A webinar series that provides insight into the vital work of international partners of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance returns at 11:30 a.m. (EDT) Aug. 11, with a spotlight on India.
An estimated 28.3 million people in India are currently infected with the COVID-19 virus, while the death toll is more than 335,000, according to the nation’s health ministry. To add to the problem, a number of variants of the virus are now making their way through the population.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) has approved a $20,000 grant for COVID-19 response in India.
The Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP)—through its Joining Hands program—is inviting people interested in digging deeper into the root causes of poverty to join one of three roundtables focusing on global issues that create poverty and affect our global partners and the United States. The idea is to not only treat the symptoms of poverty but eradicate its causes.
For the past 20 years, Sushma Ramswami has served as the communications secretary for the Church of North India. Based in New Delhi, she leads an ecumenical communications network and serves as the denomination’s secretary of national issues, organizing rallies, walks and conferences such as the Christian Conference of Asia. She has led movements for the empowerment of women, children and youth and has organized training, counseling and healing for victims of riots.
During his recent visit to farming communities across India, Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) Associate Andrew Kang Bartlett asked farmers what their biggest struggle was, and all agreed it was agribusiness. Large multinational corporations have come to India with hybrid seeds and new technology to “empower farmers and produce more from their land.”
Presbyterian Hunger Program Associate Andrew Kang Bartlett has a passion for organic, natural foods and for sustainable food production. In his 14 years with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), he has worked with farmers, farmworkers, and ecumenical partners across the world to ensure they have the resources they need to grow food naturally, without the invasion of chemicals and corporate interference.
Glendora Paul, a native of India who was co-founder of the World Mission Initiative at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, died Oct. 23 of complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 82.
Though Malayattoor attracts pilgrims throughout the year, several million climb the 1,900-foot hill to the shrine during Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Over a million arrived on Good Friday alone, causing a traffic jam that extended to the national highway 12 miles away.
Muslims in Kashmir, in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, are supporting the re-building of a Christian school that was destroyed by fire during anti-Christian violence one year ago.
“What happened here is certainly wrong and it should not have happened. I can assure you that our people will not allow it to happen again,” Munshi Mukhtar Ahmed, a Muslim teacher in a government school in the town of Tangmarg, told ENInews on Sept. 20.
On Sept. 13, 2010, the Tyndale Biscoe School was the target of Muslims protesting a reported desecration of the Quran in the U.S. that marked the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The school is in the town of Phulwama and is run by the Church of North India (CNI), the dominant Protestant denomination in North India.