wfn.org | Shalom Zone builds community in Zimbabwe

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 19, 2002 News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71BP{113}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

By Dean Snyder and Jane Malone*

MUTARE, Zimbabwe (UMNS) - A United Methodist church is taking a stand
against Zimbabwe's economic hard times through a Shalom Zone program that
gives people the means to support their families.

Hilltop United Methodist Church, in Sakubva, hosted the first Shalom Zone
training outside the United States four years ago. Today, the Shalom Zone
principles have flowered into "Isheanesu," a program empowering women and
men to become self-sufficient and their children to succeed academically.

The Isheanesu Shalom Zone, born in a room about 12 feet square, includes a
restaurant, a bakery, soap manufacturing, knitting and tailoring operations,
vegetable gardens and a classroom that provides after-school care and
academic enrichment for 58 children.

A brick building under construction will soon house classrooms, a dining
hall and administrative offices for Isheanesu. Consistent with the
empowerment philosophy of the Shalom Zone program, the company overseeing
the construction is one created by Hilltop United Methodist Church to employ
and train workers from the high-density, high-poverty community neighboring
the church. 

The Rev. Gift K. Machinga, superintendent of the Mutare District of the
Zimbabwe East Annual (regional) Conference, is proud of the way the Shalom
Zone concept has taken hold at Isheanesu, a word that means "God is with us"
in the native Shona language.

But Machinga isn't complacent. He is determined to begin new Shalom Zones in
two other communities on his district.

"We don't want Isheanesu to be just at Hilltop," he says, as he shows around
visitors from the United States. "We want it to spread."

The Shalom Zone movement began in the United States in 1992 in response to
outbursts of violence in Los Angeles following the police beating of Rodney
King. Church leaders were trained to develop a plan for working with other
community institutions and leaders to holistically address the needs of a
target area within a distressed urban or rural community. 

General Conference, the United Methodist Church's highest legislative body,
approved the creation of the program, which is administered through the
denomination's Board of Global Ministries. 

Shalom plans are designed to address the entire spectrum of human potential,
including the spiritual as well as the economic. Meeting basic health and
human needs and empowering people through organizing for political change
are critical elements of the Shalom Zone strategy.

More than 380 Shalom Zones had emerged in the United States by 1998. Bishop
Felton Edwin May, the first National Shalom Committee chair, encouraged a
group of Washington area leaders to hold Shalom Zone training in Zimbabwe as
part of the missional partnership forged between the Baltimore-Washington
Conference and the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe.

Shortly after Shalom Zone training at Hilltop in January 1998, church
volunteers began Isheanesu as an after-school project for a handful of
children in poverty-stricken Sakubva. Church leaders developed relationships
with their parents and guardians. The adults, mostly women, eventually
became involved in training programs, and today some of the same women are
learning new skills while earning income by staffing the project's
indigenous businesses. 

Financial support from the Baltimore-Washington Conference helped transform
volunteer roles into paid staff positions. Scholarships provided by the
conference are helping pay the school fees of children whose future has been
dramatically changed by Isheanesu. As the project grew, it won support from
the Board of Global Ministries in paying the salary of a "missioner of hope"
to oversee the program.

Other U.S. conferences have also become involved. The Holston Conference,
for example, is helping underwrite the cost of the project's new building.

Because of political tension and the serious economic depression in
Zimbabwe, Machinga knows that beginning new Shalom Zones will not be easy.
He is increasingly spending his time and energy advocating with governmental
offices for food on behalf of hungry people in the communities of his
district.  

Yet, with CNN reporting that the nation's rating for international
investment has sunk to the absolute lowest position in the world, Machinga
believes Shalom strategies for empowerment are imperative for economic
restructuring in Zimbabwe. 

Machinga helped begin a project in Gwese, a community in his district where
the pastor, the Rev. Susan Manyange, had identified 300 children orphaned by
AIDS. They persuaded local officials to donate a plot of land and raised
money in district churches to buy seed and fertilizer. They hoped to begin a
feeding program that might lead to the kind of empowerment programs offered
at Hilltop. 

The severe drought that has hit Zimbabwe this growing season has stalled
these initial efforts at Gwese, but Machinga is determined. 

"During hard times, that's when faith gets strong," he says. "We had a
drought ... but we don't have a spiritual drought."

Machinga has also developed a plan to begin a Shalom Zone in Chitora, a
community where he was successful in establishing a clinic with the help of
the European Union, the Board of Global Ministries and domestic governmental
agencies. 

Zimbabwe's economic hard times make expanding church ministries difficult,
Machinga says. People have very little to share.

"The message we are giving our people is 'Remember your neighbor,'" he says.
"Whatever you have, share with others."       

# # #

*Snyder is the director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington
Conference. Malone, a United Methodist laywoman and Snyder's spouse, is an
advocate for affordable housing. They are in Zimbabwe on a mission trip.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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