HOTLINE - week of August 15, 2005

Jacinta Cortez, 22, and a member of the indigenous Weenhayek community, lives in the Chaco region of Bolivia. She is studying to become an auxiliary nurse. The Gran Chaco is a vast forested area in Latin America covering portions of Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay.

"Our people, the Weenhayek communities, live along the Pilcomayo River in the Bolivian Chaco," says Cortez. "We live in three urban and 19 rural communities. Our people are poor because they live by foraging and collecting wild fruit and honey in the summer, but the land is poor and eroded.

"The wild animals people used to hunt are disappearing," she reports. "The cattle owners have many cows and goats that eat the grass, so the land is becoming a desert in some places. In other parts, we get less rain than before. Our way of life has changed dramatically in the last three decades.

"From April to September – the fall and winter seasons – people are happy," Cortez explains, "because the sabalo fishes go up the river from Argentina and Paraguay, so people set up camp on the beaches and live there with their families. They fish even when the water is cold."

Jacinta Cortez says that most people in the communities are infected with Chagas disease, a parasitic disease that can cause serious and often fatal damage to the heart and other organs. Also, some fishers have come down with mosquito-borne dengue fever, and have died because of inadequate medical attention. Five of the Weenhayek communities have health centers, and there is one hospital, but most of the Weenhayek community has to walk several miles to find a nurse. Even if they get to the nurse, though, there are often no medicines or they are too expensive.

"Some young kids want to study to become a nurse," says Cortez, "but their parents have no money to send them to study in the near cities. If we could help them to study, that would do a lot of good for our people."

Church World Service is involved in a four-year coordinated program with partners in Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay to assist more than 250 indigenous communities in the Gran Chaco, where aggressive forestry and farming practices, along with mineral exploration, threaten the indigenous way of life.

CWS's regional strategy calls for developing scholarships for indigenous youth; training leaders in legal matters and ways of making their ancestral land claims; developing land management plans and animal raising techniques; helping women artisans to market their crafts; and strengthening the work of indigenous journalists and radio stations.

Since July 24, rain-caused floods and landslides in India's western state of Maharashtra have affected millions. Thirty-seven inches of rain in one day -- the heaviest rain ever recorded in Indian history -- fell in Mumbai, the state's busy coastal commercial district.

Thousands of homes have been destroyed, crops and livestock lost, and transportation systems, health clinics, schools, water and sanitation systems damaged. The biggest concern is for low-income people living in deplorable conditions in makeshift shelters who lack safe drinking water and are threatened by water and airborne diseases. Food shortages are also a major concern.

CWS is supporting efforts to provide rice, lentils, cooking oil, sugar, salt, blankets, clothing, cooking utensils, sleeping mats, sheets, soap, towels, schools supplies, and water containers for some 15,000 of the most vulnerable people in Thane, Raigadh, and Ratnagiri districts.

CWS is urgently seeking funds to assist these flood-affected families in India.

Though the drought- and locust-caused food shortages in Niger have garnered the most international attention, prompting the world community to provide emergency food assistance, the U.S. Agency for International Development says 28 of Africa's 54 nations are experiencing some level of food shortages. Causes include poor governance, inattention to agricultural production, AIDS, drought, and the locust infestation.

CWS is working with partners in many countries in Africa to help families improve their lives. For example, in Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Ethiopia, located like Niger in the Sahel, the transition zone between the Sahara Desert to the north and wetter tropical areas to the south, CWS is helping communities to mitigate the effects of drought and desertification, from planting trees and digging wells to helping women and men farmers grow sustainable gardens.

In Niger, CWS is helping to provide emergency aid – millet, ten percent to be used for seed; milk powder; and construction of 13 cereal storage banks, with the training and equipment to operate them.

Your prayers and support - and your participation in CROP WALKS and the TOOLS & BLANKETS Program - make possible these and other life sustaining programs. For information on how to get involved, please call your Church World Service/CROP Regional Office toll-free at 1-888-CWS-CROP, that's 1-888-297-2767.

For information about free loan videos, please call 1-800-297-1516, ext. 338, or e-mail us at: videos@churchworldservice.org.

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