Lending a Hand

I checked the ELCA website to day to see how our denomination is responding to the natural disasters in central Asia and southern Mexico/Central America. The ELCA is working with Church World Service to respond to the earthquake crisis in Pakistan and surrounding areas, and Lutheran World Relief is also partnering with other church-affiliated relief organizations to help out.

And here's an organization that I have a special fondness for: The Central Asia Institute helps build girls' schools and fund development projects with a special eye toward empowering girls and women in the mountainous regions of central Asia. Greg Mortenson, the founder, is a mountain climber who, after climbing in the Himalayas, meeting the people and seeing the poverty and lack of opportunity there, particularly for young girls, sold all he had to help build a school. And that's how CAI got its start. Mortenson is a real-life hero whose compassionate action comes not only with a financial cost but a personal one as well, as he and his family have been threatened in various ways by reactionary mullahs and others in the areas where CAI is active.

I know many of us are on the brink of compassion fatigue in the wake of all the recent natuional disasters here and abroad, but -- $10 or $20 goes a lot farther in Pakistan or Guatemala than it does here. And you might want to consider that even some of these very poor countries nonetheless offered what little aid they could to the U.S. when Hurricane Katrina hit. So please send what you can, even if you have to reach into the depths of that scary place under your car seat, or spelunk in that kitchen drawer where you throw stuff and then forget about it, for some spare change. It all makes a difference.