YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE —
YOU FEED THE HUNGRY. YOU DIG WELLS.
YOU GIVE AID TO UPROOTED PEOPLE.
YOU SHAPE INTERNATIONAL POLICY.
YOU STOCK LOCAL FOOD PANTRIES.

Letsabisa Lerotholi displays peaches she grew in her garden, developed with the help of the Christian Council of Lesotho, with support from Church World Service and others. Photo: Stephen Padre/ACT International

Story: Ron Kaser/CWS

This and more is what CROP Walkers, Tools & Blankets contributors, and others make possible through support for Church World Service.

“I want to help when I see children in need,” says Dorothy “Toppy” Spears of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who has walked in 18 CROP Hunger Walks and raised $45,664 for her efforts. “This is a way I can help, by walking. I have to walk.”

Strong sentiments and a loving commitment are typical of CROP Walkers across the U.S. who are walking for one simple reason — to reach out and help those who are hurting or in need, wherever they are.

“No one ever says ‘No,’” says Thongwan Leuamchampassak of Holland, Michigan (pictured on home page), about those she asks to sponsor her in the CROP Hunger Walk. “I’m so thankful for all who sponsor me,” she adds. “It’s the thing I can do the best to help the Harderwyk Ministries people, and the hungry.” Leuamchampassak came from Laos as a refugee in 1979. Her move to the U.S. was sponsored locally by the Harderwyk Christian Reformed Church in Holland.

A bilingual assistant with the West Ottawa schools, Leuamchampassak has personally experienced hunger. “When we came here we came with nothing. That’s the way we had to live. As long as I’m healthy, I’ll keep walking,” she says. “I’m so glad I can do this to help. My hope is that every need has been fulfilled.”

Leuamchampassak and her family have raised thousands of dollars over the last 17 years for the Holland/Zeeland CROP Hunger Walk. This past spring she and 14 family members participated.

Making a difference globally and locally is what Church World Service-sponsored CROP Hunger WalkS are all about, as they reflect the total ministry of CWS. And helping uprooted people — refugees and internally displaced persons — is an emphasis for the 2004 CROP Hunger Walks— making Leuamchampassak’s walk this year even more poignant.

One of the ways CWS supporters are making a difference is the far-reaching Africa Initiative, described recently by Rev. John L. McCullough, Executive Director of CWS, as an opportunity “to help people on the African continent achieve a quality of life that we believe was God’s original intent for humanity.”

Food security
Letsabisa Lerotholi (above right) and her family are seeing a difference in their lives. She tends a lush kitchen garden outside her home, a tiny oasis on the dry slope of the mountain that towers above her house in Lesotho, in southern Africa. She waters her garden of cabbage, fruit trees, and other fruits and vegetables from a tank that is shared with four neighboring houses. The water for these gardens comes from a nearby river higher up the mountain.

Lerotholi is among many small farmers in Sekake and Seforong districts who received assistance from Church World Service and our partner, the Christian Council of Lesotho. Today, 400 households are learning to grow indigenous vegetables beyond traditional maize. They are also learning about intercropping — growing a variety of vegetables at the same time. The soil is now more fertile, and the diversity of plants means that some crops will survive the drought that continues to plague the region. It also means a more diverse and healthier diet for families. And, they are producing enough food to have some left to sell at a nearby market.

Church World Service is at work in some 80 countries around the world and, in keeping with its philosophy of responding to needs as identified by the people themselves, the responses are diverse — and effective.

Greenhouse gardening in Serbia. Photo: UNHCR/R. Chalasani

In Rasinski District, in Serbia, 42 internally displaced families and eight vulnerable local families — 361 persons, including 157 children — are learning to grow food with CWS-provided greenhouses, seeds, and training.

The 50 greenhouses, with metal frame doors on each end for easy access and good air circulation and plastic covering guaranteed for three years by the manufacturer, were all purchased locally, in part to help stimulate the local economy. So were the seeds, seedlings, 150 small hand tools, 50 pumps, and other inputs. The participating families are all receiving training from agronomists on how to maximize greenhouse production.

An ocean away, in the Central American country of Nicaragua, empowerment of women is a vital path to food security — and more. Through an innovative program supported by CWS and carried out by partner CEPAD, the Council of Evangelical Churches of Nicaragua, 170 rural women in five areas are learning to be more self-reliant, while gaining skills in soil and water conservation, sustainable agriculture, efficient vegetable gardening, and micro-project management.

The 170 women are from working families with few resources — families who don’t have enough food or don’t eat the variety of foods needed for good health. Additionally, most of these women come from male-dominated homes with high levels of intra-family violence.

At introductory workshops, the women have developed plans for managing their garden plots and heard success stories from women who participated in the training in previous years. Augmenting their hands-on gardening skills, the women are learning to deal with violence within the family, and are participating in training on women’s rights and self-esteem.

Rosa Maria Obando Sequeira of Campos Azules, Carazo, was one of the enthusiastic workshop participants: “I really liked it … because we wanted to learn the work methods to administer the garden.”

Micro-credit
For families in rural Kompong Thom Province, Cambodia, low-interest loans are often the key to maintaining food security throughout the year. Some families obtain most of their annual income just after the rice harvest, when part of the crop is sold and the rest kept for home consumption and the following year’s seed. Families who have cattle obtain their major income when they sell a cow; still others when they are hired to do casual labor.

Outside of these times of the year, emergencies or basic needs such as new clothes often force families to go to moneylenders, whose exorbitant interest rates drag the families into a vicious cycle of debt poverty.

Church World Service is helping Kompong Thom communities to develop self-help groups made of 15-20 families each, who save money monthly and make low-interest loans to their members so they can embark on income generating activities such as raising pigs and creating small businesses. $30 per family is the working capital assistance from CWS that is added to the group’s money to help begin the savings and loan program.

Water for life
As many Church World Service supporters know, an estimated 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean, safe water.

“After all these years, we have been roaming all over this land with our cattle,” says a Maasai elder, upon seeing water flow from a new well, “and we have never thought that there was water underneath us.” CWS is helping the Maasai to develop and rehabilitate water resources in the Rift Valley of Kenya (East Africa), where they live — just one of many projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East where rural communities are gaining access to safe water for health and for food with the help of CWS. Water is also one of the critical issues being addressed by the Africa Initiative.

Fighting hunger close to home
A key component of every CROP Hunger Walk is the 25 percent of the WALK income that returns to benefit hunger-fighting initiatives right in the local community.

Central Synagogue in New York City, which benefits from the city CROP Hunger Walk, writes, “You have been a guardian angel, whose contribution has helped provide a nourishing breakfast twice a week to 150 individuals and gifted them with a brown bag lunch.”

In Norwalk, Connecticut, CROP Hunger Walk funds have helped Christian Community Action food pantry to provide food for the greatest number of people in its history. Thirty-three food pantries and a Meals on Wheels program shared in $16,553 generated by their Madison, Wisconsin, neighbors’ CROP Hunger Walk. And, in New Jersey, 130 food pantries and other local hunger-fighting initiatives received $196,583 from CROP Hunger WalkS in the state.

Through support for Church World Service, congregations and individuals are providing shelter and other tools of hope when disaster strikes — and for the recovery that follows — made possible through the CWS Tools & Blankets Program.

Some examples of these tools of hope — varied as the needs that compel them — are blankets, plastic sheets, and mosquito nets, to help shelter some of the estimated one million people displaced by the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan... job skills training for street children in Latin America... mobile libraries of children's books in the Lao language for 150 Laotian primary schools... blankets for an orphanage in war-torn Baghdad... livestock and poultry to replenish herds and flocks devastated by an earthquake in Iran... blankets for Lakota Sioux families on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota... and training in sewing and other skills for women, disabled persons, single parents, refugees, and displaced persons in Bosnia.

Congregations and groups are also helping their neighbors in the U.S. and around the world through the CWS Kits Program. Whether it's Health Kits for Haitian families recovering from floods and mudslides, School, Health, and Baby Kits for families rebuilding their lives in the wake of Sierra Leone's civil war, Health and Baby Kits for use in U.S.-Mexico border communities after flash flooding, or Health Kits for a halfway house in Boise, Idaho, serving just-released prisoners, these recovery kits and their simple, small necessities are always welcome.

Individuals, congregations, and groups are also helping to shape international and domestic policy toward hunger and other issues such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic and international debt relief by exercising their right to vote and by letting their elected officials know that they want their government to do more to help hungry and hurting people.

To all those who walk, sponsor, and/or volunteer in their local CROP Hunger Walk... to congregations who sponsor a refugee family or hold a Tools & Blankets Sunday or celebration... to everyone who puts together CWS Kits... to each person who makes a contribution... thank you from the millions around the world who may never be able to say it in person.

Make a world of difference in the lives of hurting and hungry people. Support the work of Church World Service through your community's CROP Hunger Walk , the Tools & Blankets Program, the CWS Kits Program. To find out more, call your regional office toll-free at 1-888-CWS-CROP (1-888-297-2767).
Coming to our website November 15: An exciting new interactive opportunity to help “Build a Village.”