wfn.org | Board approves $114,000 in ethnic program grants

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 26, 2003	News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202) 546-87227Washington 
   10-31-33-34-35-71B{175}

NOTE: For related coverage of the United Methodist Board of Church and
Society's meeting, see UMNS stories #164, #170 and #176. 

HERNDON, Va. (UMNS) - Programs serving ethnic minorities will receive more
than $100,000 in grants authorized by the United Methodist Board of Church
and Society.

Voting directors of the United Methodist Church's social advocacy agency
acted on the grants during their March 20-23 meeting.

In all, eight grants totaling $114,000 were given for advocacy and
justice-oriented programs in the United States and the African country of
Ghana. The Ethnic Local Church Fund was created to help the denomination's
program boards support local church and annual conference ministries in each
board's area of concern.

The largest grant awarded this spring, $40,000, will help support the Ethnic
Young Adult Summer Interns at the board for the eight weeks they will spend
in the nation's capital. They will work in advocacy and serving as resource
people for annual conferences, campus ministries, ethnic caucuses and state
and federal offices. 

Issue seminars supplement their placements and include such topics as gender
equity and violence against women, racism and racial justice, and economic
justice and poverty. Applicants include young adults from the central
conferences - regional units of the church in Africa, Europe and Asia - who
are already in the United States. The multicultural group also learns about
the United Methodist Church and how it addresses the issues.

A $20,000 grant will support a program in the Oklahoma Indian Missionary
Conference that serves Native American youth of 88 churches. The One Voice
One Community program is aimed at developing in the young a political
consciousness as native people.

The program, part of the conference comprehensive plan, plans to use events
such as a rock concert and a United Methodist seminar as well as district and
conference workshops to teach about tribal, state and national political
processes. 

A $15,000 grant will help a social justice education and advocacy event to
raise Korean United Methodist awareness about the issue of reunification of
North and South Korea. The California-Pacific Annual Conference is
administering the grant, and programming leadership is provided by the Los
Angeles-based Korean Christian Newsweek and the National Association of
Korean United Methodists. The event will be a three-day seminar, drawing
immigrant peace and justice activists, first- and second-generation Korean
Americans and Korea experts.

A program called "Bridging the Gap of the Social Health Needs of Native
Americans in the Southeastern Jurisdiction" is also receiving a $15,000
grant. The advocacy effort seeks to involve Native American pastoral leaders
from nine states in advocating for services and ministries that address
family violence, substance abuse, homelessness, suicide and sexually
transmitted diseases. The program's goal is to identify and prepare leaders
to serve as liaisons and advocates to health and human service agencies as
well as emergency crisis programs.

The board approved a $12,000 grant to the Focus on Youth Initiative Program
of the Black Methodists for Church Renewal in the North Carolina Annual
Conference. 

The conference comprehensive plan provides the framework for this
collaboration of 12 small and medium churches to build a program of
leadership training and social education for African-American youth. It will
include a six-part study of the denomination's Social Principles; an advocacy
seminar in Washington; weekend immersion experiences with Native American,
Anglo and African-American communities; a mission trip to Jasper, Texas; a
cultural immersion trip to Jamaica and other events.

The Asian Help Services of Metro Ministries in the South Indiana Annual
Conference and Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis conduct an
ongoing leadership training program that reaches 300 central Indiana Asian
communities including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino and
Thai people. The $5,000 grant is being given for supplies and stipends for
leadership training workshops.

Two grants of $3,500 are going to women's groups in the autonomous Methodist
Church of Ghana. 

The Christian Women United Development Front in Ghana's North Volta
Conference asked for a grant to train women evangelists with theological
education about issues such as forced marriage and genital mutilation as well
as economic justice for single mothers. The evangelists will work among the
rural poor through the project, called "Strengthening the Faith of the Poor
Christians."

The other award will be used by the Central Volta Methodist Women in a
project called "Women Victims of Domestic Violence," which will address
social justice and empowerment of women about their human rights,
particularly against rape and other gender-related offenses.
 
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