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Note #8974 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05560
Oct. 20, 2005

Feeding the poor in Peru

Moderator helps open a new office for hunger-program partner in Lima

by Alexa Smith

LIMA, Peru - A Presbyterian hunger-program partnership in Peru opened a new
office on Oct. 19 with a brief prayer service and a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

	Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was on hand to cut the ribbon. He was
accompanied by Maria Arroyo, the denomination's liaison to South America, his
host for a two-week tour of hunger-program sites in Peru and Bolivia.

	Peru's Joining Hands Against Hunger (JHAH) Network has been up and
running for five years, but only recently has been incorporated as a legal
association under Peruvian law. It is creating alliances to work for
environmental justice and human rights and promoting economic-development
links between Peruvian churches and community organizations and U.S.
presbyteries and congregations.

	JHAH-Peru began by forming a partnership with Giddings-Lovejoy
Presbytery in St. Louis, MO. Other PC(USA) churches have signed on since
then.

	"We are 14 organizations and churches working together to fight
poverty, and in our first years, it has been swimming against the current to
do so," said Conrado Oliveira, executive secretary of JHAH-Peru. "Sometimes
it is a strong current. And sometimes we want to throw in the towel and say
that we have done all we can do."

	Oliveira told Ufford-Chase and the PC(USA) delegation: "Your presence
here with us gives us courage  to continue in the year ahead."

	According to JHAH, three out of four people in Peru live in poverty,
and one in four suffers from extreme poverty.

	In the past year, JHAH-Peru:

	Seen its partnership with Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery win recognition
as a model for joint mission: A number of international organizations have
approached JHAH for help in replicating its success, including
Caritas-Germany, Catholic Relief Services and the Latin American Alliance of
Presbyterian and Reformed Churches.

	Partnered with St. Louis University's School of Public Health and
with the central Andean Archdiocese of Huancayo in a major
environmental-health study, testing for 15 toxic metals in a 250-person
sample in La Oroya, a city where the largest metal smelter in the western
hemisphere pumps more than 1,000 tons of toxins into the air every workday.
The study has provoked violence, won coverage in 33 U.S. newspapers, and met
its $435,000 of expenses with funding from organizations including PC(USA)
congregations and individuals, Oxfam-America and Caritas-Germany.  Four U.S.
Presbyterians have served as international monitors.

	 Helped 125 artisans create, market and export more than $80,000
worth of handcrafts. The Fair Trade Bridge Project prompted  Giddings-Lovejoy
Presbytery to organize a non-profit organization to import and market its
products.

	A candle and burning incense helped create the atmosphere for the
prayer service, in which each member of the moderator's delegation and the
JHAH-Peru partners read Bible verses from long, colorful ribbons attached to
chocolate candies. "Carry the Bible verse with you, and also sweeten your
life," said the pastor who opened the service.

	Ufford-Chase presented a pottery cross hand-made in Louisville to
Oliveira, and spoke on a text from 1 John. Citing global economic policies
that benefit rich nations, the moderator said churches north and south face a
great challenge today. "God is calling us to love one another, even in places
where that is very difficult to do," he said. "But we are able to do that, in
trust and with the full confidence that God is here and present with us."

	Oliveira described the work JHAH-Peru does in eight regions of the
country, often in spite of laws that benefit large international firms and
victimize local people. He said the "hurried process" of globalization only
promises more of the same. "It is necessary to make alliances, to join the
hands of people in the north and the south," he said.

	Two representatives of Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery, Jim Cook and
Erica Wunderlich, are traveling with Ufford-Chase, and two from San Francisco
Presbytery, Jack Johnson and the Rev. Norman Fong, are representing that
presbytery's partnership with JHAH-Bolivia. Two Bolivian partners, Emilio
Aslla and Alejandrina Ibanez, also are with the delegation.

	Arroyo and Lynn Connette, of the Prebyterian Hunger Program, are
staffing the trip.

	Two PC(USA) mission workers, the Rev. Hunter Farrell and Ruth
Farrell, work here with JHAH-Peru.

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