In my 27 years of pastoral ministry tonight was the most meaningful Maundy Thursday love feast experience ever for me! Any other church I have been part of would have fired me on the spot for messing with the “Holy Ground,” but not Community of Joy.
Brethren Disaster Ministries and the Global Food Initiative recently worked together to send representatives from Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria), representatives from South Sudan, and a Church of the Brethren representative from the United States to Kenya to receive training in a program called Farming God’s Way with an organization called Care of Creation, Kenya.
With a grant of $2,500, the Church of the Brethren Global Food Initiative (GFI) is supporting a soybean consultation and exchange visit between Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) and Church Aid Inc. in Liberia. Another recent grant of $1,000 supports a community gardening initiative of Rockford (Ill.) Community Church of the Brethren.
Jennifer Hosler and I recently traveled to Nigeria to consult, connect with, and support the development and peacebuilding work of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria). Jennifer traveled to Nigeria in her role as a member of the advisory committee of the Church of the Brethren’s Global Food Initiative. In this role, she met with EYN leaders and members who had traveled to Ghana in September 2016, together with Jeff Boshart (Global Food Initiative director) to learn about soybean projects.
The Global Food Initiative of the Church of the Brethren is giving grants to support agricultural work in Haiti and garden projects in the United States. Other grants will help carry out program evaluations in a number of African nations.
The Global Food Initiative (formerly the Global Food Crisis Fund) issued a grant of $660 for representatives of Iglesia de los Hermanos (the Church of the Brethren in the Dominican Republic) to travel to Santiago, DR, for a week of training with Medical Ambassadors International. Other recent grants support cultural/garden exchanges partnering indigenous communities in Lybrook, N.M., and Circle, Alaska.
This was our tenth summer of traveling to Alaska to encourage, teach, and promote vegetable gardening. Bill went to Circle at the beginning of April, six weeks earlier than the usual mid-May arrival, hoping to make this year the most beneficial and successful yet.
Working through a nascent Brethren church in the region, the Church of the Brethren sponsored a capacity-building conference to bring Batwa together from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The following is excerpted from a report by Dr. David Niyonzima, detailing the conference and some of the learnings gained from the interaction:
Grants from the Church of the Brethren’s Global Food Initiative (formerly Global Food Crisis Fund) support water workshops and farmer training in Burundi, and the attendance by a group from Liberia at a training event at the Soybean Innovation Lab in Ghana.
Global Food Initiative (GFI) has been announced as the new name for the Global Food Crisis Fund (GFCF). The program of the former GFCF continues under the new name, and with a new logo and a redesigned website.