by United Methodist News Service
AID FOR NORTH KOREA -- Rebecca McElroy (center) joins other volunteers at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia packing boxes for North Korean famine relief in an interdenominational effort called the Festival of Sharing. The 920 boxes collected meet United Methodist Committee of Relief specifications, each containing enough food to feed a family of five for a week. A UMNS photo by Linda Reed Brown.
A container shipment of boxes for famine victims, gathered by an interdenominational group in Missouri, is expected to arrive in North Korea by mid-October.
The 920 boxes meet specifications set by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). Each contains enough food to feed a family of five for a week.
International food aid still is needed to help prevent mass starvation in North Korea. The U.N.'s World Food Programme is estimating that food prospects for 1998 in North Korea "appear to be worse than in the previous two years."
Last March, the Festival of Sharing -- an interdenominational organization housed in and partly staffed by the United Methodist Office of Creative Ministries in Columbia -- began its campaign for the North Korea appeal.
"We broke the state up into some promotional areas," said Linda Brown, associate director, Office of Creative Ministries. "Each area had a promoter/coordinator who was a reference point and a contact."
When the Festival of Sharing first made a small relief shipment to North Korea a year ago, "there was a lot of skepticism and still a lot of anger and hurt being expressed" about giving food to a nation with a rigid Communist regime, according to Brown.
"People came around," she said. "Over the six-month period of time we promoted this, people began to get past that initial reaction."
Frequent news reports about the food crisis in North Korea helped make the need more legitimate, she added.
When people have asked how they can be assured that the aid will really reach those in need, Brown said she has explained the contacts UMCOR and Church World Service, the relief agency of the National Council of Churches, have established with Christians in North Korea. "Our best response is that those people will try their best to get it to where it's most needed," she explained.
Eventually, according to Brown, people "began to understand that our call was to be generous and God's going to take care of our generosity on the other end."
Between 50 and 60 volunteers gathered Sept. 17 at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia to go through each box and make sure they conformed to UMCOR standards. About 71 extra boxes that did not make it into the shipment will be sent to the UMCOR Depot in Baldwin, La., for consolidation with other donations.
Money also is continuing to come in from churches that collected funds for purchase of bulk rice or grain, Brown said.
Sept. 25, 1997
Please give to UMCOR Advance #226435, North Korea Emergency. Give through your local United Methodist church or send financial contributions to: UMCOR, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Call 1-800-554-8583 to make a credit card donation. One hundred percent of your gift goes to relief efforts in North Korea. United Methodists' generous giving to the One Great Hour of Sharing, part of their ongoing contribution to mission around the world, supplements the cost of Advance gifts.
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of the United Methodist Church.
United Methodist Committee on Relief
Room 330, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115
Voice Phone: 212-870-3816; FAX: 212-749-2641
Email: umcor@gbgm-umc.org
| Top | Famine Emergency | UMCOR | Global Connections: Korea |