Who's On Your Shopping List?

Oh the weather outside is frightful 

and $10.00 donations sound delightful!

Our Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk continued its mission this year of helping to provide for our needy neighbors. We have raised 90% of our $130,000 goal for this year's 30th Anniversary Walk. While we are all busy shopping and decorating for this holiday season and remembering our family and friends, please think of the families and children that would be so happy to receive the simplest of necessities: warm mittens, socks, caps and scarves.

We'd like to challenge all of our CROP Walk families to share a little extra joy this holiday season. We have a 30th Red Bank CROP Walk Team set up on line. We are asking anyone who can to make even a $5.00-$10. donation to help us get closer to our goal.

Imagine what a $10 donation can buy. Through Church World Service $10. will buy two wool blankets, a health kit, a soccer ball or even a pair of rabbits. A little larger donation will buy mosquito nets to protect against malaria, 200 tree seedlings to help reforest and help prevent soil erosion. You can buy literacy classes or sewing supplies so women can develop skills to earn a living. 

 

Small donations help to fill great needs. How about $5. for each person in your family. Janis Iwanyk, I'm donating $15. for myself and my two children.  Janie and George Schildge in honor of all those that worked to make this 30th CROP Walk a great event are donating $30.  

Thank you and please click this link to donate or to check our progress. 

30th Red Bank CROP Walk Team Page  

  

CROP Global Partner Meeting in Nanjing, China

Shortly after this year's 30th CROP Hunger Walk, my husband George and I were fortunate to take an extended trip to China where we met one of our global partners supported by Church World Service/Crop. In Nanjing, China we met Liu Rohong, a staff person with Amity Foundation. Our tour group had dinner with Liu Rohong and she gave us amazing insight as to the 25 year history of this Christian nongovernmental agency. This nonprofit agency has been very effective in communist China working in the areas of public health & HIV/AIDS Prevention, disaster management, education, orphans and foster children, and community Development. 

Amity runs a Bakery, a child development Center, a Home of Blessings for mentally challenged children, and is able to respond to major disasters, such as the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province and floods in southern China.   It even managed to provide some relief aid to the Philippines and Haiti.   Ongoing initiatives include the response to the effects of climate change, pollution control, protection of water sources, and enabling farmers to access safe drinking water. 

As Ruhong spoke to us, we better understood the historical setting of social service programs in this vast country.   As the General Secretary stated in the 2009 annual report, "For social and economic development to be sustainable, local communities, whether rural or urban, have to be enabled and empowered."  Ruhong told us of the loss of education years for so many Chinese adults, during the cultural revolution, when schools didn't function.   She was one of 2 out of a class of 60 who was able to get into college by studying hard on her own.   Her grandfather, a professor, told her that she could do anything she set her mind to (as a girl in China that is a big challenge).  

We thank Amity for the wonderful work in almost all the provinces of China, and encourage them in their future endeavors.   (Five years ago, members of Amity visited Monmouth County, and some of our Crop Committee, with Marie Varley, had a picnic hosted by Susan Day. This global connection is possible through the efforts of Church World Service and their work in 80 countries around the world!        Janie Schildge