What’s the Buzz?
A new regular column about what’s being served at the World Peace Café

May 2008
Grace Girls Home and Elder Care Center
By Ruth Ann Church

The World Peace Café is excited to offer a unique and direct way to help children in need in the month of May. Donations this month will support Grace Girls Home and Elder Care Center in Trincomalee Sri Lanka. Help is urgently needed, since in the last few weeks difficult cuts in programs and operating costs had to made, including reducing the frequency of meat and vegetables in the meals for the children and elders. The on-going civil war and decreased donations over the past year has resulted in a $35,000 deficit.

The goal of the World Peace Café this month is to raise at least $200 to support getting some veggies back on the plates of the 100 girls who live there, and also to fund the start of a vegetable garden, so that vegetables can be grown at the facility. If any gardeners out there read this and feel inspired to help directly, an Ann Arbor group is currently organizing to go visit Grace Girls Home in July 2008. (Contact the FUMC church office for contact info for Dr. Naresh Gunaratnam.)

Grace Girls Home and Elder Care Center was founded in 2002 and serves as a refuge for 100 girls and 40 elders who are victims of the 25 year Sri Lankan civil war.  It also provides daily daycare for 50 children from a refugee camp, hosts an onsite vocational training school for 60 girls over age 18 and hosts a widows empowerment program that provides microcredit loans.  The facility is supported entirely by donations and is sponsored by the California based charity VeAhavta (you shall love in Hebrew).  Dr. Naresh Gunaratnam of FUMC and over 30 people from the Ann Arbor community have worked on multiple educational, medical and relief projects at Grace.  The facility which is built near a beach was severely damaged by the 2004 Tsunami, however was rebuilt with the help of our community.

Please consider supporting Grace Home by buying adding your donation to the World Peace Café buckets during Connections time (10:30 - 11:00am on Sundays) or by sponsoring a child or elder ($30/$40 a month).  More details about Grace and sponsorship at www.you-shall-love.org.

The featured coffee this month will be Brewing Hope, from the Yachil Cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico. This regular, brewed coffee has a highly ranked flavor profile and it exemplifies a direct trade coffee relationship between the farmers of the Yachil Cooperative and Higher Grounds, a roaster in Traverse City, Michigan. The link between these two groups was facilitated by a group of University of Michigan students. One of the students got the idea to help coffee farmers during a 2002 alternative spring break trip organized by the Ecumenical Center and International Residence (ECIR) in Ann Arbor.

[Read earlier "What's the Buzz" articles ]