LISTSERV mailing list manager LISTSERV 16.0

Help for ELCANEWS Archives


ELCANEWS Archives

ELCANEWS Archives


ELCANEWS@LISTSERV.ELCA.ORG


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

ELCANEWS Home

ELCANEWS Home

ELCANEWS  August 2006

ELCANEWS August 2006

Subject:

Lutheran Leaders Must Be Involved in Response to HIV and AIDS

From:

[log in to unmask]

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 08:59:55 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (181 lines)

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

August 25, 2006  

Lutheran Leaders Must Be Involved in Response to HIV and AIDS
06-129-FI

     TORONTO (ELCA) -- The Global Lutheran World Federation (LWF)
Campaign against HIV/AIDS began its first phase in 2002 "to
promote churches getting more involved with HIV and AIDS
activities, especially in regions of Africa and Asia," said Dr.
Sheila Shyamprasad, the HIV and AIDS consultant to the LWF
Department for Mission and Development.  She said one of the key
lessons learned was that Lutheran leadership -- bishops, lay
leaders, leaders of women's, men's and youth groups -- must be
involved for the church's activities to be effective.
     The first phase of the campaign ended in July 2006, focusing
on education and prevention, Shyamprasad said.  The second phase
will run through 2011 and will be a "scaling up" of current
activities with a greater emphasis on care and support, she said.
     Shyamprasad took part in the International AIDS Conference
here Aug. 13-18 and in ecumenical and interfaith pre-conferences
Aug. 10-12.  She led a workshop on "Getting Churches and Their
Leaders on Board."
     The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is one of
the LWF's 140 member churches in 78 countries.  Based in Geneva,
the LWF represents 66.2 million Christians around the world.
Shyamprasad visited the ELCA churchwide office Aug. 21-22 in
Chicago.
     The world health community first recognized AIDS (Acquired
Immunodeficiency Syndrome) in 1981.  AIDS is a result of HIV
(Human Immunodeficiency Virus) infection.  HIV is transmitted
through direct contact with a bodily fluid containing HIV, and
transmission usually involves sexual contact, use of contaminated
injecting equipment, blood transfusion or exchange between mother
and infant.
     Lutheran churches were hesitant to get involved with all the
issues related to HIV and AIDS, Shyamprasad said.  LWF launched
its campaign in 2002 in Nairobi, Kenya, with an action plan,
"Compassion, Conversion, Care: Responding as Churches to the
HIV/AIDS Pandemic," designed to enlist every aspect of being
"church" in response to the complexities of the pandemic, she
said.
     The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
agreed to fund the campaign partially, Shyamprasad said.  Global
Fund involvement brought more oversight, she said.
     "There were a few HIV projects going on in various parts of
the world which were being implemented by various (Lutheran)
churches," Shyamprasad said.  The Global Fund required more LWF
coordination to achieve the goals of the action plan, she said.
     Shyamprasad, an obstetrician and gynecologist, was
coordinator of the HIV and AIDS program of the United Evangelical
Lutheran Church in India for more than 12 years at the Gurukul
Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, Chennai.
She said that program started slowly with "awareness and
sensitization" and moved into "counseling, testing and medical
care" and finally caring for the widows and orphans of AIDS.
     LWF asked Shyamprasad, "Why don't you try to replicate the
same kind of program in other churches and try to motivate other
churches?" she said.
     A key to the LWF campaign was to involve church leaders in
the response to HIV and AIDS, she said.  "Coordinators, or the
people in the field, who know the situation, know the church
needs to move but, if they don't the 'green signal' from the
bishop or if the bishop doesn't really understand the urgency of
the situation, then nothing happens."
     The LWF campaign conducted training for Lutheran church
leaders -- bishops, lay leaders, women leaders, youth leaders,
social service providers -- all around the world, Shyamprasad
said, but the Global Fund was not happy with just the number of
church leaders trained.  It asked, "What are these trained
leaders actually doing?"
     So, the LWF administered a survey of church leadership to
"assess the impact of our training," Shyamprasad said.   She said
she learned that 95 percent of church leaders were "involved in
HIV activities."
     The survey asked a variety of questions, Shyamprasad said,
such as: "How often do you preach or publicly acknowledge HIV and
AIDS?  Have you had an HIV test?  Do you think people with HIV
should be employed by the church?  Do you think it is right to
administer Holy Communion to people with HIV?  Do you think it is
right to discuss HIV and AIDS in Sunday school?  Do you think the
churches should advise on condom promotion?"
     "We kind of graded them," Shyamprasad said.  "At the end of
it we got very good results."  She said she was especially
impressed by the greater involvement of Lutheran churches in
Africa compared to prior to the training.
     Launching the campaign in Kenya after a five-day regional
consultation, LWF sponsored similar consultations in three other
regions.  Each region "contextualized" the campaign and outlined
its own plan of action, Shyamprasad said.
     Pan-African Lutheran church leaders committed themselves in
May 2002 to "Breaking the Silence" as their statement; the Latin
American consultation in March 2003 in Venezuela adopted
"Justice, Conversion and Integration;" the Asian consultation in
December 2003 in Indonesia endorsed "Covenant of Life;" and the
European consultation in April 2004 in the Ukraine drafted "Bound
Together."
     The campaign did not target Lutheran churches in North
America or western Europe, because it appeared that government
and educational systems were providing HIV and AIDS prevention
information there, Shyamprasad said.
     Church leaders there were included in the survey, and the
results found Lutheran churches in North America and western
Europe lacking in efforts to deal with issues related to HIV and
AIDS, including stigma and discrimination.  "So maybe we need to
rethink about whom we should target in the next phase,"
Shyamprasad said.

Phase two, regional coordination, workbook, ecumenical teamwork
     The Global LWF Campaign against HIV/AIDS applied again for
money from the Global Fund for the second phase of the campaign,
but Shyamprasad recommended that LWF continue even if a grant is
not awarded.  "Now that the LWF has intensified its campaign, I
don't think we should take a backward step," she said.  "We need
to move forward."
     Care and support of people infected and affected by HIV will
be emphasized in the second phase, Shyamprasad said.  It will
capitalize on the longstanding work of Lutheran churches around
the world in care for widows and orphans and in development, she
said.
     Getting the churches involved in sharing prevention
information, talking about condoms and sexuality, took some
"persuasion and motivation," Shyamprasad said.  "But if you say,
'We have to take care of widows and orphans,' they say, 'Yes, we
have to take care.  We should be doing more,'" she said.
     The commitment of Lutheran leaders will continue to be
important, but the campaign's second phase will rely more heavily
on "technical resource people strategically placed here and
there," Shyamprasad said.
     The Rev. Lisandro Orlov, a pastor of the United Evangelical
Lutheran Church, Argentina, and director of a shelter for people
living with HIV and AIDS in Buenos Aires, coordinates the LWF
campaign in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Dr. Mamy J.
Ranaivoson coordinates the campaign in Africa.  Based in Nairobi,
Ranaivoson is the health consultant on HIV/AIDS for ELCA Global
Mission and the ELCA's Stand With Africa campaign.
     "But one person in Africa is not enough," Shyamprasad said.
"We need at least three people in Africa."  She said additional
regional coordinators are needed in Asia and possibly in North
America and Europe.
     "We're looking at regional support points where people will
be able to do capacity building and put in structures and systems
within the church structures so that the programs can go on,"
Shyamprasad said.
     The Global LWF Campaign against HIV/AIDS is also working
with other Christian campaigns.  The African Network of Religious
Leaders living with or personally affected by HIV or AIDS
(ANERELA+) is named as a co-recipient in the LWF application with
the Global Fund.
     "When we went to Africa, there were so many villages where
the pastor had an old dusty volume of something, really dog-eared
copies," Shyamprasad said.  "People go to him because he is the
only person for treatment or for counsel," she said.
     Often these pastors can't update the information they have
about HIV and AIDS by attending conferences, subscribing to
publications or accessing the Internet, Shyamprasad said.  So,
the LWF campaign developed a workbook with the help of ANERELA+
that it will distribute to all the Lutheran pastors and
evangelists in the villages of Africa, she said.
     The workbook will come out at the end of 2006, providing
information about HIV and AIDS, human rights and advocacy,
Shyamprasad said.  It will have five initial chapters, and the
campaign plans to add more chapters later, she said.
     One of the major chapters in the workbook deals with the
theology of the churches' response to HIV and AIDS, Shyamprasad
said.  That chapter was written with the help of the Rev. Jape
Heath, an Anglican priest and general secretary of ANERELA+ in
Johannesburg, South Africa.
-- -- --
     Information about the Global LWF Campaign against HIV/AIDS
is at http://www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/LWF-HIV_AIDS.html
on the Web.

     An audio report on this story is at
http://media.ELCA.org/audionews/060825.mp3 on the ELCA Web site.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask]
http://www.elca.org/news
ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

Advanced Options


Options

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password


Search Archives

Search Archives


Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe


Archives

October 2024
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
November 2018
October 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
July 2001
June 2001
May 2001
April 2001
March 2001
February 2001
January 2001
December 2000
November 2000
October 2000
September 2000
August 2000
July 2000
June 2000
May 2000
April 2000
March 2000
February 2000
January 2000
December 1999
November 1999
October 1999
September 1999
August 1999
July 1999
June 1999
May 1999
April 1999
March 1999
February 1999
January 1999
December 1998
November 1998
October 1998
September 1998
August 1998
July 1998
June 1998
May 1998
April 1998
March 1998
February 1998
January 1998
December 1997
November 1997
October 1997
September 1997
August 1997
July 1997
June 1997
May 1997
April 1997
March 1997
February 1997
January 1997
December 1996
November 1996
October 1996
September 1996
August 1996
July 1996
June 1996
May 1996
April 1996
March 1996
February 1996
January 1996

ATOM RSS1 RSS2



LISTSERV.ELCA.ORG

CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager