Campaign Tithes Have Enabled Us to ‘Adopt’ African Epicenter

By Pam Petersen, President
Unity of Phoenix Board of Trustees

As announced at our January 2008 Annual Meeting, in partnership with The Hunger Project, Unity of Phoenix has now “adopted” a specific African epicenter community in Malawi to infuse with our love and prayer support. As you may know, our Church community set an intention in May 2007 to tithe $100,000 over the course of our three-year Fundraising Campaign to support The Hunger Project’s epicenter work in Africa. This proven epicenter strategy transforms thousands of lives through a bottom-up, gender-focused approach to mobilizing clusters of rural villages to build self-reliant communities, end their own hunger, and meet all of their basic needs. In our first year, we have tithed more than $33,000 to this empowering program!

Africa map

While The Hunger Project has initiated approximately 90 epicenters in eight African countries, 16 of which have achieved self-reliance, we have chosen to focus our attention on the Mwaiwagwa Epicenter in the southern province of Malawi. Mwaiwagwa villagers recently completed Phase I of their epicenter project, which included 422 people participating in intensive Vision, Commitment and Action Workshops; the land for the epicenter building being donated and surveyed; and community volunteers preparing 350,000 bricks for epicenter construction. Phase II, consisting of the actual construction of the epicenter facilities, is now underway! This building will house a medical clinic, school, food storage and processing center, and a micro-credit bank supporting women food farmers, among other community programs.

The Republic of Malawi was formed in 1966 and has a population of about 13 million people. Fittingly, the country’s motto is “Unity and Freedom!” A country prone to drought, a key initiative for all six Malawi epicenters is the creation of community food banks. During the first quarter of 2006, food banks operating in the country’s first four epicenters contained 83 tons of grain and served more than 4,000 people.

We affirm with the people of Mwaiwagwa that this success will be repeated with the completion of their community food bank and community farm later this year.

The Hunger Project

In a country with very limited health care and high rates of HIV/AIDS and malaria, another key epicenter initiative in Malawi involves birth attendant training, the distribution of bed-nets, and the implementation of HIV/AIDS counseling and testing programs. In Malawi, child mortality is 103/1,000. Moreover, there are more than a million orphans, 700,000 of whom became orphans when their parents died of AIDS. Unofficial estimates based on private hospital entries give an HIV infection percentage as high as 30% of the population.

Again, we affirm with the people of Mwaiwagwa that through these epicenter initiatives child mortality rates will be lowered, the spread of AIDS and malaria will be halted, and that the consciousness giving raise to these conditions will be forever transformed. And so it is.

For more information on The Hunger Project’s empowerment programs, please visit www.thp.org. We will continue to keep you posted on the progress of the Mwaiwagwa Epicenter and the status of our tithe projects. Together, we can fulfill our ministry vision of being “a magnifying power for the miraculous transformation of our world!”