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The global humanitarian agency, a presence in Africa for 50 years, will continue its current programs across the continent, said its executive director, the Rev. John L. McCullough, but the new initiative “will add distinctive new programs that grow out of the critical role that Africans will play in constructing their future.”
The programs are Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution; Durable Solutions for the Displaced; Hunger and Poverty Alleviation; Water for Life; and HIV/AIDS.
Focus on Mano River region
The CWS efforts will be concentrated in the West African countries of the Mano River region — Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea — as well as Angola, Sudan and Tanzania. Those countries chosen after consultations with African leaders.
The new chair of the CWS board, Betty Voskuil, who works for the Reformed Church of America as coordinator of diaconal ministries and hunger education, called the new initiative “a cutting-edge endeavor” in which “broad commitment and collaboration are vital.”
McCullough said CWS is “joining with the All-Africa Conference of Churches, African regional councils of churches, U.S. churches, the United Nations, humanitarian agencies, and civil society institutions” in committing funds and resources to the effort.
Most of Africa’s stark problems have not eased in recent years. It has about 3.5 million people living in refugee camps and other temporary shelters. In sub-Saharan Africa, 28 million people have HIV/AIDS. Africa has 7 percent of the world’s HIV/AIDS orphans, many of whom are now heads of households, and 10 million children traumatized by war. One-third of the residents of sub‑Saharan Africa have no access to clean water. And 50 million children, most of them girls, are denied basic education.
In the face of those realities, McCullough expressed confidence in CWS’s “tremendous vision and capacity for response” and “the collective efforts of those who have the courage of faith to take on big challenges.”
Sustainable development
“The intent of Church World Service’s initiative is long‑term commitment, support, and programs that step beyond traditional relief aid,” McCullough said. “We’re going to be creative and focus on sustainable development projects, skills, and education.”
“The Africa Initiative,” he went on, “is a statement of recognition of the monumental human suffering, pain, and brokenness that is an everyday experience on the world’s largest and yet least developed continent.”
He told the CWS board, “We must do all that we can to make sure that when the day arrives when these kinds of statistics are finally obsolete, we will be able to say, ‘The children of Africa are alive.’”
Peacebuilding efforts
The Rev. Bruce Menning, a CWS board member who works as director of mission services for the Reformed Church in America, talked about a distinctive peacemaking program, CWS’s Eminent Persons Ecumenical Program for Africa (EPP), that honors the tradition of drawing on the wisdom of tribal elders to mitigate conflict.
The EPP will enable African church leaders to be proactive in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in their countries. and will ensure that the voice of the African ecumenical family is heard, Menning said.
He told the board that CWS and Africa are “a kairos match” at a decisive, opportune moment in history. He praised CWS’s “generosity of spirit at the ecumenical table.”
“Peacebuilding is the linchpin of any of this work,” Menning said, even when the immediate need is for food or water. “When conflict disrupts civil society, it's impossible to get anything accomplished,” he said.
The Rev. Haruun L. Ruun, executive secretary of the New Sudan Council of Churches, sent a message of appreciation for “the partnership of CWS in prayer, encouragement, and support for the peoples” of southern Sudan and other marginalized Africans. “They have suffered too long, and now put their hopes in peace that will prevail at community, regional and national levels,” Ruun wrote. “Until our cries for peace are heard and answered, our cries for food will never end.”
Trauma recovery
One Africa Initiative program, the CWS Seminars on Trauma Awareness and Recovery (STAR) — a partnership with Eastern Mennonite University’s Conflict Transformation Program — is designed to train African interfaith, civil and public servants in trauma counseling and its role in preventing future conflicts.
A STAR seminary took place in Sierra Leone in January, and a second was held in Liberia STAR in March.
Another Africa Initiative program will help establish School Safe Zones across sub‑Saharan Africa based on a model being tested in Kenya that involves participation by government and school-system officials, educators and church leaders.
Kirsten Laursen, CWS’s deputy director for programs, said the School Safe Zone project is based on the idea that “schools must be free of conflict and violence, including military conscription, if Africa’s youngest generation is to learn and develop. As a complement to that effort, CWS is planning to support secondary education for children in refugee camps and other temporary homes, through its Durable Solutions for the Displaced Program.
Currently, international agreements allow only for primary education in refugee camps. CWS hopes to enlist the support of U.S. foundations, churches, businesses, service groups and schools.
Agnes Abuom, another CWS board member, the African President of the World Council of Churches and chair of Kenya’s National Task Force for CWS School Safe Zones, brought greetings from what she called “the wonderful continent.” She said she is hopeful although she realizes “how high the walls are.”
Abuom applauded the recent appointment of Rajyashri Waghray as CWS’s director of education and advocacy, which she said are keys to the making of peace with justice. “Without justice in our diaconal work, the walls will remain high,” she said.
Solutions for the displaced
Mary Kuenning Gross, a CWS board member who is also executive for refugee ministries of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the chair of the board’s Immigration and Refugee Program Committee, spoke about the urgency of confronting the staggering problem of Africa’s millions of uprooted people.
“It used to be we worked just in resettlement,” she said. “Now, solutions for refugees have to be tied in to their well-being in their own countries.” She urged support of national councils of churches, which “promote reconciliation in these communities.”
Gross reported on a CWS development program in Angola that helps returning refugee women learn to sew and embroider to earn money to help support their families.
“Women in one class are working together to earn enough money to buy and share a sewing machine and to start a business together,” she said. “This is what empowerment and sustainability are really about.”
For those who may never be repatriated, she said, organizations like CWS and the UCC “are putting more intensive work into improving the lives of people who are displaced.”
CWS announced that strategies for addressing food insufficiencies in Africa will emphasize programs that protect land rights, support nutrition education and food diversification and integrate new and better technology.
Johnny Wray of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the chair of CWS’s emergency response committee, spoke of his “lasting impression of Africa as the Garden of Eden and the devastation of the Apocalypse, all wrapped together.”
“The Church World Service Africa Initiative is important,” he said. “The hunger- and poverty-alleviation component ... is important ... because it will help people feed themselves, help them rise from crushing poverty, help them live in peace and die in dignity.” Noting that some scholars believe the Biblical Garden of Eden was in Africa rather than Mesopotamia, he said the CWS initiative “may allow us in some small way help our first family reclaim the Garden.”
The Rev. Jaime Quiñones, a CWS board member and chair of its social education and development committee, said the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is “a personal issue, something that affects the whole community.”
Quiñones, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said after citing HIV/AIDS statistics, told his fellow board members, “We can be far away from these realities, but we must remember the children.” He predicted that the CWS initiative “will cause a chain reaction around Africa and around the world.”
The CWS approach to battling HIV/AIDS includes programs for least‑served populations, including women, orphan children and displaced people, and emphasizes awareness, education, working to end the stigma of HIV/AIDS, and community-building.
CWS also announced a renewed commitment to ensuring “water for all, for health, for food, for the future.” The Rev. Nicholas Genevieve Tweed, pastor of Queens New York’s Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church and a CWS board member, told his colleagues: “Water is a gift from God; we can’t control it. We must exercise stewardship of it. Everyone has a right to it. We must ensure that all people have a right to partake of pure water for life.”
Africans helping Africans
CWS’s practice in nearly all its endeavors is to work with indigenous partners — Africans helping Africans. Voskuil said she was impressed with the agency’s work with indigenous groups in more than 80 countries.
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