ELCA Promotes its Domestic Hunger Grants

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- In the past 25 years churches have learned that feeding people was not enough to solve the problem of hunger in the United States, said Gaylord M. Thomas.  The root causes of hunger would have to be addressed through relief, development and community organizing projects, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is working to improve the process it uses to fund such projects.
     Thomas, ELCA director for community development services, spoke to representatives from 46 of the church's 65 synods who met here Sept. 12-13 to learn more about the church's domestic hunger grants program and to share stories of how the process is or is not working.
     Each year on July 15 the ELCA's Division for Church in Society sends blank grant applications from Chicago to synod bishops and to organizations that have previously applied.  Applicants have until Oct. 1 to return the completed forms with budget information.  More than 600 blank applications have been sent out this year, said Amy Honore, who staffs the program.
     The division organizes the applications and sends them to the appropriate synods on Nov. 1 for review and prioritizing.  The applications are returned to the churchwide offices by Jan. 15 and reviewed by a granting committee.  Notifications and lump-sum disbursement of grants are mailed out on April 1.
     "We have very few people who are aware of the domestic hunger program in the church," Thomas said in an interview.  He called the people who came to the conference "seeds that go back into the synods to start everything - - start more communication, more awareness, more participation in the granting process, more relationship-building with the community -- the seeds for all activities around the domestic hunger program."
     The Rev. John L. Halvorson, coordinator of the ELCA World Hunger Program, noted that participants expressed some frustrations with definitions and how the churchwide offices communicated with the synod offices and with congregations about the domestic hunger grant application process.
     "We all learned from each other," said Halvorson, "and now the avenues of communication are much more open."  He said, "The people who came were eager to listen and to share their concerns.  The chemistry for the weekend was wonderful."
     Halvorson said this was the first conference of its kind since the start of the ELCA in 1988.  Participants were appointed by their synod bishops.
     "This was a training event.  This was an awareness-building event. This was an idea-exchanging event.  This was a concerns-expressing event," said Halvorson.  "With many synods the process is working smoothly.  With many there is a lot of work to do."
     The ELCA's World Hunger Appeal has been raising about $12 million a year recently to fund programs at home and abroad.  About $1.4 million or 11.9 percent of that money is distributed through domestic grants, including $816,000 awarded through the application process.
     "In 1998, the ELCA received 299 grant applications totaling $2.1 million," read a poster at the conference.  "We were able to fund 249 projects -- 125 in direct relief, 58 in community organizing, 66 in community development -- totaling $816,000.  With increased support for the Hunger Appeal, what more could we do?"
     Lita Brusick Johnson, director for the ELCA's World Hunger Appeal, asked the participants to send her ideas of how to observe the appeal's 25th anniversary in 1999.

For information contact:
Ann Hafften, Director 1-773-380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html