wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] PW on a mission

[Deeanna Alford <dalford@CTR.PCUSA.ORG>]

03290
July 18, 2003

PW on a mission

Women's organization launching global offensive vs. AIDS

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Joel Hanisek pushed the women in his workshop to think. Think
hard. Think past abstractions. Think real-world.

"Forty-two million people have AIDS," he said. "In some pockets of the
world, one in four people have it. That's outrageous."

He read off some of the answers to a statistical "pop quiz" he'd given
minutes before:

*About 8,500 people die of AIDS every day.
*By 2010, more than 25 million children will have been orphaned by AIDS.
*Only about 2 percent of people with the disease have access to effective
medications, mainly because those who live in poor countries, like those in
Africa, simply cannot pay for the drugs.

"So what are you going to do?" Hanisek asked, looking around a semi-circle
of about a dozen members of Presbyterian Women (PW) taking part in his
workshop. "Tell me one practical thing that you can do personally and then
take it back to your congregation."

Hanisek offered his workshop, "The Global Aids Pandemic: How Women of
Faith are Making a Difference," during last week's 2003 Churchwide
Gathering, PW's triennial business meeting and convention. If the women
couldn't come up with any good answers, he thought, then he would have
failed as a workshop leader.

It was like pulling teeth.

One woman suggested partnerships between U.S. and African congregations,
maybe through the International Health Ministries Office (IHMO) of the
Presbyterian Church (USA).

Another thought Presbyterians might find ways to support the two AIDS
consultants now working in Africa on behalf of the PC(USA): Caryl Weinberg,
who is stationed in Yaounda, Cameroon; and Janet Guyer, who works in
Johannesburg, South Africa.

Hanisek broke the awkward silence, saying that congregations can help by
assembling "home-based care kits" - packages stuffed with items useful to
people caring for sick relatives.

The kits are being dispensed in Malawi now by IHMO, which is being swamped
by requests for more from churches in Malawi, Congo and Kenya.

Hanisek also suggested checking the United Nations AIDS Web site,
www.unaids.org, and finding out what UNICEF is doing to combat AIDS and the
other major diseases of poverty that kill thousands of children around the
world - malaria and tuberculosis.

Hanisek, an intern in the denomination's UN Office in New York City, kept
pressing his point:

"Here we are, assembled as the Body of Christ. And the very Body of Christ
has AIDS. What do we do?"

That was a recurring question during the four-day Gathering. PW answered
it by contributing $68,000 (with more money still coming in) to AIDS
ministries in the United States and abroad.

Three U.S. programs will receive PW's financial support:

*The Women's Collective, Washington, DC, a community-based organization
managed by and for local women who have or are at risk for HIV/AIDS. It
provides services and support for women and their families.
*Iris House, New York City (where AIDS is the leading cause of death for
women aged 25-44 and girls aged 1 to 4), which offers services and
advocates for people with AIDS.
*The Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN), an Arkansas program that
provides prevention training to at-risk groups and also cares for people in
the state who already are infected.

Other funds will go to support orphans in Africa whose parents have died
of the disease. The PC(USA)'s partners in these programs are the Communite
Presbyterienne au Congo and the Central Africa Presbyterian Church in
Malawi.

PW's voting representatives also:

*Set aside $25,000 to fund HIV/AIDS health-education programming for girl
children around the world, continuing work begun in 2000;
*Decided to continue promoting an Extra Commitment Opportunity Account
(ECO#051701) used to help pay for prevention programs intended to prevent
mother-to-child transmission of the virus; and,
*Allocated $50,000 to new advocacy projects, including those with global
reach.
*Resolved to educate PW members about the relationship between	global
poverty and the incidence of HIV/AIDS.

Gerry Taylor, a former member of the peace and justice committee of PW's
churchwide coordinating team, said the organization's AIDS initiative is
unprecedented in its scope.

Taylor, a member of Christ Presbyterian Church in Carlsbad, CA, was part
of a delegation PW sent to Africa last year on a fact-finding mission. The
group saw how the disease is ravaging the continent and surveyed the needs
of the legions of women who are sick with AIDS or caring for someone else
who has it.

"Fifty-eight percent of the victims (in Africa) are female," she said. "We
need to understand that. And it is on the increase in the United States in
the female population. ... Because this is considered a man's disease,
women have a harder time getting the help they need."

Taylor has had no qualms about urging PW to throw its weight behind
efforts to moderate the scourge of AIDS.

"I think they're getting it," she said, gesturing toward the women milling
around the convention center. "Many women have come up to me and to other
leaders and said, 'You're issuing a call to action, you're not just
offering us information on mission and nourishment for our souls. You're
calling us to action.' And yes, I think we are."

Of all the actions PW took, Taylor seemed most pleased that it endorsed
the "0.7 Percent Initiative," a United Nations effort to combat diseases of
poverty by getting governments to cough up 0.7 percent of their gross
national products for the cause.

The 214th General Assembly urged individuals, congregations, presbyteries
and other church bodies to give 0.7 percent of their income for relief and
development in poor countries, especially those that do AIDS work.

On July 12, PW voted to do just that, and its leaders and members vowed to
urge their home congregations and presbyteries to do the same for the next
three years.

HIV/AIDS was an issue in virtually every major discussion at the
Gathering. Women delegates were on hand from Kenya, Congo, Ghana, Liberia
and other African countries to talk about related issues ranging from
orphan care to promoting the use of condoms.

The Sinikithemba Choir, whose members are patients from an HIV/AIDS clinic
in Durban, South Africa, sang during an evening plenary session and sold
hand-made beadwork to raise money to help buy medicine for African victims
of the disease.

Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches
of Jesus Christ in the United States, is underwriting the choir's U.S.
tour.

Many speakers at the Gathering talked about AIDS, including theologian
Elizabeth Tapia, of the Philippines, who teaches at the Ecumenical
Institute in Bossey, Switzerland. In her presentation, "Women's Leadership
and Mission in the Context of Globalization," she touched upon the
challenge of AIDS.

Because of the export of jobs to Third World nations where people work for
low wages and essentially are "industrial slaves," poor women are forced to
sell sex, or sell their daughters for sex, to survive, Tapia said, noting
that AIDS is primarily a disease of poor people.

"God have mercy," she said, calling her listeners to repentance and
activism.

Much of the information about AIDS was old news for Dorothy Brewster-Lee,
the physician who runs the IHMO. She has long been clamoring for the
denomination to take the 0.7 Initiative seriously.

Why did she take her message to PW?

Because she knows what the organization can do.

PW members already have partnered with Brewster-Lee's office to sew
anti-malaria mosquito nets for distribution to poor women in sub-Saharan
Africa in the Networkers' Project, an indisputable success. Presbyterian
women in the United States sew and ship the nets to partners in Malawi,
Kenya and Congo, who sell them at a small profit and educate poor women
about preventing transmission of malaria.

Brewster-Lee said the PC(USA)'s partners in Africa are puzzled that global
HIV/AIDS ministries haven't had more support.

She told participants in her workshop, "Presbyterian Women: Moving from
Global AIDS Awareness to Action": "Folks are already sick. In Malawi, one
in four people has AIDS. ... There are orphans, kids, to be taken care of.
They're burying people. Visiting the sick. It is the same in Kenya, where
there are a slew of Presbyterians. Overseas, Presbyterian churches have
major, major problems because of AIDS. When I go there, they can't
understand why they're not receiving more assistance from the church in the
United States."

Brewster-Lee said she came to PW, which "already gives way over 0.7
percent overseas," because "you can lead this."

"If you're giving through PW, you should have no problem challenging your
congregations, your denomination," she added. "Some congregations already
give 25 percent of their budget to mission. But most Presbyterians are not
doing that."

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