NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
March 25, 2004
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2802.
In this news release:
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Power, Water for War-Ravaged Liberian Hospital? LWR Seeking Funds
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Can a Few Dollars Nudge the AIDS Mountain in East Africa?
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Spring Flings for Fair Trade: Easter Eggs, Catalogues, Halfway to the Brim, Traveling Coffee Hour
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LWR Urges U.S. Administration to Support, Not Abandon, Life-Saving International Landmine Ban
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LWR President Named to Maryland List of Top Women
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POWER, WATER FOR WAR-RAVAGED LIBERIAN HOSPITAL? LWR SEEKING FUNDS
Baltimore, March 25, 2004 – A heavily looted church hospital for 700,000 people in central Liberia hopes to have electricity and water supplies again through a grant sought by Lutheran World Relief from USAID.
The $108,000 grant could replace generators, pumps and fuel that were stripped from Phebe Hospital in Bong County after Liberia’s civil war flared up last year. The site was heavily damaged after staff and equipment were evacuated in March 2003 to set up a field hospital closer to the capital, Monrovia.
“Restoration of electric power and water supply systems is critical to the repair and return to operation of this regional referral hospital,” said Hugh Ivory, LWR’s humanitarian response manager for Africa. Phebe and the community clinics it supervises are, or were, the entire public health system in Bong County. There is no public power or water in all Liberia, Ivory noted.
Protected by United Nations peacekeepers, Phebe staff and teams of Lutheran volunteers from Pennsylvania began clean up at the war-ravaged facility in January. Rebel soldiers in the area still pose a security risk. Restoring electricity and water will allow the former eye clinic at Phebe to re-open as a 25-bed mini-hospital.
The new grant LWR is seeking will encourage other agencies to meet the cost of restoring health services in this needy area of Liberia, Ivory said.
In the past year LWR supported Phebe’s wartime operations with $335,000 in relief goods, medical supplies and funding. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America hopes to fill three key staff positions there, continuing a long tradition of Lutheran support at the 82-year-old institution.
CAN A FEW DOLLARS NUDGE THE AIDS MOUNTAIN IN EAST AFRICA?
Baltimore, March 25, 2004 – Can a few well-placed dollars in East Africa protect lives by the thousand and invite funds by the million to fight AIDS? Keep reading and see.
Around the world major players in public health are gearing up to find ways to treat three million HIV-positive people with anti-retroviral drugs by the year 2005.
In Tanzania, some two million people have contracted HIV/AIDS so far. HIV/AIDS patients occupy more than half the hospital beds in the East African country. The Lutheran church, a major denomination there, has 20 hospitals and 150 clinics that provide 15 percent of health services in the nation.
Early this year, with funds for AIDS drugs set to increase dramatically, medical staff of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania were eager to provide drug therapy to as many patients as possible. But a final hurdle remained. Anti-retroviral training was not available and had never been offered in Tanzania.
Enter Lutheran World Relief, an organization that specializes in “capacity building” -- development jargon for moving mountains and other obstacles with promising partner organizations.
LWR linked ELCT with HIV/AIDS training experts from South Africa, the Foundation for Professional Development. Then LWR, using funds raised by the inter-Lutheran Stand With Africa campaign, agreed to sponsor the 60 Tanzanian clinicians who needed to learn clinical management of HIV/AIDS drug therapy.
“We just finished the training…and it was excellent,” Dr. Mark Jacobson, a Lutheran missionary doctor in Arusha, wrote LWR President Kathryn Wolford after the sessions last month. “It was the very first anti-retroviral training program ever offered in Tanzania! It is on the news!”
“Most importantly, it sensitized the [clinicians] to the issues around implementing a wide-scale anti-retroviral program in a country like Tanzania,” Jacobson said. “[Thanks to] LWR for making the connections and then making this possible. It has truly had a great impact.”
The $16,200 grant from LWR helped certify health workers, but did it protect thousands of lives and invite millions of dollars? When 60 clinicians treat 17 patients each there will be 1,020 people with a new lease on life and, when Interchurch Medical Assistance, an LWR partner in the U.S., was chosen recently as part of a consortium to deliver millions of dollars of AIDS drugs, the Lutheran church hospitals of Tanzania were ready for action.
You may also call 1-800-LWR-LWR-2, or mail a check or money order to:
Lutheran World Relief -
Stand With Africa
Baltimore, MD 21298-9832
Please also consider making an unrestricted donation which will enable LWR to respond quickly to the next emergency.
Thank You for your help.
SPRING FLINGS FOR FAIR TRADE: EASTER EGGS, CATALOGUES, HALFWAY TO THE BRIM, TRAVELING COFFEE HOUR
Easter Eggs
The LWR Chocolate Project web store is selling fairly traded, milk chocolate mini-eggs for Easter. The eggs are made of the same Divine-brand chocolate that nearly 700 Lutheran parishes have ordered as a way to support small-scale cocoa farmers in Ghana. To please minds and hearts as well as mouths, leaflets explaining fair trade now come with each order of chocolate. Visit the web store at www.lwr.org/chocolate.
Catalogues
A brand new catalogue is available for the LWR Handcraft Project. Hundreds of Lutheran parishes support low-income artisans overseas and raise funds by selling the project’s fairly traded handcrafts and holding LWR Fair Trade Fairs. To order the new catalogue, call 1-888-294-9660 or visit www.lwr.org/handcraft.
Halfway to the Brim
The ‘90 Ton Challenge: Pour Justice to the Brim’ is on track. The current pace should put the challenge ahead of schedule at the halfway point, April 1 st. LWR Coffee Project partner Equal Exchange reports sales of 41 tons of coffee, tea and hot chocolate five months into the challenge. The goal of the LWR/Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America initiative is for participants in the LWR Coffee Project and members of Women of the ELCA to double their fair trade purchases in one year. To join, visit www.lwr.org/coffee.
Traveling Coffee Hour
If you shine at parish coffee hour consider a fair trade coffee tour to Africa. A Women-to-Women Coffee Tour will visit coffee farmers on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in November 2004. The Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran World Relief are sponsoring the trip. Travelers will meet Tanzanian women, join in harvesting, roasting, tasting and selling coffee, and learn how fair trade makes a difference for coffee farming families and communities in the area.
Women of the ELCA President Mary Ellen Kiesner and LWR President Kathryn Wolford will join this traveling coffee hour. For information, visit www.lwr.org/study or call
1-800-LWR-LWR-2 (800-597-5972.)
LWR URGES U.S. ADMINISTRATION TO SUPPORT, NOT ABANDON, LIFE-SAVING INTERNATIONAL LANDMINE BAN
Baltimore, March 25, 2004 – Lutheran World Relief is asking supporters to contact the White House and write local newspapers to urge the Administration to reverse course and sign the international treaty to ban landmines. The United States had promised to sign the Mine Ban Treaty by 2006, but a recent decision by the White House rejects the treaty. Instead, U.S. policy will be to use mines that are designed to deactivate but that further complicate solutions to a worldwide weapons problem that kills or maims up to 20,000 people each year.
“With this policy the United States effectively abandons plans to join a hard-won international accord that has proven its capacity to save lives,” LWR’s statement says. A much-needed increase in U.S. funding for demining and survivor assistance programs is noted with appreciation.
More than 150 nations have now joined the treaty, including all NATO nations except the United States, and all other nations in the Americas except Cuba. More than 100,000 Lutherans signed an LWR petition asking the U.S. to help establish the Mine Ban Treaty in 1996-97.
The full statement and sample advocacy letters are at www.lwr.org/advocacy/landmines.
LWR PRESIDENT NAMED TO MARYLAND LIST OF TOP WOMEN
Baltimore, March 25, 2004 – Dr. Kathryn Wolford, president of Lutheran World Relief, has been named to the “Maryland’s Top 100 Women” list for the second time. The annual award honors professional success, community betterment and mentoring.
“Learning and leading are lived out at all levels of the organization,” Wolford told the panel of judges for the award, noting that LWR shares its organizational culture far beyond Maryland to empower indigenous relief and development organizations abroad and engage U.S. Lutherans in putting their faith into action through advocacy and fair trade. She described her organization’s “imprint” as “integrity, accountability, and respect for the God-given gifts and potential of every person.”
A Baltimore-area business newspaper organizes the award.
