A 10-part series
offered by Episcopal
News Service
Millennium
Development Goals Overview
Goal
1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Goal
2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal
3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria & Other Diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Create a global partnership for development
Conclusion: MDGs are 'deed-base evangelism'
"God is in the slums and in the cardboard boxes
where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has
infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is
in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of
wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them...This
is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality." --Bono,
President's National Prayer Breakfast, 2006.
First
in the ten-part series: An Overview
Millennium Development Goals overview
Will you strive for justice and peace among all
people?
Achieving the U.N. Millennium Development
Goals
Become ‘ONE Episcopalian,’ join the effort
for global good
By Alexander Baumgarten
To the more than one billion of God’s people
around the world who live each day in extreme poverty, the most important thing
each of us can do today is visit www.episcopalchurch. org/ONE and become “ONE
Episcopalian.”
Did you know that every three seconds in our
world, someone dies simply because he or she is too poor to continue living? Or
that every six seconds, someone dies from AIDS, malaria, or tuberculosis? Or
that in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean, a child is orphaned
every 14 seconds?
These brutal realities — along with issues like
conflict and war, inequality between men and women, and lack of basic education
for millions of children around the world — comprise the phenomenon known as
global poverty. The good news is that the solutions for global poverty are
within the world’s reach. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of
eight targets for eradicating global poverty, have been adopted by more than 190
nations, including the United States. The goals are built on the understanding
that the resources, strategies, and knowledge to end this crisis exist if only
the moral will can be built.
That’s where Episcopalians like us come
in.
Recognizing that people of faith are key to
building the will to achieve the goals, the Episcopal Church’s 75th General
Convention in June 2006 voted to make the goals the top mission priority for the
church over the next three years. In order to do this, the Convention endorsed a
new effort called ONE Episcopalian, in which the church has partnered with ONE:
The Campaign to Make Poverty History (www.ONE.org).
The ONE Campaign is a movement of more than two
million Americans of all beliefs and every walk of life who believe that by
standing as one we can call our government to do more to fight poverty and
disease in the world. The campaign never asks for your money. It asks for your
voice with our government, because that’s what’s needed to achieve the MDGs.
The campaign calls for the U.S. government to
spend an additional one percent of its budget each year on fighting poverty in
the world. (Currently, the U.S. spends far less than one percent.) That
additional one percent can prevent 10 million children from becoming AIDS
orphans; put 104 million children in grade school; provide safe drinking water
to 900 million people around the world; and save 6.5 million children from death
before their fifth birthdays.
In short, an additional one percent would build a
better, safer world for all people; a world that looks radically more like God’s
will for it. The only way it will get done, though, is with your voice.
Can you get involved today by becoming a ONE
Episcopalian? You can sign up online at www. episcopalchurch.org/ONE, and it
takes less than one minute. One by one, Episcopalians can help make poverty
history...
Alexander Baumgarten (abaumgarten@episcopalchurch.org) is
international policy analyst for the Episcopal Church in its Office of
Government Relations (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/eppn.htm) in Washington,
DC.
Learn more about it:
ONE Episcopalian http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ONE/
DATA
(Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) www.data.org
Educational resources from
Episcopal Relief and Development http://er-d.org/programs_36756_ENG_HTM.htm
United Nations Millennium Development Goals www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
www.millenniumcampaign.org
Produced by Episcopal Life/Episcopal News
Service. Ongoing coverage of the Episcopal Church is available at
www.episcopalchurch.org/ens.
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The First Goal: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and
Hunger
Will
you strive for justice and peace among all people?
We
are called to be Christ to the entire human family
We
can imagine and work for change
By Abagail Nelson
Imagine
waking up one morning. You roll over and feel yourself lying on a grass mat
placed on a hard dirt floor. You look across a dusty dim interior where the
early morning light is trickling through the front door, and can barely see
your three small children on their own mat, starting to stir. A wooden table
— your husband made it with his own hands as a wedding present — is
propped up against the mud wall. On it, you can just make out the shadows of a
can of sesame oil and a bowl of dried rice. This is all you have to eat. The
baby starts to cry. The others open clouded eyes and show little energy. It is
a new day.
Every morning millions of people look across
their shelters as day dawns and wonder how they might feed their families.
Unfortunately, every night, according to the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization, more than 800 million people go to bed hungry,
having successfully sold, grown, traded, or made less than $1 of income that
day.
Every single one of these people is a member of
our human family, and calls to us to be the hands and feet of Christ’s
solidarity, Christ’s love, and Christ’s grace for them.
The hope of the first of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) is that together we might eradicate extreme poverty
by 2015.
Episcopal
Relief and Development (ERD) is one agency at the forefront of engagement with
the MDGs. Working in more than 40 countries, together with the churches and
communities of the Anglican Communion, ERD assesses the local context and
helps create effective lasting sustainable change. Together we reach the
isolated and marginalized with critical training and information to increase
those crop yields, or help that bicycle repair shop finally turn a
profit.
Credit, buffalo, drought-resistant seeds, hoes,
market information, fair prices, training. For many of us, these may be words
and concepts that contribute tangentially to our lives. For others, they
represent an essential bridge to increased income and decreased hunger.
With credit for small-business improvements and
buffalo to pull plows and provide milk; with seeds that hold up in scarce
rainfall or hoes that help farmers extend their territory of cultivation; with
clear information about the price of goods at the market and the capacity to
transport those goods directly instead of through a profiteering middle
merchant; with skills training, mutual support and organization, individuals
and communities engaged by ERD through the Anglican Communion are able to
stand up one by one, and move that $1 a day to $2 to $3 to $10.
And so, tomorrow, that mother might roll
over on a clean mattress and see a pitcher of milk next to that can of sesame
oil, and know a basket of fresh eggs is waiting just outside in the henhouse.
Around the year 2015, she will watch her youngest child graduate from
secondary school, having had all the necessary nutritional supports to develop
cognitive and analytical skills.
Let us all be God’s hands and feet in this
struggle. And pray that this, His Body, will never again know extreme poverty
and malnutrition...
Abagail Nelson (anelson@er-d.org) is vice
president for programs at Episcopal Relief and Development.
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The Second Goal: Education
Will
you strive for justice and peace among all people?
Improved
education and poverty reduction go hand in hand
Educating
children can create people of vision
By Heewoo Han
You
can see in their eyes that children are filled with wonder. This was
especially true of the children in Honduras whose clear brown eyes were always
wide open, as if to soak in all the vivid colors of their beautiful country.
Some retain the hopeful twinkle throughout their lifetime, but more often,
abject poverty robs them of their luster, and weariness replaces it.
In Honduras, poverty drives many children to
the streets to scavenge for edible garbage, to the sweatshops and the fields
for cheap manual labor, and sells some children for sexual exploitation.
Studies show that education is one of the most effective ways to combat
poverty, and the church must do everything in its power to educate the 113
million children in the developing world who are likely never to set foot in a
school.
The connection between education and poverty
reduction is well documented. Education reduces deprivation and vulnerability;
it helps lift earning potential, expands labor mobility, promotes the health
of parents and children, reduces child mortality, and affords the
disadvantaged a voice in society and the political system. Recent research
shows that education also fosters improvements in the quality of social
institutions and communities. A strategy paper by the World Bank notes that
“nations in which most of the population is literate and all children
complete at least a basic education have higher quality institutions, stronger
democratic processes, and, as a consequence, more equitable developmental
policies.”
A
child’s eyes twinkle because she imagines a world replete with things that
astonish her and a future that is good; but the harsh realities often rob her
of everything, including her imagination. Always having had a world that is
against them, many cannot imagine a better world. Education fights this. At
the least, education gives people the basic knowledge so they will know when
others exploit them; and at its best, it allows people to envision a just
world and their role in building it.
The Anglican Communion has had a long
involvement in education in the developing world; Anglican missionaries built
schools and hospitals everywhere they went. Despite the negative role that
they might have played in the past, these schools are now an integral part of
the education systems of many developing countries. In Kenya, for instance,
the number of religious schools established was so extensive that at Kenya’s
independence in 1963, missionary schools were the main means of public
education, according to a 1996 article in the Journal of Church and State. In
Honduras, the Episcopal Church’s numerous bilingual schools provide
top-quality instruction unavailable through its strike-prone public school
system.
But the church must do more. The church that
proclaims the risen Christ as its center must seek to bring education to
enable people to imagine the world where Christ reigns...
Heewoo Han danhwhan@yahoo.com) is a
third-year seminarian at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and an alumnus of
Young Adult Service Corps work in Honduras.
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The
Fourth Goal: Reduce Child Mortality
Will you
strive for justice and peace among all people?
Keeping
children alive can build foundation of peace
Work on
all Millennium Development Goals affects children
By Kirsten M. Laursen
Close
to 11 million children under the age of five die each year, 4 million in their
first month of life. In poorer countries, one out of 10 children dies before the
age of five; in wealthier countries only one out of 143 dies, according to the
British medical journal The Lancet.
Malnutrition contributes to more than half of all
child mortality, and maternal malnutrition contributes to neonatal mortality.
Conflicts also disproportionately affect a child’s survival. Since 1940, more
than 80% of those killed by armed conflict have been women and children. Given
these rates, 8.7 million children under five will still die in 2015, UNICEF
predicts in its “State of the World’s Children” report.
Many childhood deaths can be prevented through
basic public health interventions: immunizations, hand washing, clean water and
sanitation and improved nutrition. While immunization coverage rates in South
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have improved to 60%, these regions, still lag
behind other regions which average above 80%. These two regions are torn by many
entrenched conflicts, which disrupt services and retard infrastructure
improvements.
Reducing child mortality requires more than
health interventions and is linked to progress made on all of the MDGs. A child’s
survival depends on a healthy birth, a healthy mother, clean water, a family
with some economic security to provide nutritious daily meals and pay for school
fees, a community free from violence, and sustained opportunities for community
members to participate in governance at the local or district level.
Around the world, Episcopal Relief and
Development (ERD), which has always addressed the challenges laid out in the
Millennium Development Goals, works with its partners in the Anglican Communion
to safeguard and protect the lives of children. ERD worked in 30 countries in
2006.
For
example, church hospitals were first responders and continue to support mobile
health units after the Pakistan earthquake. Community mobilization efforts
constructed water and sanitation systems in Honduras. A well and clinic in
Afghanistan serve a community of 20,000. Insecticide-treated bed nets provided
to children and their families, along with treatment and vector control, are
reducing malaria in 16 countries in Africa. Children are being protected from
forced recruitment as child soldiers, in efforts which put church leaders at
personal risk. Trees are planted to protect watersheds and reverse erosion on
hillside farms in the Philippines.
And our churches continue to ensure that the
voices of the marginalized are heard. As important to the services that we
provide is the witness we make to the rights of all children to live in freedom
and dignity.
Each of us can contribute by being conscious of
the resources we each use on a daily basis, sharing with others what we have so
freely been given, and seeking the accountability of our nation’s leadership
to work for peace and security and end conflict. No child can live securely in a
world of war. Helping a child is not a matter of charity, but the foundation
stone of a peaceful and secure world...
Kirsten M. Laursen (mlaursen@er-d.org) is
senior program director at Episcopal Relief and Development.
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The Fifth Goal: Improve Maternal Health
Will you
strive for justice and peace among all people?
Improving
mothers’ health can mean a stronger world for all
Work
in Zambia provides insight into needs, challenges
Helping
the people of the world attain any of the Millennium Development Goals requires
hard work every day. Below you will find some insight into the work of the
church in one African nation. The Anglican Church in Zambia is a member of the
Church of the Province of Central Africa, one of the 38 member provinces of the
Anglican Communion. Episcopal Relief and Development works in partnership with
the Zambian Anglican Council on primary-health and food-security programs, in
HIV/AIDS work, and in its malaria-prevention program.
By Grace Phiri
Zambia has a population of 10 million people. The
maternal mortality rate is 729 deaths per 100,000 live births. Zambia aims to
reduce this rate to 162 deaths per 100,000 live births. (The rate in the United
States in 2000 was 17 deaths for 100,000 live births.)
This is a difficult task requiring concerted
effort, and this is where the Anglican Church in Zambia has focused its
community mission.
The first step was to identify problems related
to pregnancy and child birth and develop interventions. Major problems
contributing to maternal deaths and complications include: inadequate number of
trained traditional birth attendants; harmful cultural practices (e.g. use of
traditional herbs to accelerate labor); lack of knowledge of basic key
information about reproductive health; traditional religious beliefs and
practices are still strong about the use of contraceptives and condoms; average
age at first pregnancy of 15-16 years; high number of deliveries conducted at
home; high incidence of malaria and HIV; poor nutrition for women, along with
heavy workload and inadequate rest; and limited access to health services and
long distances to facilities.
The church undertook a deliberate policy, with
clergy and lay leadership, of social teaching that encourages a holistic
approach that opposes rigid theological approaches in the emerging issues of
health and development. Government policies attempt to ensure the improvement of
life chances of women and girls throughout their life cycle. The policy strongly
calls for partnership; the church has strong links with the government.
Zambia
is a multi-ethnic society with 73 tribes giving it a diversity of cultural
beliefs, customs, values, and practices, most of which affect pregnancy and
childbirth management, contributing to complications, disabilities and death.
Men still dominate decision-making, even about their wives’ health needs. They
sometimes hinder their wives from participating in reproductive health
activities. The church has a program aimed at forming male motivation groups
whose aim is to sensitize communities on safe motherhood.
The church also offers a strong HIV/AIDS program
aimed at preventing mother-to-child transmission; a “Roll Back Malaria”
effort (malaria in Zambia contributes to 20% of all maternal deaths); a
food-security program (malnutrition contributes to maternal death); and
community capacity building to increase the number of trained traditional birth
attendants...
Grace Phiri (gmazala@yahoo.co.uk) is national
health adviser for the Anglican Church in Zambia.
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The Sixth Goal: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and
Other Diseases
Will
you strive for justice and peace among all people?
Preventing
disease can make global village more secure
Diseases
are a root cause of extreme poverty
By
Brian J Grieves
In
the struggle to address extreme poverty in the developing world, diseases are a
root cause of the problem. More than 15,000 people die each day because of AIDS,
tuberculosis, or malaria—all preventable diseases. Eight thousand die from
AIDS alone.
The key word that stands out for me is “preventable.”
That means we are not helpless in the face of AIDS and other diseases, but
rather have it in our capacity to control and eventually eradicate them. I
remember how, in past decades, smallpox was a killer of millions and devastated
so many communities around the world. A member of my parish in Honolulu in the
early 1970s worked on the global smallpox eradication project. One weekend he
had just returned from another international tour of smallpox sites and told us
the incredible news that the last cases of smallpox had been isolated to a
single area and the disease had finally been defeated. I had him stand up during
the liturgy to share this good news. Everyone was so proud and overjoyed that
the congregation burst into applause.
The resources and strategies for preventing HIV
and treating AIDS are likewise within our capacity to achieve. Much of the news
and statistics about AIDS is so discouraging, but the most painful part is that
governments with the resources to combat the disease, despite increased support,
have come up short 
of
what is needed. But those of us in the pews are not powerless to affect our
government’s policy. We have the right to advocate with our elected leaders to
reorganize our nation’s priorities and to put more of our resources into
development of communities worldwide, including programs that will overcome
preventable diseases.
From March 7-14, 2007, in Boksburg, South Africa,
400 leaders from around the Anglican Communion will meet to address global
poverty and AIDS through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals. The
conference will develop strategies for a Communion-wide response to the AIDS
pandemic. The church is uniquely placed, through its worldwide network, to be an
agent of healing and care. This event stands as a beacon of hope to an
often-depressed world.
The Episcopal Church provides its members with
ways to put their faith into action by being advocates for the Millennium
Development Goals. Joining the ONE Episcopalian campaign will join your voice to
thousands of others in the church to be advocates for a dynamic global effort
that will combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Perhaps your congregation, too,
will stand up in a burst of enthusiastic applause one day when someone announces
that these modern-day killers no longer threaten our global village...
The Rev. Canon Brian J Grieves (bgrieves@episcopalchurch.org)
is the director of peace and justice ministries at the Episcopal Church Center.
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The Seventh Goal:
Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Will
you strive for justice and peace among all people?
Sustaining
our environment can help us attain all MDGs
Our
individual and corporate decisions make the difference
By Phina Borgeson
How
often in our congregations have we decided that beginning environmental ministry
will just have to wait until we get our new food pantry on a solid footing? How
often have we been caught up in the health concerns of members and forgotten
about the health of our planet? How often have we chosen short-term savings over
an investment that would spare both dollars and environmental damage in the long
run?
Taking a deeper look, though, we see a different
picture.
Increasing asthma rates are an environmental
health problem. Climate change and wetland degradation contribute to harsher and
more damaging storms, hitting the poor hardest. Soil degradation, fossil fuel
depletion, and tropical forest destruction are a few of the hidden costs of
cheap food.
Taking a broader global look, we can see that
there will be no lasting attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
without considering environmental sustainability.
Improved health for the world’s poor depends on
clean, reliable water supplies and better sanitation.
Environmental pollution impacts the health of
children, who are still growing, much more than the health of adults. In many
countries women care for the land, plants, and animals which feed their
families.
Empowering women and stewarding resources go hand
in hand.
Climate change will impact agriculture around the
globe, speeding up desertification in some areas.
Global solutions for development depend on
learning or recovering local knowledge about the natural world.
Jonathan
Lash of the World Resources Institute says that “environmental income is a
stepping stone on the path out of poverty.” The poor need practices that use
and steward natural resources, not rigid conservation approaches. The command
“to till and to keep” in chapter two of Genesis, perhaps better translated
as “to serve and protect,” reminds us of our right relationship with the
rest of creation, one of sensitive engagement.
We contribute to the achievement of MDG #7
through giving, advocacy and lifestyle choices. We make sure that our charitable
dollars go to organizations, such as Episcopal Relief and Development, which
value sustainable solutions to food security as much as food aid. We advocate
for U.S. trade and agriculture policies that respect the contexts, needs and
resources of other countries, rather than increasing their dependency on us for
aid and markets. We make decisions about the consumption patterns of our
households, our congregations, and our work places— particularly choices about
fossil fuel use and food and drink purchases. When we do these things, we make
progress toward global environmental sustainability...
The Rev. Josephine Borgeson (phinaborgeson@gmail.com)
is a deacon and member of the Episcopal Committee on Science, Technology and
Faith from the Diocese of Northern California.
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The Eighth Goal: A Global
Partnership for Development
Will
you strive for justice and peace among all people?
Joining
together as faith communities can make the difference
Faith
communities can provide networks needed for work, evaluation
By
Njongonkulu Ndungane
If
we are serious about delivering on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), then
everyone involved — governments, business and civil society, rich and poor
alike — must work together in partnership. We must be “joined up” in our
policies and in our actions. It is no good if the advances of aid and
development are wiped out, and worse, by debt repayments, or unfavorable trading
conditions, or the consequences of global warming.
Churches and other faith-based organizations can
play a leading and significant role within civil society. It was churches who
led the Jubilee 2000 initiative — putting pressure on donor governments and
international financial institutions to tackle the unbearable, and
unjustifiable, levels of debt with which too many of the developing countries
were burdened. There is still more to be done, but we are at least headed in the
right direction. In similar ways, churches have been key players in the ONE
Campaign (www.ONE.org), the Global Campaign Against Poverty (www.whiteband.org)
and other initiatives. All these show that, when voters lobby in large numbers,
politicians are forced to listen!
The Micah Challenge is particularly aimed at
harnessing the people power of the churches in the developed world specifically
in support of the Millennium Development Goals. I commend it to you, and more
details are available at www.micahchallenge.us.
Churches
in the developing world can also make a difference through forming partnerships.
In sub-Saharan Africa more than 95% of the population has some religious
affiliation, with Christianity the greatest. Faith communities can reach almost
everyone within the space of a week or two. There are three particular ways in
which we make a difference.
The first is through our activities within local
communities. We often have networks where governments do not reach. In many
African countries, faith groups provide an average of 40% of all health care.
Our potential role as partners in development has only recently been recognized.
Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) has many partnerships with churches and
faith networks.
Second, the real test of the Millennium
Development Goals is whether they make a tangible and sustainable difference to
the lives of the very poorest. Faith communities, to which many of these people
belong, are often best placed to give accurate feedback on what is actually
being achieved.
The third area in which faith communities within
the developing world can use their networks is to help our civil society bring a
coordinated and focused voice to the development debate, both in holding their
own governments to account, and in calling on donors to meet their commitments
swiftly, efficiently and effectively. African Monitor is an initiative I
launched earlier this year, which is aimed precisely at these last two aspects.
You can find out more at www.africanmonitor.org...
The Most Rev. H.W. Njongonkulu Ndungane (archbish@bishopscourt-cpsa.org.za)
is the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and Primate of the Church
of the Province of Southern Africa.
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Last in a 10-part series
Will
you strive for justice and peace among all people?
Millennium
Development Goals are ‘deed-base evangelism’
Your
work embodies Gospel’s good news
By Katharine Jefferts Schori
Some
Episcopalians understand the mission of the church as solely focused on
evangelism; others would see outreach work as primary. Our baptismal covenant
addresses both, and the justice and peace work, framed by the Millennium
Development Goals, which the Episcopal Church has adopted as its first mission
priority is the kind of deed-based evangelism that shows the world the good news
of God’s love through the actions of Christians.
The Millennium Development Goals seek to end the
deep poverty that limits human flourishing. Achieving them would provide
concrete examples of the abundant life Jesus insists is the reason he came among
us — “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly” (John
10:10).
This Church has said that our larger vision will
be framed and shaped in the coming years by the vision of shalom embedded in the
Millennium Development Goals — a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are
healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have
access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the
promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision
of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate
commitment of each and every one of us.
During the past nine Sundays, you have had a
chance to learn about each of the MDGs and the mission work being done by
Episcopalians and Anglicans all over the world toward their attainment. You can
join them. You can become ONE Episcopalian and add your voice to those who are
calling on governments to do more to fight poverty and disease. You can stand
with those governments in their work.
You
can give one percent of your income and your congregation’s income to programs
that fight poverty by fighting disease and opening access to education to all
God’s children. You can find ways to join that work yourself. Have you gone on
a mission trip? Have you sat with a mother whose children are sick? Can you help
a husband and wife support their family? How will your choices affect the
environment?
Our baptismal vows say that we will strive for
justice and peace among all people, respect the dignity of every human being,
and seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Helping the world achieve the MDGs is a concrete way we can live into those
promises.
We cannot speak much in the way of good news to
people who are starving or dying of preventable disease. We must begin by doing
good news with those who are most vulnerable. In and through both, God is
glorified, and all creation can begin to experience the shalom for which we were
created...
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori (pboffice@episcopalchurch.org)
is Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church.
Welcome to Christ Church, Middletown
Throughout
the Bible there are stories of women whose courageous choices and actions made
possible a new world for themselves and others. There is the woman who argued
that “even the dogs get to eat the crumbs under the table” as she begged
for food for her children. There is the widow who gave all she had to the
temple treasury, putting the wealthy to shame. There is the widow whose
hospitality in feeding the prophet Elijah was rewarded with a jug of oil and
jar of meal that were never empty. There was the woman who had the audacity to
anoint Jesus’ feet with oil and wipe them with her hair. There was Mary
Magdalene, first witness to the resurrection, who proclaimed the Good News
despite disbelieving disciples, and Mary, who said yes to Jesus being born
within her. 
Empowering
women to choose life in today’s culture is to empower each of us to act to
transform a world ravaged by war, hunger, and disease. Promoting gender
equality — seeking ways for women and men to have equal
opportunities and equal roles in decision making in church and society — is
to promote human equality in a world healed and reconciled to the heart of
God. 