|
“I am Sam Chan. I was born in Taiping, Malaysia, and I am Buddhist. I light this candle so that the people of all faiths in Africa may live in peace.”
With these words, Sam Chan, an immigrant to the U.S., a small business owner and a computer wiz, led off the interfaith invocation at the third annual URI Circles of Light gala, held in San Francisco, USA, on February 4th. Sam was followed by ten other URI members, eight of them immigrants like him, each one lighting a candle and praying for peace in a region of the world other than the one in which he or she was born.
More than 200 URI supporters came to this invocation and the fundraising dinner that followed. In a powerful show of support for URI Cooperation Circles (CCs) around the world, donors packed the banquet room to capacity, making this the most successful fundraising event yet organized by the volunteers and staff at URI’s Global Support Office. When all the bills have been paid and the gifts tallied, it appears the event will have netted some $70,000—40% more than last year—to support the global network that links 300+ URI CCs in 60 countries.
No doubt guests were drawn at least in part by this year’s honorees: Mr. Jones Laviwa, The Rev. Dr. William Rankin, and Charles Wilson, M.D.
Together these men provide leadership to the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), an independent nonprofit organization that began as a Cooperation Circle of URI in 2000. GAIA works to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, to treat the sick and to care for AIDS orphans in the resource-poor southern African nation of Malawi. Although no longer a URI CC, GAIA continues to reflect the URI spirit of grassroots interfaith action, and it partners closely with URI CCs in Malawi under Jones Laviwa’s leadership.
The practical aid and spiritual support of URI donors and volunteers helps sustain them all, just as it does Jones and Thandiwe. If you are one of the more than one million human beings who participate in URI activities each year, we thank you.
And if you haven’t yet joined our global community, we invite you to. While it’s not too early to put yourself on the mailing list for Circles of Light 2007, you will also find ways to get involved immediately by clicking on Cooperation Circles or Ways to Give on our homepage. And, to add yourself to any of our lists or to get more information about URI, you are always welcome to telephone our Global Support Office at +1 415 561 2300 or to email us at
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Other than the interfaith invocation, perhaps the most moving moment of the evening came when Jones stood to speak of URI, GAIA and Malawi. In a nation of 12 million, some 900,000 Malawians live with HIV/AIDS, and an estimated 80,000 die every year from AIDS. Life expectancy has dropped to about 40 years.
“When I go to a wedding, I feel sad,” says Jones’s wife, businesswoman and homemaker Thandiwe Laviwa. “I wonder how much longer the young couple will live.”
But URI and GAIA give Malawians a concrete means to fight the pandemic. And the thousands of URI supporters provide not only financial help but, at least as important, the reassurance to Malawians that they are not alone.
However desperate or sad the current moment, “There are a great many people very much alive in Malawi,” as Jones says, and they are keenly aware of the love and support of URI’s vast global network. What keeps them going, Thandiwe says, is “Hope: the hope that it will get better.” The people of URI are a major and absolutely indispensable source of that hope.
There are more than 300 other URI Cooperation Circles around the world, struggling, like those in Malawi, to confront some of the greatest challenges of our times. In the Philippines they have helped negotiate between rival Muslim factions. In Uganda they rescue child soldiers. In Brazil they advocate to get guns off the streets. And in Israel and Palestine, they are building deep friendships between Jews and Muslims whose families have been at war for generations.
|
