HOTLINE - week of November 21, 2005

Pakistan

CWS has begun the groundwork for a much-needed school in its tent village in Bisyan, in collaboration with UNICEF. Teachers are being interviewed and soon the school will be operational. CWS staff is also busy putting up additional tents in the village to accommodate newcomers.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent are moving the most vulnerable children to the CWS tent village, because they say it is one of the most organized, and has the most facilities and protection for care of children. Reports are that at least 50 percent of the children in the quake-hit district of Battagram are suffering from malnutrition.

Providing psychosocial care for women is also a focus of CWS, as the care and treatment of women benefits families as a whole.

CWS continues to provide shelter kits and food packages in the areas of Battagram, Shangla, Mansehra, and Balakot, Pakistan. Support for quake recovery efforts in South Asia is urgently needed.

In past years, says Mildred Johnson, her focus at Thanksgiving was on what to cook. But this year, the holiday is clearly all about being thankful.

Johnson, who lost her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina and relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina, is grateful for the roof over her head and the fact that her family escaped safely. "We're thankful that we're alive," she says.

Through a job link at her sister’s church in Greensboro, Johnson found a position with Lutheran Family Services (LSF) in the Carolinas, a refugee resettlement service supported in-part by CWS, which is helping people displaced by the Gulf Coast hurricanes. The same week she was hired, she found an apartment and received donated furniture from LFS.

Johnson says she has "rolled up her sleeves to give back to the community... making the best of a bad situation." Still dealing with the loss of her own home in New Orleans, she has thrown herself into her new job helping other evacuees to find jobs. She already has found one company that has more than a dozen open positions, and set up interviews for 15 evacuees at the company's offices.

LFS also hired two other Gulf Coast evacuees. "They have lost most of their belongings, but not the courage and the willingness to help their own community," says Nasi Kajana, who is overseeing LFS's evacuee assistance program in Greensboro and Raleigh.

Partnerships between local congregations and refugee resettlement agencies, including LFS, are key to the support CWS is providing in ten states for people displaced by the Gulf Coast hurricanes.

More on CWS response to the Gulf hurricanes.

Church World Service is partnering with the All Africa Conference of Churches and the World Council of Churches in a peacebuilding effort that has roots in the African tradition of elders.

The Eminent Persons Ecumenical Program for Africa (EPEPA) will include up to 15 people selected to become a part of a trained, traveling task force of experienced mediators and peacemakers—or "elders"—to help settle active conflicts in Africa.

Rev. John L. McCullough, executive director and CEO of CWS, says the program relies on "the incredible resource embodied in the elders and distinguished individuals already in our midst" for the purpose of resolving conflicts and building a peaceful community on the continent.