wfn.org | Visa problems hinder travel to student event

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

June 4, 2003 News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
  10-71BI{311}

NOTE: This report may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #309.

By Pamela Crosby*

READING, Pa. (UMNS) - Young people traveled from around the world to attend
the United Methodist Church's annual Student Forum, but international
involvement was still low because of travel restrictions.

Brazil, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Philippines,
Trinidad, Tobago, Zimbabwe and 55 of the 64 U.S. annual (regional)
conferences were represented on the campus of United Methodist-related
Albright College for the 2003 Student Forum. The United Methodist Student
Movement held the event May 22-25.

However, 12 international student delegates from Africa University, a United
Methodist-related school in Mutare, Zimbabwe, were denied visas. Attendance
by international student delegates was low at this year's forum because of
increased restrictions on travel worldwide.

The news was disappointing to forum planners, who have seen the number of
international delegates increase in preceding years. 

Sungano Ziswa, a Zimbabwean student attending Delaware Technical and
Community College, said news of the visa denials shocked him.

"It now means that I can't go home," he said. "The political situation in
Zimbabwe is not too good, and students not being given visas means that
basically visas aren't being offered that easily or that readily."

If he were to go home and needed a visa to return to the United States and
finish his education, chances of that happening are slim, Ziswa said. "It's
an inconvenience to students now. There's a lot of potential in Zimbabwe. But
now people aren't going there from here, and people aren't coming here from
there. The political situation has affected both sides."

LaLaine Salting, a diaconal minister from Nueva Ecija, Philippines, studying
education at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., emphasized the
importance of the event. "As a young adult, Student Forum shows me how youth
are given the chance to have a voice in the church and even at General
Conference. It is like that in the Philippines as well." 

The Bible studies and workshops added to her experience and will help when
she returns home to teach, she said. Attending her second Student Forum, she
said international students were accepted and welcomed.

"The Road Less Traveled" was the theme for the event, which is the only
annual national gathering of young people in the United Methodist Church.
# # #
*Crosby is assistant editor and writer for the Office of Interpretation at
the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry, Nashville.

 
 

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