"Millennium Development Goal #3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women" -- by John G. Miers

"There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Galatians 3:28

All of you are one in Christ Jesus.
All of us are one in Christ Jesus.
All of us are one.

When I read this Bible verse, I naturally progressed as noted in these three lines. “All of us are one.” How easy it is to say it; how difficult it is to live it!

As I have read about the history of the world, I am always amazed as to how far we have all come – but how far we have to go. When our Diocese processed the MDG banners in our last Convention, I carried the banner for Goal #3 (photo). Some people kidded me about this, but I always noted that I was the only man in our family (I have four daughters) and I am always stunned and thankful how far they have all come. I then told people that I want to do what I can to ensure that ALL women can make the same progress that my family has, and to do it faster!

What kinds of progress? Education. Job choice. Marriage. Voting. Freedom of choice. Where to live. How to live. Medical Care. Religion. Family. Lots more.

These are things that many of our women enjoy and even may take for granted. Many are told by grandmothers that “they couldn’t do it” (whatever that was). It is fascinating and challenging than women in other countries sometimes exist where our women were a generation or two ago. We have seen how much better things are for OUR women. It behooves us to ensure that these freedoms and life styles are transmitted to all women, everywhere. Some women, in other countries, are even further along than we are.

We don’t want other women to struggle to earn these freedoms and equalities like our women had to. It is incumbent on us to do all that we can to allow all women, everywhere, to be “one in Christ Jesus.” Some may not be Christian, but they are still one.

Think of the world as embarking on a continual progression of all this progress. Many are ahead, and some are behind. Let those who are ahead reach back and pull others up to be with them. Let us all walk together. All will progress, and all will keep walking forward. Together.

John Miers is from Bethesda, Maryland, where he was employed at the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 2005.  He serves on the board of St. Luke’s House, a halfway house for persons recovering from mental illness and also  serves as Jubilee Officer for the Diocese of Washington.  He is a member of  National Commission on Science, Technology and Faith for the Episcopal Church and is active in his local church, where he is in the choir, worship committee, pastoral care committee, and the prayer team, and he also visits patients in a local hospital on behalf of the Chaplain.  

"Dean Martha heralds new day for women in Sudan" -- by the Rev. Lauren Stanley

RENK, Sudan – We made history in Sudan the other day, installing the Very Rev. Martha Deng Nhial as the first dean of the Cathedral of St. Matthew, Diocese of Renk, Episcopal Church of Sudan.

But being the first was not how the real history was made.

No, the real history was making a woman priest dean of a cathedral in Sudan. Dean Martha is the first to hold that office, just eight years after the Episcopal Church of Sudan decided to begin ordaining women as deacons and priest, just five years after Dean Martha was ordained a deacon, and only three years after she was ordained a priest.

Dean Martha is also one of the first African women to be dean of an African cathedral in the history of Christianity.

We’re feeling pretty good about ourselves right now. And not just about the history-making. We are looking around and seeing women being educated and starting businesses and taking leadership positions all over the country. In the Diocese of Renk, our schools are filled with girls, who make up close to 50 percent of the school population in some cases. Girls are taking and passing their Sudan Junior Certificates at the end of eighth grade, and taking and passing their Sudan Certificates at the end of senior secondary school. They are becoming teachers and in some cases, head teachers. They are learning to speak, read and write English and Arabic and their tribal languages, many of them from the Mothers’ Union, a powerful force in Sudan.

Women may not yet rule in Sudan, but some days, it sure seems that way.

A week after Dean Martha was installed, special prayers were offered at her home. Fifty women gathered to praise her, to praise the Church, and to thank God and the Church for lifting her up, and for her ability to lift all of us up in our lives.

Even before she became dean, Martha was a force to be reckoned with in Renk. She was a nurse, as well as a member and then leader of the Mothers Union here. When she walked through town, with a purposeful stride, everyone could see that she was a woman of strength. (I once was compared to her because of the speed with which I walk, as well as my long stride. It was quite the compliment.) When Martha spoke, everyone listened, because they knew she was a woman of faith. When she became one of the first women priests ordained in Sudan, all applauded her for her courage.

Culturally, Sudan is still a land where women are expected to do certain kinds of work, none of which involve leadership. In the countryside, it is still not unusual to see the boys being educated while the girls are kept at home. In Renk, boys can pretty much roam the streets at will; girls, on the other hand, are kept under tighter supervision. (All of my young playmates, who come to hang out with me, play games, teach me Arabic, learn English from me and just keep me company, are boys. The girls are not allowed by their families to come play with me.)

So to see Dean Martha being installed – to see her daughters weep at her service – to hear the women in town sing her praises and encourage her to greater heights for herself and beg her to lead them to greater heights – was awe-inspiring.

Forget the history.

This was about women being shown that they, too, can lead, they, too, have something great to offer, they, too, deserve to be honored.

The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church serving in the Diocese of Renk, Sudan. She is a lecturer at the Renk Theological College, teaching Theology, Liturgy and English, and serves as chaplain for the students.

Photo: The Very Rev. Martha Deng Nhial, the new Dean of St. Matthew Cathedral, Diocese of Renk, Episcopal Church of Sudan, addressed the congregation after being installed on 17 August 2008 in Renk, Sudan. (Photo by Moses Anuur Ayom.)

"Beijing Circles" -- by Lallie Lloyd

The EGR blog in recent days resounds with the voices of people from around the world talking about the MDGs and ending extreme poverty. On July 24 we heard from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was Tony Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and helped make the MDGs a top priority of the 2005 Gleneagles G8 meeting. Mr. Brown stood before a gathering of interfaith leaders hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and thanked people of faith for holding political leaders accountable for their promises to end extreme poverty.

We heard the voice of Martin McCann, who told the story of his Tanzanian namesake, seven-month old Martin Mazengo, who died from malaria. And how that one loss touched so many in their village – a loss that is felt 4 million times a day as children die from malaria, which is both preventable and treatable.

We heard the voice of Fanta Lingani from Burkina Faso, who only eats after the children and her husband are fed, if there is any food left now that food is so expensive.

How do we here in the US raise our voices and make a difference?

On September 26 and 27 Episcopal Divinity School will host a conference on “Beijing Circles,” a process for building community and encouraging women to find their voices, to speak and to act for the change they want in the world.

Beijing Circles are a circle process so-named because their content comes from a 1995 Beijing conference when 189 nations of the world called for changes in girls’ and women’s status, access and support. The circle process reminds us that the challenges facing women around the world are the same as those faced by women in our own communities and that when we do our work, as individuals and neighbors as well as citizens, we build relationships and community with those who may differ from us, and we make the oneness of the body of Christ alive and real.

The Beijing Circle process is intimately related to all the MDGs and especially to the gender-related ones (#2 Universal primary education; #3 Promote gender equality and empower women; #5 Improve maternal health). And that 1995 conference was an important foundation for the work of the 2000 Millennium Summit that spawned the MDGs.

It turns out that when we listen to women around the world, they want food for their children, and nets to protect the children from malaria. They want roads and clinics and schools. They want the fighting to stop and the men to stay home.

And when women gather in circles here at home, we can find our longing and recognize our passion and know that our desire to heal the suffering of the world is a God-given grace that will not overwhelm us if we speak it to others, ground it in prayer and reflection and release it through action and expression.

So come to the Beijing Conference in September if you can. And tell your circles of friends and colleagues. And learn about Beijing Circles. Material and information is available through the Office of Women’s Ministries at the Episcopal Church and through a website founded by Eleanor Ellsworth and Janie Davis (www.beijingcircle.org).

"Rwanda's Women are Leading the Way" -- by Cindy McCain

Cindy McCain wrote this op-ed for yesterday's edition of the Wall Street Journal about her travels in Rwanda and the living example she found of the critical nature of women's empowerment.

I have recently returned from Rwanda. I was last there in 1994, at the height of the genocide that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 Rwandans. The memories of what I saw haunt me still.

I wasn't sure what to expect all these years later, but I found a country that has found in its deep scars the will to move on and rebuild a civil society. And the renaissance is being led by women.

Women are at the forefront of the physical, emotional and spiritual healing that is moving Rwandan society forward. One of them, from eastern Rwanda, told me her story -- a violent, tragic and heartbreaking testimony of courage. She spoke of surviving multiple gang rapes, running at night in fear of losing her life, going days without food or water and witnessing the death of her entire family -- one person at a time, before her eyes.

The injuries she sustained left her unable to bear children. Illness, isolation and an utter lack of hope left her in abject despair.

And yet the day I met her, she wasn't consumed by hatred or resentment. She sat, talking with me and a few others, beside a man who had killed people guilty of nothing more than seeking shelter in a church. She forgave him. She forgave the perpetrators of her tragedy, and she explained her story with hope that such cruelty would never be repeated.

It is a humbling experience to be in the presence of those who have such a capacity for forgiveness and care. It is also instructive. If wealthy nations want their assistance programs to be effective, they should look to the women who form the backbone of every society. With some education, training, basic rights and empowerment, women will transform a society -- and the world.

Women today make up a disproportionate percentage of the Rwandan population. In the aftermath of the genocide, they had to head households bereft of fathers. They had to take over farms, and take jobs previously done by men. But there were opportunities, too: Today, 41% of Rwandan businesses are owned by women.

I saw their impact first hand at a coffee project in the city of Nyandungu. All the washing and coffee-bean selection is done by hand, by women there. Women to Women International, a remarkably active and innovative nongovernmental organization, has already helped over 15,000 Rwandan women through a year-long program of direct aid, job-skills training and education.

The organization is launching a project to train 3,000 women in organic agriculture, and is reaching out to females across the country. The women who instruct their fellow war survivors in economic development are an inspiration to those who cherish the essential benevolence of humanity.

But that is just the beginning. A new constitution ratified in 2003 required that women occupy at least 30% of the seats in parliament. (In our House and Senate only about 17% of the seats are filled by women.) Some wondered at the time whether it was feasible to meet this target. Now, nearly half of parliament and a third of the president's cabinet posts are held by women. Rwanda today has the world's highest percentage of female legislators.

Rwanda has a dark past but a bright future. It has a long way to go -- the country remains one of the world's poorest, and the social reverberations of the genocide are evident everywhere. Yet in the midst of tragedy, the women are building something genuinely new. Perhaps it is fitting that a nation so wracked by death could give birth to a vibrant new age. I know that one thing is clear: Through their bold and courageous actions, these women should inspire not only their fellow Africans, but all individuals -- men and women -- across the globe.

Mrs. McCain, the wife of Sen. John McCain and mother of four, founded the American Voluntary Medical Team, which helps bring doctors to war-torn countries.

"Love the whole world, one person at a time" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens.

I have been thinking about what it means to love the world. A group of seven women from the Magdalene Community just returned home safe and sound from Rwanda. It was amazing, and we thankful to be with our families again. The women we met fell in love with the message and community of Magdalene. We read letters the women from Nashville sent and in response, the women who are part of the sisters of Rwanda started sharing their experiences of surviving incest, violence, addiction and prostitution. Their staff said that they had never heard the women talk so openly. In gratitude and solidarity with the women of Magdalene, the sisters of Rwanda wrote letters and sent video messages to us. The stories are hauntingly similar.

Rwanda is full of people walking around with ghosts, while new life is strapped to the backs of women. Hearty crops are blooming next to people so poor they can't feed their children. It was so much to take in sometimes my legs would shake or my head would throb. Our small group carried you all with us the whole time. It was the right trip and we all think there are many more villages of women who want us to be with them. We found the cousins to the thistles. One of the many lessons I learned in Rwanda was that rape and love are universal actions. Neither get lost in translation and our job is to love the whole world, one person at a time.

Seeing women in traditional African dress with goggles and rubber gloves preparing to make soap is awesome. They were so excited when we started the second morning, they had already started cleaning the equipment. We went to villages where women waited all day to see us. They were stunning, poised, and almost whispered what they needed to tell us about their lives and their need for hope and money to keep going. We went to the market and purchased shovels, seeds, and sewing machines in response to some of their requests. Sometimes its just a fishing pole people need. They already know how to fish. The faith we saw was inspiring and a little intimidating. The singing and dancing were beautiful. The landscape is hilly with mists that come in like sweet blankets. It is strange to think of a million people dying on that land. It is hard to love the world, but if we can't, nothing else means anything to me.

"Women join demining charge in south Sudan" -- by Skye Wheeler, Reuters

This excellent article from Reuters and the International Herald Tribune details just one aspect of everyday life in Southern Sudan -- women ... sometimes pregnant women ... working to remove mines from roads. As I traveled in southern Sudan you could see the places where mines had been removed from the road ... and then occasionally you would see a large crater (sometimes accompanied by the charred wreckage of a vehicle off the side of the road) near it.

Skye Wheeler of Reuters does a beautiful job reporting this horrific situation. For more excellent reporting on Africa, be sure and visit africa.reuters.com regularly.

MILE 38, Sudan: Seven months pregnant Opayi Mary stands half a metre away from a mine made expressly to blow anything over 3 kg to pieces. For her, it's just part of a day's work.

Mary leads an all-female team of deminers working for Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) in one of south Sudan's most dangerous areas: the civil war battlefield Mile 38.

The location, 38 miles (61 km) from the southern capital Juba, was on the frontline in a decades-long conflict between mainly Christian and animist southern rebels and the Islamist government in Khartoum.

The war, fought over ideology and ethnicity and fuelled by oil, killed 2 million people and displaced 4 million before a peace deal was signed in 2005.

Now, south Sudan's semi-autonomous government, which will hold a referendum on secession in 2011, is trying to rebuild a region where even the most basic infrastructure is lacking.

Clearing the thousands of mines is an important part of efforts to rebuild the devastated region, where mined roads have made travel and transport of goods difficult.

"I was so afraid of my first one," Mary admits. Two years later she is now in charge of her group's safety and for exploding the mines taken from this empty scrubland.

"Now I have taken more than 20. I can even hold them with my hand," Mary grins. She is short and seems all burgeoning bump but walks fast between cordoned off areas.

Under Mary's watch, Joanne Jenty slides a prong into a marked-out area in front of her that she has already wetted. In the hot silence of the bush and on her hands and knees, she is feeling for the side of a mine that she will then delicately unearth.

People used to live along this major trade route but have been slow to return since the war ended, deterred by a lack of infrastructure, worries of a return to fighting and the lines of hidden explosives buried just inches under the earth's surface.

The UN Mine Action Office, which coordinates demining projects run by dozens of groups, says more than 2,000 people have been killed or injured by mines since the end of the war. The cost for farmers and communities is incalculable, it says.

STILL A STRUGGLE

With a new administration and funds of between $1.5 - $1.7 billion a year from the region's share of oil revenues, many southerners were expecting dramatic peace dividends for communities long alienated from basic services by war.

They have been disappointed. The daily struggle for survival has not changed for most rural populations and returning refugees put more pressure on scant resources. A government study showed around 90 percent see corruption as a major problem.

And the peace is still shaky.

In December and January, Misseriya tribesmen fought southern soldiers in the Abyei area, an oil-rich region straddling northern and southern Sudan. The distribution of oil revenues and border demarcation remain contentious issues.

But Mary, who fled the war to neighbouring Uganda, believes passionately that peace will hold.

"My work is like a soldier," she explained.

"When we are in training we learn: your first mistake is your last," she said as she showed her simple bush tent that contained a fancy handbag and a bottle of nail polish.

So far, Mary's team and another NPA team have removed 205 antipersonnel mines and 96 anti-tank mines from around the main road that links neighbouring Uganda to Juba, the capital of a vast and wild region that still has no large commercial farming or factories.

For Mary, who feels her baby move as she works, the job just has to be done, inch by gruelling inch in prickling grass.

"We have to work hard to develop our country, even if it is hard," she said. "We have to clear. For my children and for others."

Mary initially wanted to be a doctor but could not afford the training. But her pragmatic mind has adapted well to clearing contaminated earth.

Read the rest of the story here.

(Writing by Skye Wheeler; Editing by Alastair Sharp)

"Growing up too fast in Northern Uganda" - by Erin Bernstein

I have seen more children during my two weeks here in Gulu, northern Uganda than anywhere else in my entire life. Interestingly, though, I could say just the opposite: I have seen very few children since I arrived in the north.

How is this possible? Since the civil war began in 1986 and hostilities ended in 2006, children and teenagers in northern Uganda are just now learning what peace means, and for many of them, life in squalid internally displaced persons camps is all they know.

They grew up too quickly—the girls, especially. They had no choice. Rarely do I find a young woman without a baby on her back, and rarely do I find a girl my age or younger who will talk to me without looking away in discomfort. I have noticed that girls and women are more reserved than men in this culture, but the timidity in these young women is more evident than in the ones I met in Kampala and areas in southern Uganda.

Trauma, I have learned, is the contributing factor to this unusual behavior in children, causing several local education organizations to move their main focus from supporting high academic achievers to intertwining psycho-social support into the curriculum. Due to staff shortages, however, they have to train teachers in this field. Teachers become the trauma counselors, but they are teachers first, and above all that, they have their own trauma to conquer before they can help others.

Poverty presents another challenge. Availability of teachers is running low because funds to pay them are running low. Fewer teachers are willing to work for the current salary, which means that schools have more students than they would normally have per teacher. Quality of education thus decreases, making northern Ugandan schools even less nationally competitive than they already are.

Poverty in the north also affects the young people who want to attend school but cannot afford it. Last week, I met a boy who could not go to school because he did not have a uniform; it cost four dollars. I understand that schools have their rules and regulations, but I couldn’t believe that they would reject a child—an orphan living with his siblings in an IDP camp—wanting to learn because he didn’t own a uniform. The north is trying to rebuild itself. Recovering from over 20 years of war will take just as long, if not more. Why, then, deny the future generation of northern Uganda the chance to receive an education?

Even some families prevent their children from going to school. Many poor families force their daughters into early marriage so that her dowry will bring wealth to the family. These young girls do not typically return to school after marriage because their responsibility is now to their husbands and children, but what about the ones who do? They return, perhaps with their babies in the classroom, and present the message that it is okay to leave school to get married. A girl with children, though, cannot progress academically. Family is the top priority.

Whether because of trauma or poverty, children in the north are already marginalized and are at risk of permanent inferiority to their countrymen. A traumatized person, spending more time battling emotional issues than engaging in her studies, is less likely to perform well. A child who does not perform well is less likely to receive scholarship funding. A child who is neglected as a high achiever is less likely to maintain confidence, and a child who lacks self-esteem is less likely to stay in school.

Those who do not complete their education, though, are doomed to poor and mediocre jobs, widening the economic gap between the north and the rest of the country. Trauma, war-induced poverty, and education go hand-in-hand now. Schools are places for acquiring knowledge, but now they must serve an additional purpose. They must become safe environments for addressing mental health issues and sorting out the memories that run amok in people’s minds. They must encourage people to talk, and they must facilitate healing.

Erin Bernstein is a junior at the University of Tennessee, designing a major in the comparison of post-conflict education in Northern Uganda and education in inner-city Knoxville. Her passion for serving people has brought her to Hungary, Romania, and South Africa through the Rotary Club of Knoxville and to Botswana, Uganda, and back to South Africa through the Knoxville Jazz for Justice Project, which seeks to music as healing in war-torn Northern Uganda. She is currently in the middle of a two-month stay in Uganda for an internship at the Ugandan Parliament and to work on an art therapy project with young women in the north. Read more from Erin at her ongoing blog of her trip: Uganda 2008.

"Using quiet diplomacy to reshape women's lives" - from the Globe and Mail

This is a great story of "best practices" in making the Millennium Development Goals happen. The two things that make this program unique are two of the most important ingredients -- empowering women and local leadership.

by STEPHANIE NOLEN

From Friday's Globe and Mail

BANDIAGARA, MALI — It started with soap and some rough bolts of cotton. Back in 1999, Aïguèrè Tembely and a few other women in this town on Mali's famed Bandiagara escarpment started a simple aid project. They had the rare advantage of education, in a country where 85 per cent of women cannot read or write, and they wanted to do something for their sisters in the villages of this culturally rich but economically bleak terrain where Mali's Dogon people live.

So they started teaching women to make soap and dye cotton and a few other skills meant to earn them a bit of extra money. Which was all well and good, except pretty quickly, the village women had a question.

"They asked us, 'Why is it that when you women come here on your scooter, you are never pregnant, and you never have a baby on your back?' " recalled Ms. Tembely, who is known universally here as Fifi. "And we said, because of family planning, of course. And the women said, 'What's that?' And we said, 'Ah non!' They knew nothing about it. And we knew we would have to do something."

They were fast getting the sense that the ability to plan pregnancies would do more for village women than any soap-making project. But Ms. Tembely's expertise is in soil erosion and none of the other women were qualified to teach family planning either.

So they marched down to the local clinic and explained their predicament to the doctor. Soon they were versed in the intricacies of everything from diaphragm use to assessing a woman's fitness to take the contraceptive pill. But they couldn't just start doling out diaphragms, mais non, Ms. Tembely said. Men rule Dogon society, and decisions on pregnancy are not made by women.

"So we went first to the men, and we said, this is family planning. Why don't you use it? The men said it was forbidden in religion - no, we said, it's godly for people to be healthy and in order for women to be healthy, they must space their children."

With a small, shrewd smile, she added, "And then we said, 'Anyway, it will save you money - your children will be healthier and more of them will live.' And so the men agreed, and then the women said they would do it. That was the beginning."

It was the beginning of an extraordinary development initiative that has served to quietly, unobtrusively and radically reshape the lives of women in Dogon society. Aid workers with the Canadian diplomatic mission here, which funds the project, speak of Madame Fifi and her group as one of the most effective they have seen anywhere.

In the past nine years, contraception use in the area has risen from zero to nearly 70 per cent of women. Illiteracy is dropping quickly. And they have virtually eliminated female genital cutting in the 97 villages where they work in a country where the practice is otherwise nearly universal.

The group is called YAGTU - an acronym for the Dogon words for woman promotion association. Its driving force is Ms. Tembely, 38, a large woman with an even larger voice. But it's her skill for quiet diplomacy that has made YAGTU so effective.

Read the rest of the article here.