Today in the Mission Yearbook - Madagascar fighting the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and food insecurity

Global partner’s ministry addresses both the physical and spiritual needs of the people

January 13, 2022

FJKM seminary students in Madagascar learn about the Tommy Atkins mango. (Photo by Dan Turk)

Mission co-workers Dan and Elizabeth Turk, who have served in Madagascar for more than 20 years, are working daily with global partners through Skype, Zoom and WhatsApp to address the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and severe food insecurity facing the world’s fifth-largest island nation and one of the world’s poorest countries.

The Turks serve with the PC(USA)’s partner church, the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM), in its ministries of health, environment, agriculture and safe drinking water. FJKM believes that Christian witness should include ministry to both the physical and spiritual needs of God’s people and care for all of God’s Creation.

In a recent letter to supporters, the Turks reported that “in the capital city, colleagues report that almost everyone knows many people who have had COVID and some who have died. PC(USA)’s partner church, the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM), has been greatly impacted by the new restrictions, which include bans on worship services in the capital city and other affected parts of the country.”

The Madagascar Mission Network sent emergency relief donations to help with the urgency of the situation. FJKM continues to provide worship services over the radio and its pastors go into hospitals and COVID treatment centers daily to pray with the sick.

On March 26, Madagascar joined the World Health Organization’s COVAX program. The first 250,000 vaccines (AstraZeneca Covishield) arrived in May. As in many other countries, health care personnel, the elderly, members of the armed forces and the police were the first to receive vaccine. After a peak of active COVID cases in April of this year, official data indicate the number of active cases has declined precipitously. However, with vaccination rates low, further spread of COVID-19 is expected.

The hunger situation in southern Madagascar continues to be dire.

The World Food Program (WFP), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and Amnesty International have recently issued humanitarian appeals. The WFP and FAO estimate that over 1 million people in southern Madagascar face high levels of acute food insecurity, with almost 14,000 people in the worst category of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). The FJKM is participating in efforts to relieve hunger by distributing food and seeds and focusing on longer-term solutions such as digging wells and constructing water catchment systems.

Dan Turk works with the FJKM’s Fruits, Vegetables, and Environmental Education program (FVEE). With per capita income less than $250 per year, many Malagasy people have difficulty feeding their families. Due to ongoing deforestation, many of Madagascar’s endemic plants and animals are threatened with extinction. FJKM is responding to these needs by helping people grow fruits and vegetables to improve their nutrition and get out of poverty.

The FVEE promotes environmental awareness by planting native trees at FJKM churches, seminaries and schools. Dan Turk and his colleagues help pastoral students learn to grow fruits and vegetables. The new pastors use these skills to help their communities and families achieve improved food security and nutrition. The FVEE has established a fruit center to help promote fruit growing, especially many of the world’s best varieties of grafted mangos, on a national scale.

Turk said the FVEE was able to hold several trainings at the FJKM church at Ankaramena in south-central Madagascar, where a new mango nursery is being established and at the fruit center at Mahatsinjo. At the most recent training, 50 people from the town of Tsarahonenana near Andriba learned how to grow and graft fruit trees. In the past few years, the FVEE has trained over 150 farmers.

A new nursery located on the grounds of the FJKM seminary at Mandritsara will be managed by the seminary. It will provide grafted mango trees and other quality fruit trees for growing in Mandritsara and the surrounding area as a contribution of the FJKM to help subsistence farmers increase their food security and gain income to reduce poverty.

Kathy Melvin, Director of Mission Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Tom Harvey, Mission co-worker serving in England, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Robert Hawkey, Director, IT Strategy & Transformation, Information Technology, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Gracious God, we give thanks that you multiply our small and humble offerings and efforts as we work to care for those in need. We ask that you sharpen our focus on you and on ways we may serve. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - First Presbyterian Church of Yorktown in New York tackles food insecurity

Legacy now includes becoming a Hunger Action Congregation

December 6, 2021

 

First Presbyterian Church of Yorktown opens its pantry twice a month and draws many working families. (Photo courtesy of FPCY)

First Presbyterian Church of Yorktown in Yorktown Heights, New York, recently became a Hunger Action Congregation, capping off a long tradition of serving the community through a food pantry and other endeavors.

Churches qualify for certification as Hunger Action Congregations through the Presbyterian Hunger Program when they are active in these areas: hunger alleviation, development assistance, hunger education, lifestyle integrity, corporate and public policy witness, and worship.

“Although we’ve just been recently certified, this has been something the church has been very attuned with for a long time,” said Ellen Miles, the Hunger Action Congregation Team Lead for the church.

The crown jewel of FPCY’s hunger-action efforts is a twice-a-month food pantry that’s evolved over time to meet community needs. It has been around for more than 30 years and serves individuals and families living within about 10 miles of the church.

“FPCY’s ministry to tackle hunger started out in a very humble way, 15 to 25 bags of food twice a month to people who were hungry from a literal pantry closet in the church,” said the Rev. Chip Low, co-pastor and coach. “It was a simple and straightforward task. Then we began asking questions that moved this ministry from something transactional twice a month to what it means to engage in food justice ministry and how does that ministry ask deeper, more meaningful, more relational and transformational questions of us and the people we serve.”

Low continued, “This has happened over time as we listened to the lives of those who come to our pantry, explored the shortcomings of programs like SNAP (the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), gone on national and international mission trips that were less about building something and more about learning the impact of our lives on others, explored biblical texts, including the differences between Jesus’ compassionate response in the feeding of the 5,000 and the disciples’ response, and then asking, ‘What is all of this asking us to become as well as do?’”

FPCY attracts a large number of food recipients — 175 to 180 families each time the pantry opens or closer to 275 (per pantry opening) during the height of the pandemic — and makes sure that bags are given out with a full portion of friendliness and compassion.

“While we don’t see the same clients every time, there are some regulars and we have real relationships with them,” said Katharine Frase, co-leader of the food pantry. “Some of them have been coming long enough that we can ask about their kids or their dog … and I think that really is different. While we try to be efficient, the compassion is really important.”

She recalled an older gentleman who was eager to share a vintage photograph of himself along with some buddies and Marilyn Monroe. “What really tickled me is that we were the people he wanted to show that picture, which really speaks to relationship,” Frase said.

Most recipients come to the church to receive bags of food, which are loaded into their vehicle by volunteers for health and safety reasons during the pandemic. The church also takes bags of food to two senior complexes and is involved in local programs to feed the homeless.

“They’re broad-based efforts,” Miles said. “Lots of folks in the congregation are involved, but in terms of the actual coordination of these initiatives, it’s really a handful of people, which is just amazing. … It’s kind of a well-oiled machine.”

FPCY also has members serving on the town of Yorktown’s Food Security Task Force, and the church is searching for ways to make the community more aware of the factors that contribute to hunger and household financial crises.

“Say you’ve got a family of four and both adults are working full-time but minimum wage; they can’t afford an apartment,” said Frase, co-chair of the task force. “The vast majority of my (pantry) clients are working. They just can’t feed their families.”

Some of the produce that’s distributed by FPCY’s pantry is grown at a community garden that adults and youths from church help to tend as part of an interfaith collaboration that also benefits other pantries in the area.

Darla Carter, Communications Associate, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Cindy Ealy, Budget Assistant, Office of the General Assembly
Lindy Ebbs, Administrator, Constituency Relationships, Relationship & Development Operations, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God of all peoples, help us to trust that you will bring to completion by the day of Jesus Christ the good work you have begun. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Iowa church sows seeds of hope through longtime partnership

Growing Hope Globally helps communities around the world fight food insecurity

November 18, 2021

First Presbyterian Church in Conrad, Iowa, has a longtime partnership with Growing Hope Globally to help fight food insecurity in other countries. It raises money for the program and helps build public awareness. (Photo Courtesy of First Presbyterian Church)

Almost 20 years ago, some members of First Presbyterian Church in Conrad, Iowa, heard a presentation about a program in which U.S. farmers and churches team up to raise money to help subsistence farmers in various parts of the world.

Arlyn Schipper, a member who also happens to be a farmer, “looked at me after the meeting and said, ‘Why can’t we do that?’ and the rest is history,” said the Rev. Kerry Carson, longtime pastor of First Presbyterian.

Since then, the church has raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars as a supporter of the program, Growing Hope Globally, which brings U.S. farmers, churches and surrounding communities together to raise money and awareness to reduce world hunger. The money allows poor communities around the globe to get tools and training to help in the growing of their own food, according to the Growing Hope website.

“It’s a great community project and a great way of learning about what rural communities are facing in other parts of the world and to be in community with them,” said Alex Morse, regional director of East and Midwest Growing Projects for Growing Hope, formerly known as Foods Resource Bank.

In turn, communities in Africa and other parts of the world receive assistance to help them become more self-sufficient at growing their own food while retaining their dignity.

“We don’t send food overseas,” Carson said. Money is “way more efficient and doesn’t sit on a dock and rot some place while political organizations try to figure out where it should go.”

U.S. churches choose how they would like to support Growing Hope. Some raise crops and donate the proceeds to the program while others hold events, such as auctions, dinners, bike rides or 5K races to help fund agricultural development projects internationally.

“It’ll not only change your life, but it’ll change the people’s lives overseas,” said Schipper, a board member at large for Growing Hope, which held its national summit in Conrad in 2019 with First Presbyterian.

Over the years, First Presbyterian has worked collectively with a handful of churches from various denominations in the area to help raise funds, initially relying on growing field crops on land the churches would donate. More recently, due to shifts in the farming business, First Presbyterian has relied more on produce from First Presbyterian’s youth garden.

Prior to the pandemic, we would have “a big community corn feed to celebrate our harvest in August,” Carson said. While gathered at the park “we roast corn out there and people can buy vegetables and enjoy an afternoon together… It’s kind of a great way to end the summer and get ready for the new season, and everybody in the community can be participating in that project that way.”

Growing Hope benefits people in about 35 countries in various parts of the world, including Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, as well as the Middle East, Morse said. About 500 churches are involved.

“Over the last 20 years, we’ve been able to help over 2 million people achieve food security, and this last year, we were able to help almost a quarter of a million people with improved agricultural training,” Morse said.

Carson said First Presbyterian has helped people in about 25 countries. We’ve either sent people there, we’ve contributed funds there, or we’ve received guests from there.”

One of the best things about the program is that international partners “self-identify what their greatest needs are in terms of finding food security,” Carson said. “Sometimes that’s improved plantings. Sometimes it’s water resources. Sometimes it’s seeds to provide diversity of food so that they can be healthy. Sometimes it’s food storage. Sometimes it’s infrastructure like being able to get produce to a major highway or market so that they can be sold.”

Schipper was attracted to the program because it makes use of something he and his Iowa community already do: grow food. He said he also gets satisfaction from knowing that he’s helped someone who really needs it. “It’s a helping hand, not a handout,” he said.

Darla Carter, Communications Associate, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Amanda Craft, Manager, Immigration Advocacy, Office of the General Assembly
Octavia Craig, Treasury Assistant, Purchasing, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the example of your Son, Jesus, and his desire to reach out to help those in need. Help us to recognize our own opportunities to spread the love of Christ as your ambassadors. Amen.