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Bulletin Inserts
Immediate Response, Long-term Rebuilding
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 When
a disaster strikes, we want to respond immediately. That’s important because
the timing may make the difference between life and death for many people. But
when the images of the disaster disappear from the news, it’s easy to forget
that for survivors, the initial shock is only the beginning of a very long journey.
One of the hallmarks of Presbyterians’ One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS)
response is that through both Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and our
other two OGHS programs, we walk that journey with survivors throughout the long
process of rebuilding their lives and their community.
When a tsunami struck southern Asia in 2004 on the day after Christmas, the
world responded immediately. Within a week, Presbyterians had given more than
$500,000 and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) had sent $320,000 to partners
in the region for immediate relief. Anticipating the duration of the crisis in
most communities, PDA asked Presbyterians to give even more, and wisely set aside
much of their generous gifts for the long-term rebuilding.
For Pak Yadi, the loss was devastating. His wife and children, his home, and
his ability to farm his land all vanished in the time it took the tsunami to
crash inland and then recede, dragging tons of salty mud on top of his farmland.
Until the salt could be removed or neutralized, it would kill whatever was planted.
But your gifts to OGHS helped Mr. Yadi start over, enabling PDA’s partner
to make low-interest loans to farmers to rent unaffected land nearby and to buy
seeds and tools. By raising melons for sale in local markets, the farmers could
buy food and medicine, make loan payments, and slowly set aside money to reclaim
their own land. The farmers learned that by joining together in a cooperative,
they could help one another rather than compete. Now, four years after his future
looked totally hopeless, Mr. Yadi, remarried and reconnected with his land, looks
forward with his wife to the birth of their first child.
Let us thank God for giving us the chance to be a part of this rebirth of
hope. Today, on our one chance this year to support these ministries through
One Great Hour of Sharing, may the healing balm of Christ’s love wash through
us
to reach those who next need it, wherever they may be in this coming year.
Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing change people’s lives:
- One way PDA responds to immediate needs is by providing emergency life
packs ($125 value) containing basic necessities for displaced persons.
- Self-Development of People helped fishing and farming communities’ tsunami
recovery through its regional partner, the Development Promotion Group.
- The Presbyterian Hunger Program worked with communities displaced by
the tsunami and by multinational land speculators buying up their farmlands.
Food Security
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More
than one in seven of the world’s almost seven billion people suffers from
hunger. Conflict is one cause, creating as many as 20 million refugees and displaced
persons worldwide. But a far more important cause is poverty. Poverty is increasing
throughout the world, partly because farmers are pushed to grow crops for the
world market rather than food for their own communities. Others are evicted from
their fields to make a place for foreign export companies. This obliges them
to buy food from a market that profits from their vulnerability.
The shift over the past twenty years from growing traditional crops to producing
export commodities has especially impoverished large sections of rural Africa.
To make ends meet for their family, poor farmers must often sell part of their
harvest when there is a glut. This way they don’t earn their products’ true
worth and must later purchase food when it is scarce and prices are high. They
then have to sell their livestock or go into debt just to eat. One path to food
security is for African farmers to maintain the ability to grow their own traditional
crops and to store and manage the stocks in community grain banks.
The time before harvest used to be the worst, Matthias, a young Cameroonian,
remembers. For months “we would have one meal a day at most, and it was
just a thin mixture of flour and water with nothing else.” The last time
around his parents had to sell four goats to feed their children, so they had
no resources to pay school expenses. But now the family eats in the morning and
at night, borrowing a bag of food from their grain bank and repaying it at harvest.
When Matthias saw his father taking a goat to the market this year, he thought
it was for food again, but instead it was to pay for school. “This year,” Matthias
says, “I have eaten well and I now attend school. I am very happy.”
This is the only time of the year One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) harvests
the gifts of Presbyterians to meet the needs of God’s people throughout
the year. Thanks to your giving in the past, the Presbyterian Hunger Program
and the other two OGHS programs have been able to meet those needs. This year,
as the suffering of the world’s poorest people is increasing dramatically
due to the economic crisis, please consider increasing your gift dramatically
as well.
Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing change people’s lives:
- The Presbyterian Hunger Program works with communities to enable
them to produce, store, and sell their food for a fair price.
- After a disaster, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance offers training, tools,
and seeds to help communities return to food security.
- Self-Development of People helps many marginalized communities learn
urban gardening techniques or start community gardens.
Access to Clean Water
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In
much of the developing world, the lack of ready access to clean water is one
of the most difficult problems families and communities face. Because it is such
a basic need, until it is met it challenges every effort a family makes to address
other problems. If clean water is available at a distance, someone — usually
women or children — must spend much of their day carrying it home, time they
can’t spend on other long-term needs such as growing food or getting an
education. Yet if they don’t fetch the clean water, nearby contaminated
water may be too tempting for thirsty mouths to resist, causing debilitating,
even fatal diseases.
For most of the past century, the Dominican sugar industry imported Haitians
to work in their sugar fields and factories. Although they lived in deplorable
conditions in clusters of housing known as bateys (BAH tays), many stayed because
they could earn more money than in Haiti. Some married Dominicans and raised
families there. Many of the bateys where they lived survived the closing of the
sugar refineries, but conditions did not greatly improve. Many had neither sanitation
nor sources of clean water.
Recognizing that their bateys could not move forward without clean water,
some women organized to build clean water systems. With Self-Development of People’s
support, they dug wells and piped water to storage tanks in central locations.
Finally, clean water is accessible to their families. Now their children needn’t
spend hours each day carrying water, and they can attend school. Having seen
what an organized effort can accomplish, they can focus on their communities’ other
challenges.
Little makes us recognize our interdependence quicker than thirst. If others
pollute our common water, we are all poisoned. Sometimes we depend on others
to help us find sources of clean water. Today we are called to give sacrificially
to One Great Hour of Sharing, which helps families and communities find that
clean water. May we give generously indeed, and in that giving may we begin to
find the wellsprings of living water Jesus promises will quench our thirst forever.
Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing change people’s lives:
- Because clean water is one of the most urgent necessities after disasters
occur, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance includes it as central in both its immediate
and long-term disaster responses.
- Both the Presbyterian Hunger Program and Self-Development of People
recognize that clean water is crucial to any development project, so it may be
the need around which community organization begins.
- A shallow well that may cost $1,500 can save countless hours of carrying
water and save lives otherwise lost to contaminated water.
“Where
your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
If you were searching for God’s treasure, you’d find it in people.
Every person, in every nation on earth, is treasured by God! Yet for many people,
life can be searingly tough.
One Great Hour of Sharing joins our hearts with God’s by providing decisive
aid when disaster strikes and by helping refugees rebuild their lives. Your gift
strengthens struggling communities with basics like education, health care, tools,
seeds, and wells.
When we care for God’s treasured children, we ourselves are transformed.
We see more clearly what matters most in life and are inspired to live courageously.
Our hope rises as we realize new life is possible.
First Timothy 6:18-19a exhorts us “to do good, to be rich in good works,
generous, and ready to share, thus storing up ... the treasure of a good foundation
for the future.” Our treasure lies in honoring God, doing God’s will,
and loving God’s treasured people. May you find your treasure, and your
heart, through sharing resources and changing lives with a generous gift to
One Great Hour of Sharing.
Recognizing that our treasure is God’s children, One
Great Hour of Sharing helps us keep individuals, their families, and their communities
central in our hearts. The three Presbyterian programs we support through our
gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing — Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the
Presbyterian Hunger Program and Self-Development of People — give us a way
to meet our brothers and sisters in their times of need and to share with them
the treasure of God’s renewing love.
Whether we’re responding to the immediate pangs following a tornado or
earthquake or to the chronic, numbing pall of hunger, poverty, or homelessness,
our gifts allow us to relay through our own hearts the message of the risen Christ, “I
am with you always, to the end of the age.” In scores of countries around
the world and in our own communities, our gifts reassure those in need that they
are not invisible or forgotten, that God’s love does not pack up and leave
with the news crews. Sharing these gifts is a tangible way to remind our sisters
and brothers — and ourselves — of the vitality and persistence of that
love. Today, through One Great Hour of Sharing, let us put our gifts where our
heart and treasure are.
Global
Food Crisis
United
States agriculture is producing more than ever. More and more countries are following
our model. And yet, more and more of God’s children face
hunger every day. How is this possible? This paradox and the global food crisis
have brought into question the foundations of our food and agricultural system.
The crisis has many causes, but taken together, they come down to this: many
countries produce much less food for their own people. Almost without exception,
countries that have changed from growing food for domestic markets to producing
for the world market have sacrificed food security with dire results for family
farmers and low-income people.
One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) engages us with our sisters and brothers
in this most basic of all human challenges: helping ensure we all have enough
to eat. One of the important focuses for OGHS responses has been to strengthen
local agricultural food production. Let’s look at a single example of how each
OGHS program is helping to address different aspects of the global food crisis.
In Zimbabwe, a ban imposed before last summer’s elections on food or agricultural
assistance left two million Zimbabweans in urgent need. Late in the summer, the
ban was lifted, allowing Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and its regional
partners to deliver food aid, particularly focusing on families displaced by
political violence. In addition to providing emergency food aid, efforts focused
on building up local production capacities by providing seeds, fertilizer, and
training. The vulnerability of Zimbabwean agriculture, once the region’s
breadbasket, underscores the need for food sovereignty. Food sovereignty ensures
that nations control their own food supply, including the ability to store grain
for times of want so that all the people will have nutritious, affordable, and
culturally appropriate foods. Zimbabwe’s people welcomed PDA’s approach
of enhancing local food production and
food security.
Rural Minnesota Native Americans of the Anishinaabeg nation recognized these
needs as well. Faced with numerous health issues, high rates of alcoholism and
drug dependence, and a lack of employment opportunities, tribal leaders have
decided to reconnect members with the traditional foods of their culture. Their
White Earth Food Restoration Project, which has been funded by both the Presbyterian
Hunger Program (PHP) and Self-Development of People (SDOP), is recovering traditional
ways of eating, through school and community gardening, seed saving, and the
harvest and sale of wild rice. By cultivating the crops and traditions that nourished
their people for centuries, they are building ways to strengthen the health of
their bodies, their economy, and their culture.
Seattle Youth Garden Works (SYGW) is a market gardening program that employs
and trains homeless and underserved youth. Youth work 10–20 hours a week
after school and on weekends, earning a minimum wage plus a share of sales profits
as they learn to grow organic produce and sell it at farmers’ markets.
By connecting these young people to education, jobs, and community, SYGW, with
support from the PHP, is planting the seeds for a new generation of farmers who
can provide healthy alternatives to people with little access to affordable,
nutritious food. At the same time, they are building community and local food
security.
Just as there are many conditions that contribute to the global food crisis,
no single response can resolve it. But thanks to your gifts to One Great Hour
of Sharing, you are supporting initiatives to train farmers to continue growing
traditional crops and strengthen local food economies. These provide a hopeful
alternative to the current high-tech, single-crop agriculture whose dependence
on lots of petroleum inputs and long shipping distances decreases food security.
OGHS is helping regions in the United States and throughout the world build their
resilience against the food crisis. So one way you can respond to help God’s
children maintain their ability to feed themselves is right at hand. Consider
your gift today a seed, and thank God that there are people all over the world
dedicated to nurturing that seed so that it bears the most nutritious fruit possible,
that all may be fed. Please give generously. |
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