“Seeing is Believing” tour

The following exerts are from an article in The Province on March 2, 2006:

Neatly dressed Surrey businessmen and poorly dressed street people met yesterday in a program designed to show the dark side of city life. “We saw things that in day-to-day living we tend to avoid because we don’t like poverty and mental illness”, said Lloyd Craig, president of Coast Capital Savings. “Here we are in a great country and you see how absolutely desperate people can get”.

The tour was set up by the Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, a national, non-profit group that believes solutions to poverty and hunger must involve business.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said participants came away with a good understanding of the challenges. Craig said Watts support was very important “She really understands this side of building a city. It’s more than increasing the tax abase”.

Business men willing to open their eyes and see “poverty and mental illness”, recognize “how absolutely desperate people can get”. What next? Business people whom “just want to help out”? Next you will be claiming Canadian Business for Social Responsibility. What? Abbotsford remains uncaring, Only in Surrey you say? Pity.

More of a pity is that Surrey’s Mayor “understands this side of building a city. It’s more than just building a tax base”. Would that some of our local politicians would open their eyes and see. But then they would not be able to deny the homeless, the poor and the mentally ill that have been abandoned to live on the unforgiving, uncharitable streets of Abbotsford.

The politicians, business people and good citizens of Abbotsford, Seeing? Believing?

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing”. John 20:27