ELCA offers a picture of hope, The

Lutheran, The, Mar 2005 by Hunter, Elizabeth

To learn more about how the ELCA fights world hunger, The Lutheran spoke with Kathryn Sime, director of the ELCA World Hunger and Disaster Appeal.

The Lutheran: What's your mission as director?

Sime: To help congregations and members live out our calling to "go and do likewise" in our fight against hunger. We are a generous church, richly blessed .... I'm privileged to help our church respond generously.

When you think of hunger, is there a face you remember?

I met Agathe in a rural mountain village in Haiti. She and her husband have seven children. If their story were typical of a Haitian family, they might have little hope of reaching beyond subsistence living. But through ELCA World Hunger Appeal gifts to Lutheran World Federation partners in Haiti, Agathe received a "mama" pig and now has two piglets she will sell to help pay her children's tuition. With this precious education, her children will break this devastating cycle of poverty. I have a picture of Agathe standing proudly next to her two piglets. She's trying to look serious, but you can see the glint of a smile. It's not a picture of hunger-it's a picture of hope.

How do we move beyond a sense of helplessness at the enormity of this problem?

I find hope in the reminder that God has richly blessed [our world]. We have sufficient food sources today to feed everyone. Once I accept that hunger isn't inevitable, then I have to accept my role in perpetuating the cycle of hunger, and that's hard to take. ... We have to take those real feelings and emotions that are stirred up when we learn about hunger and transform them into actions. ... We can end hunger, but we have to work together.

Do you have any pet peeves?

As adults, we shouldn't be collecting spare change but writing checks-big ones. Hunger shouldn't be about petty change. It's not a petty issue.

I see hope in creative efforts around alternative giving. Many people seem to be making the links between our conspicuous consumption and people with nothing to consume.

What are ways to help eliminate hunger now?

1) Give generously. And talk about why you give so your children, grandchildren and friends can learn to model your commitment to fighting hunger. 2) Speak up. Advocate for those whose voices aren't heard... in local politics, in state government and in our federal government. All our financial giving is exponentially more powerful when we're also strong advocates for fair and just political systems (www.elca. org/advocacy). 3) Be wise consumers. Consider how our spending can help or hurt those whose hands made the goods we buy. Buying fair trade coffee and chocolate is a good place to start (www.elca.org/advocacy/issues/ fairtrade/ or www.lwr.org). 4) Pray without ceasing for the global crises and disasters we hear about daily, and for the silent disaster of devastating poverty that rarely makes the news.

How does the hunger appeal help?

We respond through four strategies (relief, development, advocacy and education). Relief is what most of us think of when we think of hunger, and feeding people today is important. But if we only did relief ministries, we'd never reduce or eliminate hunger.

Development is our long-term solution to ending hunger through building community access to clean water, education, improved agricultural practices .... Relief and development projects make up 82 percent of our world hunger budget. Continuing to educate our members about the realities of hunger worldwide and close to home is also important, as is advocating for our government's role in solving hunger.

Why is church involvement important?

I learned in Haiti that one of the strengths the church brings is a unique infrastructure. In Haiti the way to get relief and development help to people was through church systems such as cooperative groups that use small loans to buy goods in one community and sell them in another. It sounds a bit boring at first, but then you realize they're creating commerce. The microloan groups become delivery systems for other services, such as empowering women or talking about human rights. Also the church can hold governments accountable to their promises.

How have 30 years of Lutheran efforts made a difference?

First, our coffee-drinking church has elevated the discussion of fair trade to new levels. We can now find fairly traded coffee in supermarkets and in Starbucks. It wasn't only us, of course, but we can take pride in the role we've played in lifting up this important (and delicious) way to grow the demand for fairly traded coffee.

We've also helped countless communities learn how to help themselves fight hunger more effectively. Asansuli, India, suffered from ongoing poverty and food shortages until an LWF team, funded in part by the ELCA World Hunger Appeal, helped them build a grain bank and taught them more effective agricultural practices. Five years later, crop yields have doubled and the village is free of debt.

Last, but not least, our Stand With Africa initiative offers hope, even amid terrible poverty, war and the devastation of HIV/AIDS. Through our Lutheran World Relief partner in Tanzania, ELCA gifts helped build peace between warring factions of farmers and Maasai herders through conflict resolution and improved irrigation techniques. With more clean water available, tensions between farmers and herders are reduced. They now have the tools to find peaceable solutions to conflict.