wfn.org | Bishops see quilting as sign of hope in Pakistan

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Feb. 22, 2002  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-33-71BP{069}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

By the Rev. Larry Hollon*

QUETTA, Pakistan (UMNS) -- Changing conditions in Afghanistan continue to
dislocate thousands of people, and relief agencies in this city near
Pakistan's southern border struggle to adapt to new needs almost daily.
 
"The situation changes from day to day," said Naeem Shahid Ghauri, project
director for the ecumenical Church World Service (CWS). Ghauri briefed a
fact-finding delegation of four United Methodist bishops and two top church
agency executives from the United States on Feb. 20.

Besides dislocation caused by the war in Afghanistan, drought, extremely
cold temperatures and privation have recently set desperate people on the
move to find food, shelter and safety, he said.

Three days before the delegation arrived, more than 10,000 refugees in a
single day struggled into a staging camp near the city. Located in southern
Pakistan's Balochistan province, Quetta has a population of 400,000.

"Many coming now lack food and clothing," Ghauri said. "They have been
walking in the extreme cold for upwards of four days. They arrive carrying
the few possessions they have left."

While the situation is not unmanageable, it does undermine efforts at
repatriation that are just beginning. Many of the recent arrivals fear
insecurity in rural Afghanistan and are unwilling to return until local
militias have been disarmed, the relief worker said. As a result, this could
mean a long-term stay for some people.

About 46,000 people are currently in 10 camps in the region. Many of the
refugees are women and children who have borne the brunt of much of the
suffering. An estimated 3.3 million Afghans have sought safety in Pakistan,
and another 3.1 million are in Iran.

CWS has designed programs to meet emergency needs, including food and
shelter, as well as generate income for recently widowed women who are heads
of households but lack the formal education or skills to earn a living. Many
longer-term refugee women, who fled during Afghanistan's war with the Soviet
Union, need those skills as well.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief has had a long-term relationship
with CWS and has supported its projects around the world, including Central
Asia.

In Pakistan, CWS entered into a partnership with the Shuhada Organization,
an Afghan women's group, and targeted 400 economically vulnerable women for
quilt-making work. With raw materials contributed by CWS, the women
organized into small work groups and hand-stitched 25,000 quilts in three
months. The quilts were given to refugees along with food aid in a carefully
monitored distribution program.

The United Methodist leaders visited the quilt-making project and also
participated in the food distribution, which coincided with the eve of a
Muslim holiday feast. Several newly sewn quilts were handed out as the
bishops met with participating families and staff.  

The interaction "gave us insight in a powerful way," said Bishop Elias
Galvan, leader of the United Methodist Church's Seattle Area. He noted that
as the ecumenical agency is meeting emergency needs, it has also created a
project that looks to the long-term future, and it has identified women and
children who are often forgotten or overlooked.

"That CWS has given widows and children priority is an act of faith," he
said. "It is living out the biblical injunction. And I am impressed that CWS
has said it will be here for the long term. It won't pull out after the
crisis has abated."

"Quilt-making for these women is a life-and-death matter," said Bishop
Beverly Shamana of the San Francisco Area, reflecting on a woman preparing
batting for a quilt. "They are so vulnerable. Yet, as I watched a woman work
the batting, I think she was beating life into her quilt."

The women turn small clumps of cotton into batting and disperse it in the
quilting material by beating it with large sticks.

"By expressing their handiwork in this way, these women are affirming that
we have something within us that is God-given," Shamana continued. "They are
stitching life into those quilts, and they are affecting the whole
community."

"It brought to mind all those biblical images of women," said Bishop Ann
Sherer of the Missouri Area. "Women really are 'the least of these,' just as
in Jesus' day.  Women in poverty, living at the edge of the culture, are so
fragile. They have no handles to grab onto and move forward.

"Yet," she continued, "through the presence of Church World Service, they
see a sign of hope. They know someone else cares. To know that someone cares
is to give hope, and that this hope comes through the church is so
wonderful. They are finding handles to the future."
 
"I saw two places of hope in the midst of a lot of brokenness," said Bishop
S. Clifton Ives, leader of the West Virginia Area and president of the
United Methodist Board of Church and Society. "There was brokenness
everywhere we looked, but hope also came shining through in the work of
Church World Service. This hope is made possible by Christian people around
the world who really believe that all the children of the world are God's
children."

The delegation contributed $1,000 to the work of CWS from funds provided by
First St. John United Methodist Church in San Francisco and Oak Hill (W.
Va.) United Methodist Church.

The delegation is on a fact-finding visit to meet with church leaders in the
Middle East at the request of the Middle East Council of Churches and the
Church of Pakistan, according to Galvan, president of the United Methodist
Council of Bishops.

"We are attempting to understand the situations under which Christians live
and do ministry in the Middle East and to stand in solidarity with them," he
said.

The group includes James Winkler, general secretary (top staff executive) of
the United Methodist Board of Church and Society; the Rev. Larry Hollon,
general secretary of United Methodist Communications; and Liberato Bautista,
associate general secretary, Board of Church and Society.

# # #

*Hollon is the general secretary of United Methodist Communications, with
main offices in Nashville, Tenn.

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United Methodist News Service
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