Overseas Giving Group
The Overseas Giving Group was set up in 2003 to administer the Overseas Giving Fund, a £100,000 bequest from Bert Fortune, a teacher and long-standing member of the Church.
While we knew of his generosity, the scale of Bert’s bequest surprised and delighted us.Bert wanted to see the work of the Church growing overseas and the Vestry appointed a group to interpret his wishes and to encourage our members to propose specific projects for funding.
The Overseas Fund focuses on community development, education and learning, peace and reconciliation. It supports children, young people and families and some of those affected by AIDS, all within a broad Christian understanding of responding to human need. Sustainability has been an essential feature of our support - donating small sums of money that will make a lasting difference. Ongoing funding has been donated to two main initiatives and one-off support given to several smaller projects:
The Lisu People of Burma
We all saw some evidence of the terror that developed out of a peaceful protest led by Buddhist monks in Burma. In the west, we are unable to get much accurate information about what life is like under this secretive regime.
The Lisu is a hill tribe living in the remote and ecologically fragile hill areas of Burma. They face constant natural and social disasters and experience ongoing oppression. Poverty is extreme and life expectancy is low.
Peter Swan of the Myanmar Baptist Convention writes that “the situation here is getting more difficult. Many of the Lisu community are facing many obstacles.” It is difficult for those groups seeking to provide local support to do so because funding efforts are very difficult and the opportunity to publicise or promote the work is not available in the present political climate.
Our support for the Lisu people over the past year has contributed to vocational training required to generate local income and improve capacity-building. Our donation of £5,000 has funded sewing classes and equipment, fish culture, machine repair workshops and basic computer training.
The Jenin Creative Cultural Centre, Palestine
We are providing support to a Cultural Centre in Jenin, Palestine. Yousef Ahwad runs the Centre in the dilapidated city where people have endured decades of violence and invasion. He has developed an extensive programme - computer and language training and musical activities for young people - as well as art, dance and drama workshops for teachers and democracy awareness sessions for women. Where there is severe personal restriction and constant conflict, opportunities for release and self-expression through creative activity are vital.
In 2007, the Fund gave £5,000 to the Jenin Centre, helping to buy musical instruments, art materials and computer equipment.
We met Yousef Ahwad at the Centre. He said: “During the atrocities here, the people just focused on survival. You know, we lived through years of seeing young children throwing stones at tanks. It’s craziness when children start confronting tanks. Even now many of the children are just sitting on the streets, waiting for something to happen. They have nothing to do, and we thought it was very important to have a safe space: a place where they could dream.”
The centre opened in 2002, the year more than 50 residents of Jenin refugee camp were killed during a particularly brutal invasion by the Israeli military.
“During that time we were just chasing the pain here in Jenin,” said Yousef. “It is very important to document the [Israeli] violations. But we were also suffering from a cultural evaporation, and as Palestinians we want, and need, to maintain our cultural identity.”
The centre works creatively with children across the city. “We are open for anyone” said Yousef. “We have kids coming from the camp, local villages and the city. We give them art classes, training in computers, music and photography.”
Yousef believes these projects irrigate the cultural desert in Jenin. But they also give the children vitality. “They come here and take part in these projects,” he said, “and then we see them start to smile.”
The walls inside the centre are covered in photographs, drawings and artwork, mostly done by the children. Yousef guides us towards one wall: one side is covered in childish drawings of parrots, a sunset over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and a flower that looks like an orchid. The other side features snipers aiming their guns, a tank firing at a ship, and the famous Palestinian cartoon hero, Handalla, suspended above a field of corpses.
“These drawings were all done by the same boy,” said Yousef. “He started making these violent images two days after the war started in Lebanon. The occupation has a huge impact on the minds of our children.”
In light of the two deaths early this morning, we asked him how active the Israeli military is in Jenin these days. “Compared to two years ago, the situation here is easier,” he said. “We are thankful for the great support of our friends at Old Saint Paul’s Church, who are drawing the smile on the faces of our children.”
For further information please email the Centre at jenin3C at yahoo dot com.
Other Projects
The Overseas Giving Group has also supported a horticulture initiative at the Malindi Orphan Care Project in Malawi. The project has now been taken over by a larger charity but Old Saint Paul’s helped to establish the programme and aided a food programme for older and infirm members of the community.
The group donated £1,500 to the SHINE Project through Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). This health programme in a remote area of Cambodia seeks to reduce maternal and child mortality through community development approaches. Our money helped deliver health promotion information and contributed to the purchase of display materials, nurse uniforms and toys for ante-natal centres.
ChildAid is a Christian charity seeking to improve the lives of disadvantaged children, particularly street children, children with disabilities and orphans in the former Russian republics. We donated £2,000 to give 25 disabled children free physiotherapy treatment; provide food for a street child for a year; support a young person in Khabarovsk for a year and to provide a nurse to look after abandoned babies.
The Sally Mair Blind Children’s Trust in South India has been set up by its eponymous namesake, a specialist teacher of children with disabilities, to provide intensive support for a group of visually impaired children and young people. We have donated £1,000 to help Sally set up this programme.
The Church of Bangladesh received a donation of £2,640 through the Church of Scotland World Mission Council. The money is to support a project seeking to reduce human trafficking through awareness building and networking focusing specifically on the needs of women.
The Rwenzori Peace Bridge of Reconciliation is a Quaker-led initiative in Western Uganda. We donated £2,000 to help the effort to build peace and resolve conflict in this difficult and challenging war-torn country where many children and young people get caught up in fighting. We have helped to pay for school-based training in conflict resolution.
For more information about the Overseas Giving Group please email .
