World Vision

I noticed a "World Vision" sign on the train last night. Instead of the standard "For the price of a cup of coffee..." it had "for the price of your daily bottle of water..." you can feed a child in Africa. This really started me thinking about the implications. First, did the signs and TV commercials in Canada change too? Second, is this just a comment on how the modern person drinks a bottle of water everyday?
But if we go deeper what are the implications? I mean if we think about coffee and look at the countries where coffee is produced we see what? To find the area for a coffee plantation, massive rain forests are razed. People in these countries often have limited human rights, but conversely coffee in some notable regions (think South America or Southeast Asia) coffee production is the alternative to producing narcotic drugs.
Whereas bottled water has its own environmentally destructive legacy. Not only is the delivery of bottled water versus tap water clearly indicate loads more emissions but where companies find the water is often untouched wilderness which is essentially bulldozed over to put down a factory. When we think of the plastics we can't help but think about the oil used to make the plastics. Where does oil come from? countries that harbour terrorists and refuse women rights to do anything.
When you balance out the two I think it is clear that coffee is better for the world than bottled water. So is World Vision changing their stance to also try to get people to subliminally reduce their bottled water intake? Perhaps a good message but done in a horrible way.
So when World Vision asks you for the price of a bottle of water a day instead of the price of a coffee a day don't buy into their propaganda unless this is just a nod to the fact that in a post Star Bucks world the price of a coffee is no longer affordable.

Rekindling the Flame

I haven't written many posts recently. The main reason being that the blog had served its purpose. I was using the blog to rant about things that I found it difficult to do in person, mainly because of a feeling of isolation. That feeling passed as I moved to a larger city, learned more Japanese, started work at two companies with a social edge, etc. But now I have discovered a new purpose to blog; to hone my writing skills. I am currently looking to do a Masters of Education then follow it with an MBA. To do an MBA you must write the GMAT which includes an essay component. I am hoping that by writing blog posts I will increase my score on the written portion of that test. My goal is to write a blog every few days.