One Great Hour of Sharing
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Bulletin Inserts

Immediate Response, Long-term Rebuilding

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Image of the PDP bulletin cover, Immediate Response, Long-term Rebuilding

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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Image of the PHP bulletin cover, Food Security

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

Image of the SDOP bulletin cover, 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.”

Image of the OGHS Ecumenical Slimser for 2009

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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