NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
December 19, 2002
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2802.
In this news release:
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Food Now Plus Harvests Later, Yet Millions Are at Risk in Africa
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Iraq Aid Planned With Local Churches in Jordan, Iraq and Syria
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LWR Quilt Has Walk-On Role in ELCA Christmas Special
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No Baby Born in Bethlehem
FOOD NOW PLUS HARVESTS LATER, YET MILLIONS ARE AT RISK IN AFRICA
Baltimore, December 19, 2002 -- Lutheran World Relief and other members of Action by Churches Together are helping drought-stricken communities in Africa with both needed food and future harvests, but Africa's current food crisis looms ever larger. United Nations estimates are that up to 30 million people in the Horn and southern Africa are now at risk.
In Zimbabwe, with church help, rations are reaching 11,000 families while farmers are planting seeds for drought tolerant crops. In Malawi, farmers continue training in land and crop management while supplementary food is going to 18,000 families led by women, grandparents, or AIDS orphans.
An emergency program in Ethiopia is providing 140,000 at-risk people with food, livestock, medicines, seeds and tools managed by a Lutheran-Catholic-Orthodox partnership. Another Lutheran project in North Shoa province produces dependable irrigation for family farmers beset by drought.
In arid northern Kenya, an LWR project begun during a drought two years ago is now helping hundreds of thousands of livestock and their owners with veterinary services, boreholes, storage tanks, and an early warning system.
For the work mentioned above, $5.7 million is needed. So far, LWR has dedicated some $830,000 to these projects and is seeking further donations. Survival for the most vulnerable people – those most in need of food aid now – depends on early action.
This threat to tens of millions of people is linked to erratic rainfall and recent climate changes, to weak economies and inadequate food distribution systems, to soil degradation and over-population in certain areas, and to conflicts over land, notably in Zimbabwe. The heavy toll of AIDS on people in their most productive years is making the crisis worse, especially in southern Africa.
For a printer-friendly PDF of our Africa Food Crisis Action Alert, click here to visit www.lwr.org/emergencies/foodcrisis.html.
You may also contribute by calling 1-800-LWR-LWR-2, or by mailing a check or money order to the address below.
Lutheran World Relief - Africa Food Crisis
PO Box 17061
Baltimore, MD 21298-9832
IRAQ AID PLANNED WITH LOCAL CHURCHES IN JORDAN, IRAQ AND SYRIA
Baltimore, December 19, 2002 -- Lutheran World Relief is making emergency preparations with partners in Jordan, Iraq and Syria in case the current crisis over Iraq slips into war.
Preparations are intense, if limited. Actions include setting up 16 aid centers with parishes in Iraq and pre-positioning relief items for refugees in Jordan including a stockpile of nearly $500,000 worth of LWR health kits, school kits and quilts for 22,000 people.
Also, some 50 Iraqi, Jordanian and Syrian church workers and volunteers are taking emergency response training. The first workshop was completed last week in Jordan.
"We are not going to be surprised this time – like during the Gulf Crisis of 1990 – by the size of the humanitarian emergency," said Edmond Adam, coordinator in Jordan for a Middle East Council of Churches program that is a long-time partner of Lutheran World Relief. LWR is also working with the American Friends Service Committee in Jordan and other groups. Action by Churches Together, a worldwide alliance that includes LWR, is mobilizing its members for this aid to Iraq.
Despite the preparations, funds available to an agency like Lutheran World Relief for the Iraq crisis fall far short of likely needs. Adequate aid work will require substantial donations from church members and the public. LWR is requesting contributions.
Church workers in the region still hope that a peaceful and lasting solution to the crisis is possible, but say a sense of inevitability already hangs over the region. "As far as war goes," said Adam, "the feeling here is that it is not if, but when."
The humanitarian dimensions of a war are daunting because of geography and politics. While Jordan is at the center of these church-related efforts, it is Iran and Turkey that figure in United Nations estimates of refugee flows. More than one million Iraqis could flee a war to closed areas of Iran and Turkey. An estimated eight million people may be forced to flee their homes within Iraq.
For a printer-friendly PDF of our Iraq Action Alert, click here to visit www.lwr.org/mideast/index.html.
Also LWR President Kathryn Wolford addresses the Iraq crisis in a feature this week by Reuters Foundation at: www.alertnet.org/thefacts/
reliefresources/564130?version=1.
You may also contribute by calling 1-800-LWR-LWR-2, or by mailing a check or money order to the address below.
Lutheran World Relief - Middle East Crisis
PO Box 17061
Baltimore, MD 21298-9832
LWR QUILT HAS WALK-ON ROLE IN ELCA CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
Baltimore, December 19, 2002 -- An LWR quilt just took a detour from its trip overseas for a quick appearance in a Christmas Eve television special from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, "This Holy Night" (CBS, Dec. 24, 11:35 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, 10:35 p.m. Central/Mountain Time.)
The quilt joined a procession of gifts to the manger at Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke in Chicago, where the special was taped.
"Young people from the parish carried a variety of gifts to the crèche, symbolizing the diversity of our lives and service to God and humanity," said Barbara Andrews, ELCA's publicity coordinator for the program.
St. Luke's quilters are an intergenerational group. The seventh and eighth graders and adults who made the Christmas quilt meet regularly during lunchtime to sew for LWR.
The procession to the manger occurs midway through the one-hour program. "We'll be sending the quilt [to LWR's warehouse] as soon as the rest of the batch is completed," said Laura Abrahamson, a member of St. Luke's.
["This Holy Night" on CBS, Christmas Eve at 11:35 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific) and 10:35 p.m. (Central/Mountain) -- in place of the David Letterman show. For more information, visit www.elca.org.]
NO BABY BORN IN BETHLEHEM
In the Holy Land LWR helps to heal the sick, train young adults, and rehabilitate people broken in body and spirit. Reaching help is a gamble, however, in a society scarred by settlers, soldiers and suicide bombers. In the report below, a young woman tries to go to Bethlehem to have her first child.
By Sean Hawkey, editor for the World Association for Christian Communication *
Bethlehem, December 2, 2002 -- When Nahed Fawaregh (below) became pregnant earlier this year she and her husband felt blessed. She was due to give birth in the first days of December and would travel to the nearest maternity hospital in Bethlehem.
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Nahed Fawaregh.
Photo: Sean Hawkey |
Nahed and her family live in a small village called Ma'sarah (meaning Olive Press) where the countryside is spotted with olive groves and vineyards. While many of the villagers drive herds of goats and sheep, Nahed's husband drives a taxi, so getting to the hospital wouldn't be a problem.
Nahed, who just turned 20, was the subject of family affection as her baby grew, friends gave her small gifts, old ladies knitted little jumpers and everyone made sure she ate what she wanted. Nahed was radiant with health and happiness.
At midday on November 27, Nahed went into labor. She had already prepared a bag and she set off with her husband in the taxi for Bethlehem. They went on the only road that isn't dug-up and blocked-off with piles of earth and rubble by Israeli bulldozers. But only certain people are allowed on this road: Jewish people who live in heavily guarded settlements on the West Bank. (The term "settlements" doesn't accurately describe the expanding colonies, towns and cities that are built on high ground taken by military force and inhabited by some 400,000 people, many of them new arrivals in Israel from Eastern Europe and Russia. Local Palestinians are left with the ever-diminishing gaps between the colonies and the network of highways linking them up.)
The Fawareghs knew they were forbidden to travel on the Jewish-only, settlers road, but it was an emergency. They prayed that they wouldn't run into an Israeli patrol, but they did.
A jeep with four soldiers of the Israeli occupation forces caught them and held them at gunpoint. The soldiers said nothing even though it was obvious that Nahed was in pain. Her water broke and her husband pleaded with the soldiers. They told him to shut up. Nahed began to bleed but the soldiers still did nothing; they just kept them waiting. Finally, after two hours, the soldiers let them go.
Bethlehem is under curfew, its streets patrolled by tanks. "This is a prison," explains Rev. Mitri Raheb, the Lutheran pastor who with his family and other Bethlehem residents has spent months trapped in their homes this year.
"If you leave your house you will be shot," Raheb says. Tank crews shout through loudhailers as they roar past the houses: "Don't come out, you animals." The afternoon that Nahed arrived in Bethlehem a man named Rabayia, who had gone to get some bread for his family, was shot dead by occupation troops. He was shot in the back of the head with an explosive bullet. Often such murders are reported as crossfire, people here explain in despair: "Crossfire means that we cross and they fire." Helplessly, I watched Rabayia's mother and wife gnashing their teeth and tearing at their hair and clothes with grief.
In Bethlehem, a statue of the Virgin Mary stands above the entrance of the Holy Family maternity hospital. She is riddled with Israeli bullets. When Nahed finally arrived at the hospital it was clear that the delay had been too long. Her baby boy was dead.
Nahed tells me her story quietly; she is full of grace. "I offer up my suffering to God," she says. As I look at her I can't help thinking that her whole story is in her face, not just her own story but Palestine's story.
Click here to read more about LWR's work in the Holy Land.
* Hawkey is editor for the World Association for Christian Communication, a London-based development organization and professional association. He met Fawaregh during a visit to the International Center in Bethlehem, a Lutheran outreach ministry which hosts LWR and other church-related travel groups.
