United Methodists send young adults across globe

NEW YORK (UMNS) Young adults are learning about the challenges facing people across the world through a short-term mission program of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.

The Global Justice Volunteer Program is now moving out of its pilot phase and accepting applications for placement on three sets of teams in 2000, according to the Rev. Bud Heckman, an executive with the board's Mission Volunteers department.

Volunteers from the second pilot group met in New York the week of Dec. 13 to discuss their experiences.  The six young adults had received orientation in mid-October before being dispatched to eight-week assignments in Armenia, Brazil and Liberia.

Laurie Day of Caldwell, Idaho, and Kevin Robbins of Charlottesville, Va., participated in a program of the United Methodist Annual Conference in Liberia called PRAY that works towards reconciliation among youth in an African country still trying to recover from a long civil war.

Robbins said he found the Liberians have "a powerful hope that things will get better," but noted that the effects of war are still evident and there are concerns about government corruption.

Reconciliation, Day said, is being accomplished in small ways through community-based efforts, but, she added, "very little is being done at the top."

Day recently was given the 2000 Theressa Hoover Community Service and Global Citizen Award by the board's Women's Division.  Her project for that award will take her to Kenya to examine how the roles of women there have changed in the last few decades.

Robbins, a student at Columbia University in New York, said he found his participation in the Global Justice Volunteer Program to be thought-provoking.  "The experience definitely has challenged me to revisit how I'm going to be involved in social justice and human rights work," he added.

Karen Alley of Townsend, Mont., and Michael Hammond of Ghana, Africa, worked with Noah's Ark, a community development program supported by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) in Armenia.

The pair was involved with two 4-H clubs that helped teach youth skills such as carpet and dressmaking and set up small agricultural projects.  In one project, Alley explained, each youth raised 15 chickens, selling the eggs for income.  One chicken would then be passed on to another youth.

Hammond said he found that impoverished people in Armenia had more difficult lives than their counterparts in Africa.  "People don't have money in Africa, but they know the means of living," he pointed out, while in Armenia he found people had been reliant upon the former Communist state for their needs.

Alley is a delegate to the United Methodist General Conference in Cleveland next May.  Hammond hopes to start some small agricultural programs in Ghana with the church's assistance.

Maria Garcia of San Antonio, Texas, and Clifton Conrad Jr. of Lafayette, La., served as volunteers with the Street Children's Project in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Garcia said they discovered most of the children are not abandoned or homeless orphans.  "They all have families," she explained.  "Most of the time, they're the only one in the family who works."

That work, Conrad added, includes such tasks as washing or parking cars, washing windows, loading groceries and shining shoes.  Garcia, a Roman Catholic, came to appreciate how people in Brazil have organized themselves to promote social justice.  "I came out of this knowing that whether it's a small change or a large change, it will help in some way," she said.

Conrad, who is considering future mission work, admired the staff of the street project.  "It was amazing to see some of the things they did for the children -- the love that they had for them," he explained.