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Eight United Methodist Young Adults To Spend the Summer as Global Justice Volunteers |
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Eight United Methodist young adults are devoting eight weeks of the summer to a volunteer mission program that puts them in situations where people are struggling for justice. These Global Justice Volunteers, working in teams of two or three persons, have an opportunity to explore the relationship of faith to justice issues by serving in communities often pushed to the social and economic margins. Teams this year are assigned to a Filipino migrant ministry in Hong Kong, a youth center in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a community health organization in Nicaragua. The young people work with missionaries or through ministries related to the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church. Six of the 2005 Global Justice Volunteers are from the United States and one each from Liberia and Sierra Leone, where The United Methodist Church is also strong. “I found out about the program when I told my campus minister that I wanted to spend the summer doing something helpful, something that had a faith element to it,” said Rachel Cloud of Leawood, Kansas, when interviewed at the end of a week of orientation in New York City. The rising senior at the University of Kansas, where she is a Spanish major, is looking forward to the intercultural experience of working in Central America. Ms. Cloud is on the team already at work with Accion Medica Cristiana in Sahsa, Nicaragua. The summer work there is supervised by Missionary Belinda Forbes. The center is also a mission partner with the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. The Women’s Division was instrumental in starting and continues to strongly support the Global Justice Volunteers program, which operates through the Mission Volunteers Program Area of the board. A second team member in Nicaragua is Barrett Rogers of Beebe, Arkansas. Finda Fengai-Kabba of Freetown, Sierra Leone and Samuel Barbay Gaye of Monrovia, Liberia, said in interviews that they are particularly interested in the Global Justice Volunteer program because they hope to adapt the model for the West Africa Central Conference (comparable to a jurisdiction in the United States) in the near future. Mr. Gaye works with the Young Adult Fellowship of the Liberia Annual Conference and Ms. Fengai-Kabba is the Young Women’s Coordinator for the West Africa Central Conference. Ms. Fengai-Kabba is one of a team of three assigned to Bethune House, a migrant women’s refuge, and the Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers in Hong Kong. Other volunteers in Hong Kong are Carol Kimball of Augusta, Maine and Gabrielle Sinclair of Lexington, South Carolina. Bethune House is related to Women’s Division. Mr. Gaye of Liberia, John Wilson Irwin of Memphis, Tennessee, and DeJesus Totty of Detroit, Michigan, are serving at the Omladinski Youth Center, in the town of Gornji Vajuf-Uskoplje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This center was founded and has continuing links to UMCOR, which has done extensive rehabilitation work in the Balkan country following the war there in the 1990s. The Global Justice Volunteer program takes full advantage of the many ministries already related to The United Methodist Church through the mission boards and its units, such as the Women’s Division and UMCOR. Volunteers must be between the ages of 18 and 25, high school graduates with at least one year of college or work. While the majority of the volunteers’ expenses are covered by the mission agency, volunteers contribute $200 per month to participate in the program and cover other out-of-pocket expenses including food and ground transportation. Most are assisted by their home congregations or other sources within the denomination. Limited scholarships are available. The young adults
receive orientation from the Mission Volunteers office of the mission board.
At the end of their service, they reconvene for debriefing.
Date posted: Jun 21, 2005 |
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