wfn.org | NCC/CWS Praise Bush Vow to Fight AIDS in Africa

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2252/2048/2227
	    CWS News 212-870-2654
Web: www.ncccusa.org <http://www.ncccusa.org>; news@ncccusa.org
<mailto:news@ncccusa.org>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Leaders of National Council of Churches, Church World Service praise
President Bush's Commitment to Fight AIDS in Africa, Offer Assistance of
Faith-Based Organizations
Congress Urged to Allocate Funds Necessary to Make a 'Decisive Difference'
for Africa

July 25, 2003, NEW YORK CITY - Citing "the staggering fact that some 30
million people in sub-Saharan Africa are living with AIDS," the CEOs of the
National Council of Churches (NCC) and Church World Service (CWS) hailed
President Bush's "visionary commitment to provide $15 billion to help the
people of Africa fight boldly against the AIDS pandemic."

In a July 24 letter to the President, NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar and
CWS Executive Director John L. McCullough also expressed the belief that
"Republicans and Democrats in both houses of the Congress will unite around
this great compassionate vision and affirm your initiative by offering
immediate and unanimous support for the funds you have pledged."

Noting that the President has championed the role of faith-based
organizations in delivering valuable social services in the United States,
so, too, the assistance of faith-based humanitarian groups "could be the key
to the success of your plan to conquer AIDS in Africa," the letter
continued. Such groups "are positioned to move immediately, effectively,
with high levels of expertise and accountability - and are short only the
financial resources to make the task possible," Edgar and McCullough said.

The National Council of Churches is the leading force for ecumenical
cooperation among Christians in the United States. The NCC's 36 Protestant,
Anglican and Orthodox member denominations include more than 50 million
persons in 140,000 local congregations in communities across the nation.
Church World Service is the global humanitarian agency of the member
denominations of the NCC.

The full text of the letter follows.

July 24, 2003

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of the ecumenical family of America's Protestant, Orthodox and
Anglican churches, we strongly commend you for your visionary commitment to
provide $15 billion to help the people of Africa fight boldly against the
AIDS pandemic that threatens the well being of an entire continent.  We urge
the Congress to allocate these funds in order to implement your vision.

Like you, members of America's faith-based organizations have been deeply
moved by the staggering fact that some 30 million people in sub-Saharan
Africa are living with AIDS.  We are saddened by the additional fact that
only a tiny fraction of those 30 million people have access to the kind of
treatment that our citizens take for granted.

We believe that Republicans and Democrats in both houses of the Congress
will unite around this great compassionate vision and affirm your initiative
by offering immediate and unanimous support for the funds you have pledged.
This will enable urgently needed programs of education, prevention and
treatment to be implemented on the scale that you so wisely proposed - a
scale that is necessary to make a decisive difference for the people of
Africa.  We share your sense of urgency, for every day that the need is not
met, 6,500 Africans die of AIDS-related causes.

America's faith-based mission agencies - backed by the full range of the
nation's churches, from Episcopal to Baptist, from Lutheran to Methodist,
from suburban to inner-city - and their jointly supported humanitarian
ministries, such as Church World Service, have long been partners with
Africa's faith communities and are already deeply committed to the AIDS/HIV
challenge in Africa. We also lift up the work of other faith-based agencies,
including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, with whom we
have discussed collaborative AIDS programming in Africa.  But, while almost
every American denomination has a presence in Africa, and many have
elaborate programs of ministry there, all of them, even the most prosperous,
are woefully under-funded for the mammoth task that is at hand.   They are
positioned to move immediately, effectively, with high levels of expertise
and accountability - and are short only the financial resources to make the
task possible.

The $15 billion you have pledged to the people of Africa should be
channeled through this trustworthy, proven network of faith-based ministries
that are already at work across Africa.  These organizations, backed by the
church-going people of America, have the experience and the personnel in
place to speed your AIDS program into reality, with accountable financial
management, humanitarian sensitivity, and long-developed relationships with
the African people.

Faith-based organizations deliver valuable social services in this country,
as your Faith Based and Community Initiative has highlighted.  Even more,
faith-based groups could be the key to the success of your plan to conquer
AIDS in Africa.  It would be a partnership between the public and private
sectors that would dramatically unite the American people, in solidarity
with our African brothers and sisters, as nothing else could.

We look forward to the opportunity to support your decisive response to this
humanitarian crisis. We join you in prayer for Africa and its people.

Respectfully,

Bob Edgar, General Secretary			John L. McCullough, Executive
Director
National Council of Churches USA		Church World Service

-end-