wfn.org | Photo exhibit focuses attention on hunger, poverty in Africa

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

Jan. 21, 2004 News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn. 7
E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL-AF-AA-RM-I{018}

NOTE: Photographs and a photo flash package are available with this report at
http://umns.umc.org.

By Shanta Bryant Gyan*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - A photo exhibit featuring portraits of impoverished
children and families in Africa is focusing attention on the continent's
pressing social problem - and serving as a challenge for Americans to
respond.

The exhibit, "Bread and Stones," is on display in the rotunda of the United
Methodist Building at Capitol Hill. Photos were taken from the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Zambia, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Algeria. 

James Winkler, top staff executive of the United Methodist Board of Church
and Society, said the exhibit depicts the church's deep concern for hunger
and poverty in Africa. He noted that some 3.4 million people in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo alone have died from war and famine in less
than a decade. 

"It shows the faces of Africa and what happens in Africa," he said at the
exhibit's Jan. 15 opening.

One photo shows a young girl of about 7 or 8 years old in tattered clothes
with a broad smile and outstretched arms, yet unable to reach a loaf of bread
locked in a store cabinet above her head. Another photo depicts a family of
six, with melancholy expressions, standing in the foyer of their concrete
home. 

The Rev. Ray Buchanan, a United Methodist minister and president of Stop
Hunger Now, an international aid organization, took some of the photos during
visits to several African countries, where he assessed humanitarian relief
needs.

Other photos were taken last October during a Board of Church and Society
fact-finding trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gloria Holt, a
Board of Church and Society board member from the Northern Alabama
Conference, and the Rev. Eugene Winkler, a retired pastor in the Northern
Illinois Conference, took those pictures.

The board delegation traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the
request of the country's three United Methodist bishops - Fama J. Onema,
Nkulu Ntanda Ntambo and Kainda Katembo. Winkler, who led the mission, said
the group sought to learn more about the political and humanitarian situation
in the country in order to strengthen advocacy efforts.

In the Congo, the delegation met with President Joseph Kabila, members of
Parliament, church leaders and human rights advocates. The group also visited
refugee camps and orphanages to observe the humanitarian situation. 

Winkler said the United Methodist Church in the Congo has been an integral
partner with the Congolese government in trying to end the ongoing conflict
in the country. "The church stepped out and said, 'We will work with whoever
will bring peace.'"
 
He urged the U.S. government to invest more resources in helping foster peace
in the Congo. "To achieve peace in the Congo, it can't be done by spending
money on weapons of mass destruction and in sending people to the moon," he
said.

Board officials hope the photos from the Congo and other Africa countries
will catch the attention of U.S. policymakers by putting human faces on
poverty and war in Africa.

"If we see those faces up close and personal, we would not have fear, we
would not have indifference," Buchanan said. "We would say, 'Yes, these are
my brothers and sisters, and there's nothing we can't do on their behalf.'
The thing we have to understand is that this is our family.

"We've got to care enough to share," he said. He added that in his travels to
poor countries, he often uses photography to protect himself from getting too
emotional. 

A representative from the Christian advocacy group Bread for the World showed
a video of local church efforts to overcome hunger and spoke about a 2004
campaign to fully fund the Millennium Challenge Account, a new government
program to increase U.S. foreign assistance and emergency global AIDS funding
without cutting other poverty-focused programs. 

Bread for the World's "The Letters of Offering" encourages members of church
congregations to write letters to Congress in support of anti-hunger
legislation. 

"It's unfair and unjust for people, especially in our world today, to ever go
hungry," said Derrick L. Boykin, Bread for the World's local church outreach
associate. "We have the ability and the wealth to ensure that people are fed.
The United States has to take the lead."

More information on the photo exhibit is available at www.umc-gbcs.org.

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*Gyan is a freelance writer based in the Washington metropolitan area.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org