Here are some simple and fun ways to spend time together this Christmas. They’re also great ways to remember how you help touch the lives of others every day of the year, including during this festive season.
Greet People the CLWR way
Tired of always using “Merry Christmas” as a greeting? Why not greet your friends and holiday guests with something a bit more unusual? The languages below are used in countries where we work.
Spanish (spoken in Bolivia and Peru): “Feliz Navidad”
Portuguese (spoken in Mozambique): “Feliz Natal”
Ethiopian: “Melkam Y Gena Amet Beal Yihunelatchew”
India (Hindi): “Shubh Dipavali”
Make a We Care Christmas Kit
Have you made a We Care kit before? If not, this is a great time to start! A We Care kit is a standardized bundle of goods that is delivered to people in need overseas. You can order beautiful and functional We Care cloth bags (made using fair trade principles in India) from CLWR to package your kit. We accept these year-round, and during Christmas we invite you to attach a toy to the outside of your kit as a special gift to a child. For kit building instructions, visit www.clwr.org/WeCare.
Make a CLWR Advent wreath
This is an Advent wreath with a twist! Using items from around your home, you can build a wreath that ties together all the different types of good work you help CLWR accomplish. Here’s what you’ll need to build and decorate your wreath and what each item symbolizes:
A cardboard base (cut into a ring): symbolizes the boxes of alternative trade products that CLWR’s Four Corners imports, which support fair wages and worker rights.
Glue: symbolizes the bond that God makes with us and the binding love that is the source of our responsibility towards our brothers and sisters throughout the world.
Pine boughs: symbolize CLWR reforestation and soil and water conservation projects.
Twine (to secure boughs): symbolizes the bales of quilts and kits shipped overseas to those in need.
Blue ribbons: symbolize irrigation schemes and clean water programs
Red ribbons: symbolize HIV and AIDS awareness/prevention programs
Beeswax candles: symbolize entrepreneurial training programs like beekeeping.
Nuts and coffee beans: symbolize sustainable agriculture.
Chalk or pencil stubs: symbolize education, especially for girls and adults.
Bandages: symbolize health education and access to services.
Baking flour (to dust the wreath like snow): symbolizes the food-for-work programs supported through Canadian Foodgrains Bank that feed people while they work on community projects.
Make snow angels
Make them in the snow, on the cookie tray or out of construction paper! Be sure to do this with some friends or family, and talk about your favourite “angel story” in the Bible. What was the angel’s message? How could that message relate to people (refugees, the hungry, the poor or the abused) today?
Order Four Corners cocoa, tea, coffee and chocolate
Most of us love our hot beverage and a piece of chocolate during the Christmas season. Why not make your purchases count towards something good? By purchasing through CLWR’s Four Corners, you are supporting farmers and producers who are getting a fair value for their crop, and who are practicing sustainable agricultural practices.
Remember your past
Many people’s current situations are similar to your own family’s past. As Canadians, we have a common background as immigrants and refugees. There have been times of abundance but also times of poverty and hunger. When your family gets together this Christmas, why not reminisce about your heritage and about how it connects you to the struggles many people face today?
Write a prayer
Get together with your children or your Sunday school class and write a prayer together that remembers the different people of the world. Some things to pray for would be: food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless (refugees/disaster victims), medicine for the sick, income for the poor/unemployed, a hug for the lonely and hurt, school for the unschooled, peace and justice.
In October, a group led by CLWR travelled to various African countries to learn more about relief and development work. Download our print edition of Partnership for more stories and images.
By Patricia Jackson, Global Encounter participant
It has only been a short time since returning from the Global Encounter—Africa 2007 tour to Uganda and I am still in the process of deciphering just what impact the experience has had on me. It was an incredible opportunity to experience the lives of others in a divergent culture, and upon meeting the people of Uganda and hearing their stories, I felt an immediate human connection to their circumstance.
Northern Ugandan villages have been under siege by two forces. The first is a rebel militia called the Karamajong who are in constant standoffs with the Ugandan army; the second is the recent flooding since mid-July. The villagers have been forced from their homes only to find themselves in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps. Other villages, if not directly affected by the Karamajong, are also suffering the loss of clean water and sanitation as the flood waters have destroyed latrines and contaminated the boreholes that provided them with clean water.
I was reminded of the beautiful passage in Psalm 27:13-14.… “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (NRSV)
“I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living…” To me, God is saying that good and positive things can happen for the Ugandan people who have had so much taken away. But it is up to us, the ones who have enough to give.
My experience has only re-confirmed my perception that what happens in one part of the world ultimately reflects on what happens on another. The decisions we make every day as individuals will directly affect someone else in the world. As consumers, we have the opportunity to find out how our purchases will have effects elsewhere. As contributors, we need to be accountable with the money we collect for those whose circumstance puts them at risk for disease and suffering and perhaps even death.
I saw a people who were both vulnerable and strong at the same time. The Ugandan folk, who are predominantly Christian, prayed for us… we who have so much were given the ultimate gift of prayer by a people who were so faithful, yet had so little. They seemed to know what it meant to “wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
In October, a group led by CLWR traveled to various African countries to learn more about relief and development work. Download our print edition of Partnership for more stories and images.
By Janet Morley, Global Encounter participant
Environmental Protection
When Benjamin returned from Uganda to Rwanda after the genocide, he and his people settled in an area with plenty of trees and few people. This was important, because it meant there would be access to firewood and material to construct shelters. But at the time he didn’t understand how cutting down the trees might lead to soil erosion and affect agriculture.
Through the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), he was trained in environmental protection. He and his people learned that Rwanda’s steep mountainous terrain and torrential rains combine to result in soil erosion when trees are cut and not replaced. The LWF trained 700 people on reforestation and provided seedlings which allowed the establishment of tree nurseries. Last year 350,000 seedlings of 10 varieties were planted throughout Benjamin’s province.
The LWF also introduced economy stoves. Made from local clay, these stoves retain the heat from the morning cooking throughout the day and use about one third of the firewood required in a regular cooking stove. Every week a few more homes get one of these improved stoves.
Food Security
Beatrice is a “contact farmer” who received training in modern agriculture and livestock techniques. She was then given a cow, which provides milk for her family and manure for her small banana plantation. She even expects to have surplus milk for sale. The calf is given away to another family, who will do the same when their cow has a calf, and so the chain continues until every family in the village has a cow. The key point that Beatrice and other contact farmers have learned, and then pass on to their neighbours, is how to care for the dairy cow in a shed, rather than the traditional method of allowing longhorn cattle to graze in the fields. Zero-grazing is less labour-intensive, other crops in the fields are not destroyed by the grazing cattle, plus the cow in the shed produces significantly more milk.
Water Access
Many residents in some of the driest areas of Rwanda are forced to walk up to seven kilometres a day in search of water. It’s often the children who have to fetch it before or after school, carrying the heavy jerry cans long distances. The LWF is constructing gravity water systems using local materials and local people’s labour. The water is brought to huge collection-point tanks, spaced one kilometre apart, along the roads where people live. This drastically reduces the amount of time needed to fetch water, allowing children more time for studying and playing, and women more time to grow vegetables and make baskets.
Photo: Janet Morley
