Presiding Bishop's Fund: a Network for Sharing
Episcopal News Service. May 23, 1985 [85119]
NEW YORK (DPS, May 23) -- What do the Diocese of Butare in Rwanda; Nigerian student Christian Monyei; the Church of St. Matthew and St. Timothy, New York City; and Heifer Project International have in common? The Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief; all are part of that network of giving and receiving.
The Diocese of Butare, located in famine-stricken east Africa, has a population of more than two and a half million, 70 percent of whom need help obtaining food. A recent grant of $30,000 was sent from the Fund to Archbishop Justin Ndandali of the Church of the Province of Burundi, Rwanda and Zaire to provide immediate food for famine victims in Butare Diocese. A previous grant of $21,000 to neighboring Kigali Diocese had sparked the request.
Christian Monyei is a Nigerian studying pharmacology at the University of Montana in Missoula. When a military government took power there in January of last year, it imposed restrictions on the transfer of funds, making it impossible for Monyei's family to send him money for his schooling. In a "Catch-22" situation, in order to earn enough to continue with schooling, Monyei would have to drop out of school for a semester and take additional jobs -- which would endanger his status with the Immigration and Naturalization Service as a student, perhaps resulting in deportation.
However, the Episcopal chaplain at the University, Lynne Fitch, was able to help Monyei, an Anglican, stay in school by arranging for him to receive a $500 grant from the Episcopal Society for Ministry in Higher Education. The grant came from a pool of $30,000 which the Presiding Bishop's Fund had given the Society to meet emergency needs of African students and their dependents living in the United States.
The people of the Church of St. Matthew and St. Timothy are among the givers to the Presiding Bishop's Fund. The Rev. Marco Mejia, who serves the Spanish congregation in this multi-ethnic parish, recently presented Fund officials with a check for $983 from his flock, many of whom are poor, to be used to feed the hungry in Ethiopia. Said Mejia, "We have some serious needs in our congregation, but our commitment is to meeting human need wherever it occurs."
Heifer Project International is headquartered in Little Rock, Ark., and is currently chaired by the Rt. Rev. Herbert Donovan, Jr., Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. As a charitable organization, which for 40 years has provided food-producing farm animals and training in their care to needy families in the U.S. and abroad with the proviso that the offspring of the animals be shared with other needy families, Heifer is both a giver and receiver of Presiding Bishop's Fund grants. Aided by the Fund, Heifer also serves as a channel for it.
One of Heifer's most recent projects is to work with the Christian Relief and Development Association (CRDA) of Ethiopia and fulfill a request for 2,000 draft oxen to be provided over the next two years to replace animals dead or sold because their small-farmer/owners were wiped out by the drought. For families who lost their tools as well, one-ox plows will be provided. Traditional Ethiopian plows use two oxen, but this new version, which was developed by Ethiopian agricultural workers and can be made and repaired by local village blacksmiths, plows efficiently with only one. The oxen will be purchased gradually from areas of Ethiopia where the drought's impact has been less severe. They will be distributed only as farmers are prepared for them to avoid causing a draft animal shortage in the source areas.