"Food is the Pathway to Peace" -- OMNIA's Contributions

“If Covid doesn’t kill them, hunger will,” exclaimed Rev. David Das, the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Bangladesh and OMNIA’s National Coordinator. He said this back in April just as the pandemic restrictions were being imposed.

Many of our Interfaith Peacemaker Teams are located in marginalized communities. Many team members are daily wage earners who found themselves out of work and therefore out of money and out of food. We asked our friends to help, and many of you contributed. Thank you!

Hunger has re-emerged in catastrophic proportions across the world. The combination of violent conflict, climate crisis and covid-19 could push 270 million people to the brink of starvation, said David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program, upon receiving the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. “Food is the pathway to peace,” he declared. Let me describe how OMNIA is taking that pathway to peace.

In Nigeria…

Youth hunger protests in Nigeria turned into a protest against police brutality.

Eighty five percent of those who live and work in Gombe city, Nigeria are also farmers. During the rainy season, they go to their villages to work on their farms. The harvest becomes a part of the family’s food supply for the rest of the year. This year, government imposed Covid restrictions coincided with the rainy season. People were not allowed to travel to their farms resulting in a poor harvest and increasing hunger. At the same time, government and corporate warehouses were withholding food supplies. In October, Nigerian youth rose up in protest. On October 21st, a government force named SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) shot and killed several unarmed protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos and the protests turned towards police brutality and spread across the country.

Interfaith Peacemaker Team leaders, including Muslim and Christian clergy in Gombe city inserted themselves into the protest planning meetings. They influenced the group to recognize the power of non-violent civil disobedience, even in the face of brutal violence. The protests have ended, but hunger persists.

Today, there are 85 Interfaith Peacemaker Teams in Gombe State up from 71 last year. Each team with about 20 tough-minded and focused faith leaders (clergy and lay, women and men) collaborating across difference, building power and acting strategically to break down the large problem of food insecurity into small manageable issues that are urgent, relevant and winnable. When they win a small victory, they can win a larger ones.

In Bangladesh…

Ms. Salina Khatun is a garment worker and a leader of an Interfaith Peacemaker Team in Bangladesh. The garment industry accounts for 80% of that country’s exports and is a $40 billion industry. 85% of the 3.5 million employed by the garment industry are women. They work in sweatshop conditions for 14-16 hours a day and make the equivalent of about US $58 a month.

Covid restrictions caused many garment factories to close resulting in loss of income for Salina and her IP Team. But hope was not lost. They didn’t get discouraged but sprang into action. Collaboration, power-building and strategic action learned at their training resulted in the women pooling their resources to buy or borrow sewing machines. Soon, they started a sewing business making clothes and selling to locals. Starting a business, particularly in this environment is tough, they found out. Pandemic means the locals don’t have much money for clothes either. But the women are determined to make it work.

There are 29 IP Teams in Bangladesh, up from 15 last year, and over two-thirds of the members are women. They are industrious, energetic and powerful.

In Sri Lanka…

Food security requires either land on which one can cultivate, or money to purchase food in the market. In Sri Lanka too, Covid restrictions meant that many daily wage earners couldn’t go out and earn. But many of our Interfaith Peacemaker Team members live in villages and have access to a plot of land on which they can cultivate. They are fortunate because Sri Lanka is blessed with lush arable land that can be cultivated all year around.

OMNIA’s National Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe with Ven. Senapura Sumana Thero at the vegetable nursery.

Five Interfaith Peacemaker Teams in the Gampola district (in the Central Province) decided on an urgent, relevant and winnable project to address the issue. Expecting the pandemic to last longer than anyone anticipates, they agreed to cultivate vegetables and yams in their backyards. The local Buddhist temple, donated farm land, in which they planted a nursery, and distributed plants to all the IP Team members. With advice from Agriculture experts from a local university the nursery was able to produce more than sufficient plants for distribution to IP Team members. They even added mushrooms to the Sri Lankan cuisine!

Mr. Jagath Godamunne, the Government Officer of a village in Gampola District is one of our IP Team leaders. He is a part of a network of Government Officers in the villages in the area. The director of the network, impressed with the work of the IP Teams proposed that he bring 200 Government Officials to a two day-long IP Team training so each of them could launch IP Teams in their own villages.

Sri Lanka today has 24 IP Teams (with 11 more in formation), up from 20 last year.

Despite Covid-19 restrictions IP Teams are strengthening and expanding in all our locations. When people hear about the successes of an IP Team in the next village, they clamor for one in their own village as well. Many seem to know instinctively that collaborating across difference is how we are meant to be. Yet it is difficult because our separate religious traditions stand in the way. We are noticing that large numbers of people of all faiths are willing to dismantle their exclusive theologies and supremacist traditions and allow new thinking to emerge from the ground up. They are the ones leading the way.

Interfaith Peacemaker Teams are finding creative ways to address food insecurity. As they do, they become the building blocks of a new movement towards a world of justice and peace. Do partner with us, and contribute to this emerging new reality.

Bishop Munib Younan Named Recipient of the Kenneth W. Bensen Award for Contextual Leadership

Chicago, December 3, 2020

Rt. Rev. Dr. Munib Younan, Bishop Emeritus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land was the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth W. Bensen Award for Contextual Leadership presented by OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership. The award was presented at an online ceremony on December 3, 2020.

Please read Bishop Younan’s acceptance speech here:

Bishop Younan is an internationally renowned religious leader with significant experience and expertise in interfaith relationships and actions in pursuit of justice and peace. As one who is constantly attentive to the contextual struggles of the Palestinian people, Bishop Younan’s voice is both authentic and powerful.

In his retirement, Bishop Younan continues to engage in the various ecumenical and interfaith initiatives in Jerusalem, some of which, he helped found and nurture. He continues to serve as an honorary president of the Middle East Council of Churches and is a recent past president of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches. He is also a founding member of the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land which comprises Jerusalem’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities, and provides leadership to the ecumenical Patriarchs and Heads of Local Christian Churches in Jerusalem.

Globally, Bishop Younan is the most recent past president of the Lutheran World Federation, a global communion of Lutheran churches with 145 member churches in 79 countries representing more than 70 million Christians, and is currently an honorary president of Religions for Peace International, a prominent interfaith organization dedicated to global peacebuilding.

Bishop Younan has been a part of the OMNIA Institute since its transition from the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE). In 2017, he, together with Dr. Wesley Ariarajah and OMNIA’s president Dr. Shanta Premawardhana spoke at the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation at Kirchentag (a massive Christian festival) held in Berlin and Wittenburg, Germany. Given today’s context of increased interreligious activities and conflicts, they proposed that the framework for New Reformation should be Interreligious Contextual theology.

His books, Witnessing for Peace: In Jerusalem and the World (Fortress Press, 2003) and Our Shared Witness: A Voice for Justice and Reconciliation (Lutheran University Press, 2012) amply describe his commitment to justice, peace and contextual leadership.

The award ceremony will be a part of a fundraising celebration of OMNIA’s Interfaith Peacemaker Teams. The online event will be on Thursday, December 3rd at 2:00 p.m. (US/ Canada Central Standard Time). Please click here to register for the event.

OMNIA has built 138 Interfaith Peacemaker Teams in Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Each team comprises twenty tough-minded and focused faith leaders who collaborate across barriers, build power and engage in strategic actions for justice and peace.

What’s Wrong With Our Theology

Rev. Sekou trains SCUPE students in non-violent civil disobedience (Jan. 2015)

CHICAGO: June 13, 2020

by Dr. Shanta Premawardhana

On Tuesday, June 16th, 9:00 a.m. Chicago time, OMNIA will launch a series of Tuesday Talks – global Zoom conversations on the “Seeking a New Reality.”

This New Reality is emerging. The signs are everywhere. Events of the last two weeks made it clear that the United States is ready for such a conversation. Our engagement with Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh make it clear that other places of the world are ready for a New Reality as well.

Our conversations will focus on the nature of the New Reality, its values, its impact on our common life, and what OMNIA’s role is in helping bring about the New Reality.

The first conversation on June 16th will feature Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, as the initiator and Dr. Afri Atiba as the first respondent. Participants will be invited to offer brief responses. The purpose is not to seek answers but to provoke thoughtful questions.

Upon registration participants will receive information about how to join the Zoom conversation.

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou moved to his native Ferguson, MO, immediately following Michael Brown’s murder of August 2014. He was quickly at the forefront of the protest movement organizing and training young people in methods and disciplines of non-violent civil disobedience. I invited him to come to Chicago and train SCUPE’s seminary students. He gave them an unforgettable hands-on training in non-violent civil disobedience.

“These young people,” he said, referring to the Ferguson protesters, “These queer, black, young women, and these saggy-panted young men are the very ones leading the movement towards justice. Those who are the most marginalized in society are leading where the church is failing to go. This is where God is speaking, and the church is not listening.” “It’s 50 years since Martin Luther King,” he said, “50 years since the Voting Rights Act, 50 years since Bloody Sunday in Selma, but it is as if nothing has changed—it’s open season on black men and women.” So he asks, “What’s wrong with our theology that 50 years later we are still struggling with this?”

 That framing, “What’s wrong with our theology?” puts the onus on religious leaders --theologians, theological educators and preachers -- for not privileging the contextuality of the streets. Sekou’s criticism is also this: had the discipline of theology taken seriously the racial revolution of 50 years ago, and had given space for a theological revolution to take place, would the churches allow the atrocity of police brutality to happen today? This requires a paradigm shift for theologians, who are used to holding the “received” tradition sacrosanct. The best we know to do with the questions and struggles that arise from the context is to tinker at the edges of our received theological traditions.

Sekou’s question is still valid. And now we have another opportunity -- the kind of opportunity for which OMNIA was made. For we are not satisfied tinkering at the edges. We are willing to look courageously at the malevolent forces at the heart of our religious traditions and seek change.

OMNIA is already busy around the world helping birth this New Reality. Interfaith Peacemaker Teams are already challenging the received traditions and taking seriously the contextual realities. We are doing this in Northeastern Nigeria (where Boko Haram is active), where Muslims and Christians are putting aside their historic antagonisms and coming together. We are doing this in Sri Lanka, where Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians are coming together, despite last year’s Easter bombings by an extremist Muslim group, and continuing instigation to violence by some extremist Buddhist monks. We are doing this in Bangladesh, where increasing extremism among Muslims sees a corresponding increase in extremism among Christians and Hindus.

OMNIA trains religious leaders and people of faith how to collaborate despite their differences, to build power by building relationships and alliances, to think and act strategically to win. Each small victory leads to building greater power and to greater victories. Soon it becomes evident that formerly antagonistic groups can work together, and that they can achieve victories that were otherwise impossible. This begins to shift the culture from one that tolerates extremism to one that affirms pluralism.

We have learned many lessons from our engagement around the world. We have learned to take the questions and struggles of the people on the ground seriously. These require us to critically examine our received theologies that legitimize our oppression and undermine our liberation. As our theology changes, rather than legitimizing oppression, it becomes a force for liberation.

This happened throughout history. A great example is the religious legitimization of Apartheid in South Africa. When the World Conference of Reformed Churches under Allen Boesak’s leadership declared Apartheid a heresy in 1983, the entire system began to crumble. Boesak was responding the cries that were arising from the context of deep suffering and struggle. This can be true of White supremacy as well.

We are also clear that we can’t do this alone. We need lots of partners, friends, supporters. Our Tuesday Talks are a way for you to join the movement. Please do join us.

Rev. Punitharajah Enoch, OMNIA Leader in Sri Lanka, Dies

Rev. Enoch at an OMNIA Training of Trainers in February 2020 in Kandy, Sri Lanka

Kandy, SRI LANKA (May 9, 2020) — OMNIA mourns the loss of Rev. Punitharaja Enoch who died May 8th of a heart attack at the Jaffna hospital. He was one of OMNIA’s Interfaith Peacemaker Team leaders in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. In February 2020 he participated in a Training of Trainers event in Kandy, where he committed to train others to participate in Interfaith Peacemaker Teams.

The following is an appreciation written by Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe, OMNIA’s National Coordinator in Sri Lanka.

It is with great sadness and loss that we have to record the passing on of the Rev Punitharajah Enoch of the American Ceylon Mission in Sri Lanka. Rev Enoch has served the Church in Sri Lanka and the Christian Community with much dedication and love. His love for God’s people was evident in the way he moved with them and made himself available to them at their times of need. Because of such love, his ministry among them was comprehensive and fulfilling. The humility with which he was serving among them, was exemplary. We are confident that Enoch offered creative leadership, when he was called to be the Chairperson of the American Ceylon Mission Church.

My association with him was very short. I got to know him as a leader of the OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership, in the North of Sri Lanka. He had grasped well the OMNIA concept of ‘all encompassing’ approach and attitude. OMNIA’s method of ‘Bottom up’ rather than ‘Top down’ learning, was attractive to him. Organising people was close to his heart, which was clearly visible in his speaking and preaching. He was loved by the people whom he served and he enjoyed a wonderful freedom in their midst. He was very well convinced, that he was called by God to serve the people in the community and was not willing at any stage, even during the times of great difficulty and insecurity in the North, to desert the people and be away from them.

Pictures of Rev. Enoch at the Training of Trainers event in Kandy in February 2020

I first met him in 2019, when I attended the Advanced Training Programme of the OMNIA Institute, in Jaffna. He had already gone through the Basic training programme and was deeply committed and interested in serving the community. His willingness to learn and equip himself to serve God’s people was remarkable. Enoch’s engagement in words and action with those who trained him and the desire to possess clarity of understanding, was solely characteristic. He was always willing to struggle hard to achieve the best.

In February this year, he was chosen and invited to be trained as a Trainer for the OMNIA programme in Sri Lanka, especially concentrating in the North and the East, which he accepted with great interest and travelled to Kandy. The enthusiasm with which he participated, was not only encouraging but also rewarding. We noted that he always looked to the future. While anticipating the kind of challenges that he may face in the future in such training, he was keen to learn and equip himself to creatively deal with such situations. Enoch’s ability and willingness to relate to the problems and the struggles of the people in the North, was commendable. His preparation to be a trainer and a leader in the community was in such a context. He was truly and deeply rooted contextually. That was both a psychological as well as a practical and a realistic approach.

We take this opportunity to thank his family for sharing him with the larger community. We also convey our heartfelt condolences and the assurance of our prayers to the family. We are ever grateful for all what he has been to us, the Church and to the larger community, in this nation.

We thank God for God’s concern for the people in need and who are powerless, that God was willing to share Enoch with us and the people, even for a short period of time. That probably was in God’s plan, the period in which his services were most needed. We are grateful for his life and ministry and pray that his soul will Rest in Peace and Rise in Glory. What a great loss to say goodbye to him at his prime age.

Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe
9th May 2020. Kandy

Update on OMNIA's Covid-19 Response

Nursing Students from Gombe College of Nursing Joined IP Team Leaders in the Campaign

On Thursday last week, Gombe State in Nigeria imposed a state-wide curfew. They have identified 39 people with the Covid-19 virus. As Rev. Abare Kallah, our National Coordinator in Nigeria said, “This is a ‘stitch in time.’ We did our Community Awareness and Preparation project at the right time.”

Gombe College of Nursing partnered with our Interfaith Peacemaker Team leaders in this project. Nursing students paired up with IP Team leaders and visited 24 villages. With the blessing of the Traditional Rulers they convened religious leaders (imams and pastors) and taught them how to use their public voice to teach people the best practices of Covid-19 hygiene, like washing hands and keeping 6 feet away. A global interreligious organization, KAICIID (King Abdullah International Center for Interreigious and Intercultural Dialogue) based in Vienna, Austria sought our partnership in the project. Abare also reported to me the words of one Traditional Ruler, who said that none of the government’s appeals for community awareness were nearly as effective as the OMNIA training.

Click here for the document we prepared to take out to the religious leaders

Click here for Rev. Abare Kallah’s video response

In Sri Lanka, our Interfaith Peacemaker Team leaders used our donations to leverage help from the massive grocery store chain, Cargills – Food City. Together they made bags of dry rations and through the 20 IP Teams distributed to needy families. This took a significant effort since our Sri Lankan IP Teams are located in three geographically distant areas, and right now because of the curfew, travel between those is almost impossible.

Recognizing that giving dry rations is not a sustainable solution, particularly since curfew might last a long time, the IP Teams are promoting home gardens. Most IP Teams are located in villages, and therefore, most people have a small back yard, or a plot of land. A US based organization, Sustainable Harvest International has begun conversations with us about how to take their techniques for producing quick yield in small plots.

Our work in Bangladesh is still in process. The curfew is most strict there. So our colleagues have a very difficult time communicating with IP Teams. However, they were discussing strategies over the weekend, and I know, will come up with good options. The IP Teams in Bangladesh (some in the slums of Dhaka) are the most marginalized of all our IP Teams. This is what makes our work there the most challenging. I will keep you informed of their progress.

This is the value of IP Teams. These are clergy and lay religious leaders who are trained to collaborate, build power and think strategically. They are prepared to take on issues that arises from the ground, and are trained to undertake only those that are urgent, relevant and winnable. Both Nigerian and Sri Lankan IP Team leaders have assured me that these projects are winnable. Small victories enable them to gain greater credibility and greater power, leading them to bigger victories.

Two critical question have arisen:

1. Can the Covid-19 pause be an opportunity to find ways to begin a dialogue with those with extremist views, since now we are all facing a common enemy in the virus?

2. Can governments, businesses or entrepreneurial leaders work together to create new opportunities for internet access in places where it is difficult, such as Northeastern Nigeria. The social distancing required by Covid-19 makes the digital divide intolerable.

We will continue to work on these questions. Thank you for you engagement.

OMNIA's Covid-19 Response Phase II

Rev. David A. Das

If the Virus Doesn’t Kill Them, Hunger Will

“The situation is dire,” said Rev. David Das in a phone call with me today. “If the virus doesn’t kill them, hunger will.” David is our National Coordinator in Bangladesh and the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in Bangladesh. “Our Interfaith Peacemaker Teams (IP Teams) are in the most marginalized areas. Many leaders and team members are daily wage earners. Because of the extended curfew, they have no income, and therefore no food. They are starving.” The government has supplied some assistance, but “because marginalized communities don’t have political clout, some are not receiving that aid.”

I also had a conversation with Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe, our National Coordinator in Sri Lanka. The IP Teams there have already begun to distribute dry rations to some of the communities that can be reached during breaks in curfew. They are also planning for the long haul, recognizing that the social isolation will continue for a long time to come. They are encouraging families and communities to grow their own food. He is hoping to provide seeds for vegetables and encourage the cultivation of yams.

Please click here to read some incredible stories of the work of IP Teams

Our Work in Nigeria

At a checkpoint on the road in Gombe State in Nigeria, the military stopped Abare Kallah and his team: “Why are you going about when there are limitations of movement?” they shouted in to the car.  “We are OMNIA,” said Abare, “we are going to do community awareness for Covid-19.” They got a thumbs up!

Earlier this month we launched a Community Awareness and Preparation for Covid-19 project in Gombe. We had a window of opportunity since there was no curfew. Rev. Abare Kallah, our National Coordinator in Nigeria, took a team of Nursing students, and visited 24 villages in the past 10 days. They trained the local Interfaith Peacemaker Teams (IP Teams) and provided talking points for religious leaders on using their public voice to get the message out to their communities.

When they got to the villages, they heard stories like: “This has not affected the poor man. I have never traveled to places that have the virus. I will not get the virus.” They also heard: “this is a disease of white people; it’s a disease of rich children who travel abroad;" and that it’s a political ploy. After the training, one man said that he now realizes that it is coming “like wildfire.”

Watch a short video clip of Rev. Abare Kallah here.

We equipped the IP Teams with a document I prepared to help religious leaders understand the religious reasons to accept such changes. You can read that here.

Seeing the impact we are making, the world-renowned interfaith organization, KAICIID (King Abdullah International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue) based in Vienna, Austria has partnered with us.

No Time to Wait on Phase II

We had hoped to wait until Bangladesh and Sri Lanka lifted their curfew to engage our IP Teams in Community Awareness and Preparation. Clearly, we have to act now. In Bangladesh the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths have surged in recent days. Sri Lanka’s numbers are more stable, but it is clear, as Bishop Kumara says, “we are in this for the long haul.”

To be clear, we are not a relief organization. Our mission to build IP Teams requires us to protect and support the ones we already have. I won’t usually come to you requesting relief aid. But this is an unusual circumstance, where our own leaders are in grave danger.

I have discussed with both our National Coordinators, methods by which we can ensure proper distribution of resources, despite the curfew. I am convinced that they both have organizational capacity to handle this well.

Therefore, I want to ask if you might do your part and make a generous contribution.

Today, I received the following message from a U.S. based donor:

“Shanta, I am sending you this donation from the stimulus funds I just received. I think OMNIA’s work is so important. It’s easy for me to stay at home and keep working during this COVID pause, but I keep thinking of our brothers and sisters on the Interfaith Peacemaker Teams who won’t have it so easy. I keep thinking of how many don’t have running water or days’ worth of food, like I do. I’m glad that OMNIA trains local leaders who understand the situation and will help their communities as best they can.”

How much can you give?  $25? 50? 100? 250? or more?

Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar by a generous donor.

To make a secure online donation please click the button below.

Thank you!