day, I came across this article, "Quake Ignores Class Divisions of a Poor Land." In it, Marc Lacey and Simon Romero make this basic argument:

_{"Earthquakes do not respect social customs. They do not coddle the rich. They know nothing about the invisible lines that in Haiti keep the poor masses packed together in crowded slums and the well-to-do high up in the breezy hills of places like Petionville."}

I beg to differ. Here is the thing...when a disaster strikes, Lacey and Romero have a point. It can hit anywhere, at anytime, and affect anybody. But that's where a disaster's inability to discriminate ends. In the press coverage immediately following the earthquake in Haiti, many news and relief organizations pointed out that the reason Haiti is such a large-scale disaster is because of the lack of infrastructure that exists in the country in the first place, and fundamentally, that's true. What this argument fails to mention is that existing structural inequalities, on top of poor infrastructure, magnifies the impact of the disaster on certain people. People's ability to rebuild after an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a cyclone — it's only as strong as their place in society beforehand.

Lacey and Romero continue:

_{President Rene Preval was the most vivid example of just how democratic natural disasters can be, his grand office at the presidential palace flattened and his home badly damaged.}

That is absolutely true. There is no doubt that everyone in Port-au-Prince is facing the impacts of heavy devastation. But, while he is an extreme example, the president of Haiti is also a perfect example of the discriminatory nature of disasters. Rene Preval can rebuild. He can access relief, he can access food and fresh water, and he can use the connections and finances he had before the disaster to rebuild his life after it.

This was true in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when wealthy homeowners found that the complexities of the insurance policies they held were almost insurmountable. But with time, patience, and a lot of lawyers and money, they could get their insurance claims fulfilled. Those with little before Katrina were completely left behind, their houses abandoned because they didn't have the means to take on the structural power barriers that marginalized them before the storm.

The truth is, disasters do discriminate. Disenfranchised members of society become more so, struggling to survive, let alone rebuild livelihoods. Inequalities that existed are merely magnified, forcing some people onto the edges of society. UUSC works to lessen those deep divides — work that is more complex than traditional relief efforts — but, fundamentally important in the effort to foster long-term change.

Assuming that disasters affect everyone in the same way is dangerous. It undermines relief efforts and deepens longstanding inequalities. So when an earthquake, or tsunami, or flood, strikes, existing divisions aren't "ignored"; they are magnified. Remembering this fact is the key to rebuilding.

In a powerful op-ed for the Cohasset Mariner, Reverend Jan Carlsson Bull asks the question, "In the wake of a disaster, what can we do?"

"What can we do?" Perhaps the first words to come out of our hearts after we gasped in horror at the suffering of our neighbors in Haiti. What can we do to help? Tremor follows tremor, and this morning as I write yet another shockwave has moved through this island nation, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

With our minds on Haiti and the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., those words that Dr. King spoke to a congregation assembled at the National Cathedral in our nation's capital on the Sunday before he was murdered resound for us today: "We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." This past Sunday we sang a paraphrase of this, the words of Cecily Taylor: "Our world is one world: what touches one affects us all..."

We are affected; we are touched. We are family. What can we do? With 3.5 million people wandering amid the debris and over 100,000 dead and thousands unaccounted for, where do we begin?

Read the rest of the op-ed here [PDF]. Thanks to Reverend Carlsson Bull for this piece!

Here are some more things UU congregations and groups have been doing:

• Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• UU Congregation of the Palisades held an auction to raise money for our Haiti relief fund.
• First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network (MUUSJN) sent an  appeal to their network asking folks to give generously to our Haiti Relief Fund.
• Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Plattsburgh conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• First Parish UU Church in Portland, Maine, is planning to do a benefit concert in February to raise funds for our Haiti relief fund. 
• Boulder Valley UU Fellowship in Lafayette, Colo., conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• The organization European Unitarian Universalists made a special contribution to our Haiti relief fund.
• UU Church of Canton, N.Y., conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice posted an appeal for donations to our Haiti relief fund on their website.
• UU Congregation of Atlanta conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• UU Church of Chattanooga conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• UU Fellowship of Hendersonville, N.C., conducted a special collection for our Haiti relief fund.
• Emerson UU Church in Canoga Park, Calif., contributed a Sunday offering to our Haiti relief fund.