NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
December 18, 2003
In this news release:
- New Bethlehem Website for Peacemakers Online This Advent
- Holy Land Advent Visit in Progress: Read the Diaries Page
- Fair Trade Gets Big Boost for Christmas: Good News for Small Coffee, Cocoa Producers
- ‘All Our Children' Brings a Spark to Beleaguered Children in Baghdad
- Catholic Parishes to Begin Serving the Fair Trade Coffee Lutherans Use
- After Six Years, 141 Nations Back Mine-Ban Treaty
- Three New Staff Enhance LWR's Effectiveness
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2800.
NEW BETHLEHEM WEBSITE FOR PEACEMAKERS ONLINE THIS ADVENT
Baltimore and Bethlehem, December 18, 2003 - A new website from Bethlehem about peacemakers is online from Bethlehem this Advent season. The site offers reporters and visitors information about ordinary Palestinians going about their lives peacefully. Lutheran World Relief provided funding for the website.
Aiming to be a “voice of the voiceless” the site gives members of the media “a better understanding of the great majority of seldom-heard Palestinians who want freedom and justice and seek a better future through non-violent means,” according to Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem and director of the center that hosts the site.
“We want to highlight peacemakers, since so much focus is put on troublemakers,” Raheb noted.
The site, Bethlehem Media Net, provides personal stories and diaries about going to school, earning a living, trying to reach jobs and doctors' appointments through roadblocks and checkpoints, working the land, and going to worship.
One of the first stories is by Frank Wright, former foreign correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who came to Bethlehem to help launch the website and media center. Wright describes a 61-year-old man, Abu Usama, who thought he had seen it all in a life spent mostly under occupation but who now sees “the Wall” (a 20 foot-high border barrier) coming toward his village near Bethlehem. Another story features a young violinist on a mission to keep music alive for children living amid tension and strife.
“It was here 2000 years ago that Christ gave God a face…and a name,” said Raheb. The new website will show “the human face of the Palestinian people and their religious communities,” Raheb said, with a special interest in the fate and ministry of Palestinian Christians.
Bethlehem Media Net also assists journalists with study visits, interviews and reporting trips. It accommodates ‘virtual' visitors as well.
“At a time when many are afraid to visit the Holy Land, now they have this site to visit at least,” Raheb said, adding: “Please do not hesitate to share this new address with friends, colleagues, and people working in the media around you, because you too can give a voice to the voiceless.” Go to www.bethlehemmedia.net for more details.
Christmas 2003 is the 56th Christmas that finds LWR supporting humanitarian, medical, vocational or local peacemaking activities in Bethlehem, other parts of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
HOLY LAND ADVENT VISIT IN PROGRESS: READ THE DIARIES
A group of 12 people from the Midwest is visiting current and historic sites of Christian ministry in the Holy Land this Advent season, including the Bethlehem center mentioned above. Click here to read the group's diaries.
FAIR TRADE GETS BIG BOOST FOR CHRISTMAS: GOOD NEWS FOR SMALL COFFEE, COCOA PRODUCERS
Baltimore, December 18, 2003 - Fair trade coffee purchases by Lutheran parishes increased 44 percent this November over last year. The increase reflects holiday giving plus a yearlong push to double the amount of fairly traded coffee sold through the LWR Coffee Project.
In October and November, Lutheran parishes ordered 17 tons of fairly traded coffee. Approximately 60 percent more parishes were involved compared to the same period last year. The increase is due in part to “Pour Justice to the Brim: The 90-Ton Challenge,” a yearlong fair trade drive promoted by the Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Sales of fair trade products generate much-needed benefits for some five million small-scale producers in the developing world at present. These include farmers like Philip Tesha, in Tanzania, whose coffee is available through the LWR Coffee Project.
“If the farmer can get a reliable price in return for his sweat on the farm, he can maintain his life,” Tesha told LWR recently, “The farmer should be as important to the consumer as the consumer is to the farmer. If not, there is a flaw in the system.”
LWR promotes coffee purchased from small farmers by Equal Exchange, a 100-percent fair trade coffee company based in Canton, Massachusetts. LWR and Equal Exchange are leaders in introducing fair trade to Lutherans and other faith groups.
Chocolate Going Strong, and Handcrafts Too
LWR's newest fair trade initiative, the LWR Chocolate Project, is also showing strong early growth. Since its launch in October, parishioners have purchased $44,000 of fairly traded chocolate through the project.
The chocolate, which happens to be named ‘Divine,' uses fair trade cocoa from a worker-owned cooperative in Ghana. A coop official, Abraham Appiah-Kubi, told LWR, “I want to thank Lutherans for choosing Divine chocolate. Buying Divine means respect for the efforts of cocoa farmers and improvement in their living standards.”
Fair trade earnings by the coop have paid for 174 community wells since 1994, Appiah-Kubi said.
Creches, kites, and other fair trade handcrafts from around the world are also on sale in scores of Lutheran parishes. In October and November 70 parishes ordered handcrafts for a ‘Fair Trade Fair' using the LWR Handcraft Project. SERRV International, a fair trade organization based in Wisconsin, supplies the handcrafts.
Global fair trade sales totaled $400 million in 2002, generating $30 million in additional revenues for producers and workers, according to fair trade monitoring groups. In addition to guaranteed minimum prices for producers, fair trade's benefits include direct purchasing from producer organizations, fewer middlemen than conventional trade, and lasting business relationships between producers and wholesalers.
LWR has promoted fair trade since 1997.
'ALL OUR CHILDREN' BRINGS A SPARK TO BELEAGUERED CHILDREN IN BAGHDAD
Baltimore and Baghdad, December 18, 2003 - "I saw something spark in the children I haven't seen in five years. A child who would never approach strangers eagerly went [up] to the actors. The staff was also electrified.”
These reports from Baghdad are from the latest 'All Our Children' activity, a children's theater project whose first performance took place this month in the only institute for autistic children in Iraq.
‘All Our Children' is an inter-agency health initiative for Iraqi children sponsored in part by Lutheran World Relief. It began last Christmas.
The new theater project will perform 30 times in hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps and poor neighborhoods. The goal is to improve the emotional health of children who are disabled, fearful, anxious and depressed amid Iraq's crises.
Other recent ‘All Our Children' projects include refurbishing parts of a pediatrics hospital in Kerbala that had to move to an inadequate facility during the war, and purchasing 100 locally made beds and mattresses for two crowded children's hospital in Mosul.
The price tag for helping children in these ways is $148,000 in Kerbala and $10,000 each for Mosul and the theater project. The amounts reflect the cost of working with locally established non-governmental organizations in Iraq—still only a handful of groups—that LWR and other ‘All Our Children' members have actively supported since the initiative began last Christmas.
The overall outlook for children in Iraq remains dim. Infant death rates remain high and access to clean water, sanitation and basic health services remain low, according to United Nations statistics, studies by other agencies and reports from ‘All Our Children' projects. A study released in November by Christian Children's Fund found that “the war and the post-war environment have fundamentally worsened the lives of most children and families” in the Baghdad region. The United Nations Population Fund reported last month that maternal deaths in Iraq have tripled since 1990. Such trends are part of steep, 13-year declines in public health that are especially evident among young children.
The ‘All Our Children' theater grant covers two plays: "Love" and "The Neighborhood's Tree." "Love" tells about two cats that decide to resolve their differences peacefully rather than by fighting. "The Neighborhood's Tree" is about children who save a tree from being cut down.
CATHOLIC PARISHES TO BEGIN SERVING THE FAIR TRADE COFFEE LUTHERANS USE
Baltimore, December 18, 2003 - Catholic Relief Services has launched a fair trade coffee project for Catholic parishes in the U.S. Lutheran World Relief assisted CRS during the development of the project, helping link CRS to Equal Exchange, the fair trade organization that partners with LWR in the LWR Coffee Project, and sharing experiences gained from the 3,500 parishes in the LWR project.
LWR promotes fair trade projects and education among faith-based counterpart organizations through the Interfaith Fair Trade Initiative, a three-year program funded in part by the Ford Foundation. CRS and LWR are both based in Baltimore. CRS hopes to eventually introduce fair trade coffee in 19,000 Catholic parishes.
AFTER SIX YEARS, 141 NATIONS BACK MINE-BAN TREATY
Baltimore, December 18, 2003 - December is the sixth anniversary of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. So far 141 nations have agreed to support the treaty. According to an anniversary statement by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), the level of support worldwide and a high rate of compliance “makes the treaty the most successful agreement of its kind today.”
Anti-personnel mine use, stockpiles and exports have declined, while mine clearance and assistance to victims has increased since the treaty was written, according to ICBL. However, landmines still injure or kill an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people each year, the vast majority of whom are civilians. Also, the four biggest nations in the world have still not agreed to the treaty: China, India, the U.S. and Russia.
In 1996-97 Lutheran World Relief collected 105,000 signatures as part of the effort to gain U.S. government support for the anti-landmine treaty. LWR continues to advocate that the U.S. sign the treaty and, along with hundreds of other church-related organizations, is a member of ICBL. Click here for more information.
THREE NEW STAFF ENHANCE LWR'S EFFECTIVENESS
Baltimore, December 18, 2003 - Lutheran World Relief has three new staff members whose skills and duties are dedicated to enhancing LWR's effectiveness—Dr. Lisa Baumgartner Bonds, vice president for external relations; Mr. Glenn Strachan, chief information officer, and Ms. Lisa Negstad, director for organizational effectiveness.
Bonds is a public affairs specialist and former professor. Prior to joining LWR, she was communications director for the National Breast Cancer Coalition and vice president at one of the world's largest conservation organizations, the World Wildlife Fund. Before that she was senior vice president for M&R Strategic Services, a public affairs firm, where she established a full-service environmental communication practice. Bonds has also worked as press secretary for Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney of New York and taught speech-communication at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.; American University in Washington, D.C.; and the University of Minnesota.
Strachan's new information technology position serves both LWR and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. For the past 10 years Strachan served as vice president and chief information officer at the Academy for Educational Development in Washington, D.C. He has worked on information technology and health information systems in Romania and Grenada, and has degrees in sociology, psychology and women's studies. A social scientist by training, Strachan describes computers as an extension of his personality.
Negstad, a former comptroller at LWR, was until recently vice president for finance and administration of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Negstad's work experience includes overseas relief and development work with Church World Service in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where she managed finance, administration and credit programs. She was also resource coordinator for the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, Washington, D.C., has a Master of Business Administration from Yale University, and is an alumnus of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps.
