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Church World Service Launches Multi-Year Africa Initiative
As a tangible sign of peacebuilding, CWS board member Bruce Menning places a Mozambican sculpture created from melted down guns among other symbols of the Africa Initiative.
Photo: Thomas Abraham/CWS
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New Board of Directors Eager to Support Broad Effort
New York, NY – Church World Service (CWS) gained the enthusiastic support of its new Board of Directors today (3/24), as the global humanitarian agency unveiled plans for its multi-year Africa Initiative.
The initiative targets Africa’s most at-risk populations: children, people living with HIV/AIDS, and uprooted people including refugees, migrants, and internally displaced persons. The agency will also give special attention to the needs and rights of African women and girls and the key role women must play in development of African communities and societies.
Built on its 50-year presence in Africa, Church World Service will continue its ongoing programs across the continent. But the new initiative, says CWS Executive Director and CEO Rev. John L. McCullough, “will add distinctive new programs,” he notes, “that grow out of the critical role that Africans will play in constructing their futures.”
Those issue-formed programs include Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution, Durable Solutions for the Displaced, Hunger and Poverty Alleviation, Water for Life, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.
McCullough literally unfolded the agency’s Africa Initiative to its board members, as he laid out an African cloth on a table in their midst. CWS board members then presented various aspects of the initiative and added more symbolic pieces to the table.
Mano River Region Focus of Initiative
The initiative will concentrate on the West African countries of the Mano River region—Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—and Angola, Sudan, and Tanzania. Those countries were identified following consultation with leaders across Africa during several historic conferences and meetings held in recent months.
New CWS Board of Directors Chairman Betty Voskuil is Coordinator for Diaconal Ministries and Hunger Education, Reformed Church of America. Voskuil describes the CWS initiative as “a cutting edge endeavor” and says, “Broad commitment and collaboration are vital to its success.”
“CWS is joining with the All Africa Conference of Churches, African regional councils of churches, U.S. churches, the United Nations, humanitarian agencies, and civil society institutions, as it commits funds and resources in a reaffirmed determination that the time for Africa is now,” says McCullough.
For the most part, Africa’s stark statistics have not lessened in recent years. There are some 3.5 million displaced people living in refugee camps or other temporary shelters, and 12.5 million are people displaced within their own countries.
28 million people live with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has some 12 million HIV/AIDS orphans, many of whom are now heads of households, and 10 million children traumatized by war. More than one-third of people living in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to clean water. 50 million children, mostly girls, are denied basic education.
In the face of those realities, however, McCullough cited Church World Service’s decades of “tremendous vision and capacity for response” and its success in “the collective efforts of those who have the courage of faith to take on big challenges.”
“Sustainable Development, Skills, and Education”
“The intent of Church World Service’s initiative is long-term commitment, support, and programs that step beyond traditional relief aid. We’re going to be creative and focus on sustainable development projects, skills, and education,” says McCullough.
“The Africa Initiative,” he noted, “is a statement of recognition of the monumental human suffering, pain, and brokenness that is an everyday experience” on the world’s “largest and yet least developed of our continents.”
Reviewing the statistics, McCullough told the organization’s board that “we must do all that we can to make sure that when the day arrives when these kinds of statistics are finally obsolete we will be able to say, ‘the children of Africa are alive.’”
Engaging Eminent Persons for Peacebuilding
CWS Board member Rev. Bruce Menning, Director of Mission Services, Reformed Church in America, and Chair of the Church World Service Mission Relationships and Witness Committee, talked about how one distinctive peacemaking program, CWS’ Eminent Persons Ecumenical Program for Africa, echoes the tradition of drawing on the wisdom of tribal elders to mitigate conflict.
The Eminent Persons program will assist African church leaders in being proactive in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in their countries and will ensure that the voice of the African ecumenical family is heard.
Menning told the gathering that Church World Service and Africa are “a kairos match,” the right combination at a decisive, opportune moment in history. Menning praised CWS’s “generosity of spirit at the ecumenical table.”
“Peacebuilding is the lynchpin of any of this work,” Menning noted, whether the other issues may be hunger or water, because, he said, “when conflict disrupts civil society, it’s impossible to get anything accomplished.”
From Africa, Rev. Dr. Haruun L. Ruun, Executive Secretary of the New Sudan Council of Churches, sent a message of appreciation for “the partnership of CWS in prayer, encouragement, and support for the peoples” of southern Sudan and other marginalized African peoples “who have suffered too long and who now put their hopes in peace that will prevail at community, regional and national levels…. Until our cries for peace are heard and answered, our cries for food will never end, “ said Ruun.
Trauma Recovery Seminars, School Safe Zones
One Africa Initiative program, CWS Seminars on Trauma Awareness and Recovery (STAR), a partnership with Eastern Mennonite University’s Conflict Transformation Program, is designed to train African interfaith, civil society, and public servants in trauma counseling and utilizing trauma healing as a strategy for preventing future conflicts.
A Liberia STAR seminar is in progress this week, Monday, March 22-March 30, in Monrovia and follows the first West African STAR, held in January in Sierra Leone.
Another signature CWS Africa Initiative program will help institute School Safe Zones across sub-Saharan Africa. An initial model is being explored now in Nairobi by the government, school system, educators, and church leaders of Kenya.
School Safe Zones, comments CWS Deputy Director for Programs Kirsten Laursen, is built on the idea that “schools must be free of conflict and violence, including military conscription, if Africa’s youngest generation is to learn and develop.” CWS’ McCullough introduced the School Safe Zones vision during a presentation last year to UN-HABITAT.
As a complement to the School Safe Zones effort, CWS plans to support provision of secondary education to children in refugee camps and host communities through its Durable Solutions for the Displaced Program.
Currently, international agreements allow only for primary education in refugee camps. CWS hopes to enlist the support of U.S. foundations, churches, businesses, service groups, and schools in support of schools in Africa.
CWS board member Agnes Abuom is African President of the World Council of Churches and Chair of the Kenya National Task Force for CWS School Safe Zones. Abuom brought greetings from “the wonderful continent” and told CWS board members and executives that she realizes “how high the walls are. What happened in Africa?” she exclaimed. “The walls are so much higher now, not any lower.”
Abuom applauded the recent appointment of Church World Service’s new Education and Advocacy Director Rajyashri Waghray, affirming the key role of advocacy in building peace with justice, saying “without justice in our diaconal work, the walls will remain high.”
Durable Solutions for the Uprooted, Food Security, and the AIDS Pandemic
CWS board member Mary Kuenning Gross, Executive for Refugee Ministries, Wider Church Ministries, United Church of Christ (UCC), and chair of the Board’s Immigration and Refugee Program Committee, spoke on confronting the staggering problem of Africa’s millions of uprooted people.
“It used to be we worked just in resettlement. Now, solutions for refugees have to be tied in to their well being in their own countries,” says Gross.
“Just last week,” Gross noted, “UNHCR projected a plan to repatriate two million people in nine countries.
“In recent years there have been several major repatriations made,” she describes. “Angola is one example. In these areas, support is needed for the councils of churches, who promote reconciliation in these communities.
“One CWS Africa Initiative development program in Angola is now helping women displaced by that country’s civil war and who are returning home now,” Gross reports. “The program is helping these young women learn to sew and embroider, to earn money that will help support their families. Women in one class are working together to earn enough money to buy and share a sewing machine and to start a business together.
“This is what empowerment and sustainability are really about,” says Gross.
And for those who may never be repatriated, Gross says organizations like Church World Service and the UCC “are putting more intensive work into improving the lives of people who are displaced.”
CWS announced in the board meeting that strategies for addressing food security in Africa will place emphasis on programs that protect land rights, support nutrition education and food diversification, provide inputs, and value indigenous knowledge.
Johnny Wray, Disciples of Christ, and Chair of Church World Service’s Emergency Response Program Committee, shared his “lasting impression of Africa — of the Garden of Eden and the devastation of the Apocalypse all wrapped together — like Siamese twins inseparably joined at the soul — beauty\ugliness; bounty\poverty; joy\agony; life\death.
“Do you know,” Wray asked the Board, “that some anthropologists think that the Garden of Eden was in Africa not Mesopotamia — that it was here Adam and Eve called home — from African soil the first humans were formed.
“The Church World Service Africa Initiative is important; the hunger and poverty alleviation component of the Initiative is important — not only because it will help people feed themselves; help them rise from crushing poverty; help them live in peace and die in dignity. It is important because it may allow us in some small way help our first family reclaim the Garden.”
Added Laursen, “Our focus also includes advocacy, to support just economic trade policies that allow Africa’s agriculture industry to exist, to grow, to compete on the world market.”
Jaime Quiñones, CWS board member and Social Education and Development Committee Chair, cited combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa as “a personal issue, something that affects the whole community.” He quoted his mother, saying, “You cannot cover heaven with the palm of your hand.”
Quiñones, Presbyterian Church (USA), quoted HIV/AIDS statistics and cautioned, “We can be far away from these realities,” urging the Board to “remember the children.” The CWS Initiative “will cause a chain reaction around Africa and around the world,” predicted Quiñones, who ended by hearkening back to Wray’s depiction, saying, “ We can lend our courage to strengthen our family in Africa.”
The Africa Initiative’s integral approach to battling HIV/AIDS will include programs targeted to least-served populations, with emphasis on women, children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, and displaced people, and focus on raising awareness, education, working to end the stigma of HIV/AIDS so people will feel free to seek health care, and on providing community supports.
In one project, partnership with FilmAid International will bring outdoor screenings of films about HIV/AIDS prevention and other critical topics to residents of refugee camps. Laursen comments, “CWS says the film program shows viewers how to take action, offers entertainment to help alleviate trauma, and features models for rebuilding community life.”
Laursen reports that the FilmAid program is receiving positive reports from a test model in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya
Church World Service also announced it expanded commitment to ensuring “water for all, for health, for food, for the future,” reports the Rev. Nicholas Genevieve Tweed, pastor of Queens New York’s Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church, and a member of the CWS Education and Advocacy for International Justice and Human Rights Committee.
Tweed referred to “the blue gold” and opened his remarks by saying, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink … Water is a gift from God; we can’t control it. We must exercise stewardship of it. Everyone has a right to it … We must ensure that all people have a right to partake of pure Water for Life.”
Laursen notes, “The goals here are essential: programs that improve sanitation conditions, enable efficient irrigation, and allow access to under-utilized natural water resources.” The CWS water programs will also “protect watersheds and build ecosystem-based management and good land and water use management.”
Program concentration will be on helping people obtain and manage their own potable water supplies and watershed sources.
“Water is not a resource to be privatized and restricted,” said McCullough. The Africa Initiative calls for durable on-the-ground projects and advocacy that prevents policies that inhibit local communities from accessing water or from developing their own water solutions.
Africans Helping Africans
In nearly every effort, Church World Service works with indigenous partners -- Africans helping Africans. Reformed Church’s Voskuil says she was initially impressed with the agency’s work with groups indigenous to each of the over eighty countries in which CWS operates. “I love the word ‘accompaniment,’” she says, elaborating on the relationship between CWS and its partners.
In fact, says CWS Board Member and chair of the Planning Committee Jennifer Riggs, Disciples of Christ, “To work in Africa, relationships with [African] church constituents may ease the way more than ties to other institutions.”
McCullough referred to humanitarian John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s statement that “Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty,”** and reminded his fellow ecumenical partners and board members of a passage from the Bible’s book of Habbakuk, saying “‘the vision awaits its time,’ and the time is now for action.”
CWS executives and board of directors underscored their commitment to Africa, closing the initiative’s presentation with prayerful thanks “for those appointed to serve Africa at its hour of need,” saying, “We stand at the crossroads, but ‘the Lord is not shaking.’”
Church World Service is a humanitarian agency and cooperative ministry of 36 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations, providing sustainable self-help and development, disaster relief and refugee assistance in partnership worldwide.
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
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