Sister Sharon Eubank, president of Latter-day Saint Charities and first counselor in the Relief Society general presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, talks with David Beasley, United Nations World Food Programme executive director, outside of the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City on Monday, Sept. 30, 2019. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — Straight-talking former South Carolina Gov. David Beasley initially recoiled at the thought of leading the U.N. World Food Programme for the same reason Latter-day Saint Charities was wary about partnering with the organization.
Neither thought it was up to the red tape and inefficiency for which the United Nations is known. Latter-day Saint Charities President Sharon Eubank said leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “were afraid the bureaucracy would just grind us up” rather than help them achieve their goal to provide quick and nimble aid during emergencies.
Yet Beasley stood in front of the church’s Salt Lake Temple on Monday’s sunny, windy afternoon and trumpeted the partnership between the World Food Programme and Latter-day Saint Charities after a tour of the faith’s humanitarian facilities with church officials.
“What’s driving the rate of increasing hunger in the world today is man-made conflict,” the WFP’s executive director said, “so to have a partner that understands that the most powerful weapon on Earth is love — in times like this when there’s so much destabilization and so much conflict — to have a partner that understands reconciliation is extremely important today.”
Sister Eubank, who also is the first counselor in the church’s Relief Society general presidency, stood by Beasley and described the two organizations’ five-year relationship as among the most significant for the faith’s humanitarian arm.
The two leaders said each organization benefits from working with the other.
The World Food Programme helps the church gain easier access to help people in places where it does not have members, such as Yemen and Somalia.
The church gives the WFP millions of dollars, including $3 million in 2016.
“We’re very grateful,” Beasley said, “because they’re one of our world’s largest partners in the nongovernmental sector. We work together in many countries, and we talked today about many of those opportunities and how we can end hunger around the world.”
On Monday, leaders of the two groups learned they have more ways they can create synergy.
For example, Beasley said he was unaware of the church charity’s expertise in agricultural practices, yield and productivity. He said that expertise could help the WFP’s efforts to introduce better, healthier, more productive seeds and crops to people who don’t want handouts but a hand up.
The WFP, for example, helped self-reliant people rehabilitate half a million acres of land for farming last year. Beasley said if it the church’s agricultural expertise can lift that project, he can help provide infrastructure to get the food where it needs to go.
“We learned a lot more about the World Food Programme’s ability with infrastructure,” Bishop W. Christopher Waddell, second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I wasn’t aware of that as some of the things they do building roads and bridges, etc., that allow food to be moved from the location where it’s been grown to where it needs to get.”
Last year, the WFP built 10,000 miles of roads and bridges to help get food to people and food from fields to markets.
“Sometimes the greatest disaster for farmers comes when they have a very successful yield and they don’t have any way to get to the market, so it all rots in their backyard, so to speak,” Beasley said. “Forty percent of the food in some nations is lost between the field to the market. Worldwide, that amounts to $750 billion worth of food that will feed 2 billion people that’s being lost in post-field losses.”
Beasley toured the Bishop’s Central Storehouse, Welfare Square and Temple Square. He, Sister Eubank and Bishop Waddell lunched with Bishop Gérald Caussé, the church’s Presiding Bishop, and Sister Jean B. Bingham, general president of the Relief Society.
Beasley and Sister Eubank both expressed interest in partnering to provide school lunches to hungry children.
The WFP helps provide food support to about 90 million people in 83 countries each year. Bishop Waddell said the church is small in comparison. Still, in 2017, the church pledged $11 million to 11 organizations, including the WFP, to help feed 1.1 million people in some of the most difficult places in the world, like Yemen, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan.
The WFP launched a movie trailer last week that will air in 35 countries. It shares a somber message: 3 million children die of hunger each year. Beasley, the Republican governor of South Carolina from 1995-99, said mothers in Afghanistan tell his people their husbands don’t want to join ISIS, but they do to save their daughters from starving to death.
Beasley earned the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for pushing for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol dome. He also taught at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.
He said he came to Utah to see where the heart of the church’s members is.
“Probably the most significant thing, frankly, is the spirit, the spirit of cooperation, truly wanting to help the poor and needy and least of these that we all bring to the table. I think that was probably the biggest takeaway,” he said. “I meet with a lot of people around the Earth, and you’re looking for partners in truth. I think that is the biggest thing, that compassion for helping not just those of your own church, but people that are suffering, God’s children all over the world. And that’s the heart that I like working with anywhere and everywhere.”
The church first partnered with the World Food Programme in 2014 to help feed people during the Ebola crisis. In 2015, they worked together again during a drought in Ethiopia.
In 2016, the church’s First Presidency and other world religious leaders and scholars issued statements through the World Food Programme calling for an end to world hunger.
“We invite people everywhere to open their hearts and minds to this growing need and make resources available to the effort of eliminating hunger where they live,” the statement said.
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2oIhTJE
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario