Standing in solidarity with Anglican Christians throughout the world, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) has started the Anglican International Development for Relief and Change (AID) fund.
Throughout the world, many faithful Anglicans are suffering through poverty and discrimination.
The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) in the UK andIreland, in addition to providing a spiritual home for Orthodox and Mainstream Anglicans, are also impassioned to encourage and envision global and local mission. So, standing in solidarity with Anglican Christians throughout the world, the FCA has started the Anglican International Development for Relief and Change (AID) fund.
Over the next few years, enabled by a supporter team, AID will be partnering with churches in education, healthcare and job creation through micro-finance projects, especially in regions where access to these basic needs have been restricted or denied to Christians due to deliberate discrimination and oppression.
Faith
As a priority, AID has begun to work in partnership with the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS). Since the country’s independence in 1956, the Sudanese people have endured more than twenty years of civil war between the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the north and the non-Muslim, non-Arabic speaking Sudanese in the south. During two decades of war more than two million were killed and more than four million people were displaced – devastating the lives of men, women and children. The fighting only briefly relented for a number of fragile peace accords to be signed. The latest, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 gave the southern Sudanese autonomy for six years, after which a referendum for independence is scheduled to be held in 2011.
Anglican Christians account for about a third of the population of southern Sudan. They have thus far survived the brutal onslaught of the military regimes who have favoured the Islamic-oriented government’s attempts to impose Sharia law on the country as a whole. So right now, while there is peace, there is a most urgent need to create long-term and sustainable economic development in the region so that beyond 2011 the southern Sudanese can retain autonomy in their day to day living.
Opportunity
Working in partnership with the Episcopal Church of Sudan, AID is setting up a micro finance Project beginning in the Juba Diocese but planned to cover all the dioceses of the province . Projects are typically agricultural and there is great scope for enabling people to make full use of the land that is available to them.
Typical investment could be chicken farming, ploughs, bed and breakfast or brick making which benefit from money being loaned to enterprising parishioners in the dioceses within the ECS.Finance for a project is
provided in the form of a loan, the donor can then track the sum of the loan directly to the beneficiary via a website and at the end of the agreed term the sum of the loan will be re-invested in another micro business. The original donor will be kept informed about the continuing impact of their gift. For example an Anglican womens’ group
has set up a small tea stall in Juba and is doing well. They need capital to improve their business significantly.The profits go to support a nursery school programme.
Love
Aid has already conducted training programme for the key staff who will run the programme. A survey has been done and a business plan developed to make the project sustainable in three years. We will be happy to send a copy of the business plan to anyone who requests for it. As the Anglican Christian population begin to face up to the uncertainty of what their future could hold following the 2011 Referendum, the demand for many more similarly operated micro-finance projects is growing.
We want to do all we can to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters living in southern Sudan. But time is short. Anglican Christians in southern Sudan need both your prayers and practical support today. So please will you ask God how you should respond to this urgent need for southern Sudan? The trained staff are
in place the business plan is ready and we need your support to implement it and give hope to many
I have included a list of points for prayer, which could be used at your church service, and on the reverse examples of the various micro-finance projects and their respective costs which AID have been asked to finance. With your help, Anglican Christian men and women throughout southern Sudan can create a long-term sustainable economic future for their families and for themselves.
Yours sincerely,
Hugh Pratt
Treasurer for AID
Further information by emailing anglicanaid@gmail.com or by calling 01865-883388 or by visiting www.anglican-mainstream.net
Anglican International Development, 21 High Street, Eynsham, OX29 4HE
Tags: Christian Life