PWRDF Strategic Themes
Based on the 2001-4 Strategic Plan
Our Vision: Restoring Community
The restoration of community is at the heart of the faith-based vision of PWRDF. As a Christian agency for development, relief and justice, PWRDF is built on a call to humanity to love one another as God loves us. Love calls us to build, maintain and restore communities here on earth that are good and lasting.
In every part of the world, communities are at risk from the economic and political forces that are described as the trend of 'globalization'. With unprecedented speed and scope these neo-liberal policies vastly enrich the fortunes of a few and result in the exclusion and powerlessness of the world's majority. As the divide between rich and poor grows deeper, globalization erodes sovereignty, culture, and opportunities for meaningful participation, and at the same time, increases poverty, marginalization, and despair.
Beyond its impact on human community, the ecological consequences of globalization, including the rise in industrial pollution and the impact of the re-orientation of farming economies for cash crops, are devastating the earth. More than a question of economics and even of politics, this situation is a matter of theology.
As people of faith, we are called to articulate an alternative vision - God's ancient dream for fullness of life, to resist the forces that deny life and steal hope, and to affirm the biblical value of the precedence of community.
The vision of Jubilee, God's ancient dream of liberation for peoples and the earth, is rooted in the promise of creation, of abundance of life, of life in its fullness - entirely opposite from the survivalist rules of the market. The Jubilee legislation is a model of 'sabbath economics' or 'moral economy', based on the premise that economy is meant to serve people and the earth, not the reverse.
Restoring Community: Our Companions in the Journey
We find hope in this ancient scheme in the knowledge that we are not the first, nor the last, nor the only people to find our voices in the song of Jubilee. The song has travelled through the ages, and lived in the historical memory of oppressed peoples from the communities in the Acts of the Apostles, to the movements in the early industrial world against privatization, and to the struggles of peoples to resist slavery. There are also many present day companions in the journey of hope among people of faith across the globe who find the Jubilee to be a great vision for social and economic justice and ecological renewal.
Nourished by this shared vision PWRDF will work in partnership with the "Global South" - the world's majority who bear the burden of intolerance and inequity - "to strive for justice and peace and to respect the dignity of every human being". (Baptismal covenant, Book of Alternative Services, p. 159). This strategy of inclusion will ensure the empowerment of women and enhance gender equality at all levels of programs, decision-making, in families, in community and in society. It will promote development and participation within Indigenous Peoples' communities in Canada and in the South, affirming their traditional rights and supporting their control of their own destiny. PWRDF's Youth initiative will include participation by youth in social justice work and international development, in Canada and overseas. PWRDF will work in partnership to empower the poor, and to seek to redress those injustices that keep people impoverished, while enabling them to meet themselves their basic needs (for sufficient food, clean water, primary health care, etc.) PWRDF will also accompany Uprooted People, including victims of disasters, refugees, internally displaced people, and migrant workers. We will work with them in defense of their rights, ensuring their security, and supporting their empowerment.
Restoring Community: A Commitment to Act
For PWRDF, Restoring Community involves sharing wealth from Canada with people from the South through its International Community Development Grants Program, based on mutuality of interests, partnership, and shared decision-making. Through ecumenical partnerships in Canada we will engage people in the North and the South in the re-creation of right relationships through awareness-raising and education so people better understand the forces that affect their lives and break community, and how they can restore the earth. At times, it will be necessary to speak out and to advocate for policy changes that favour the marginalized and poor rather than exclusively the rich and powerful of the world. It will involve bringing together people in North-South and South-South Exchanges and networks. And it will involve supporting practical acts of solidarity that restore community and contribute to the creation of a more just world.
This partnership journey will take us beyond the church walls to places that may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable. However, we travel with the knowledge that it is God who calls us and has been there before us, and that we do not travel lone. Our fore-bearers have set us on this path and we are joined by people of hope everywhere who seek transformation and restoration of the whole inhabited earth.
Our Strategic Themes
Restoring Community: Three Ways Forward
PWRDF will be accompanied in this common, holy task to repair the world by many partners and fellow travellers both in Canada and in the South. In this shared journey together, three broad categories will guide the force of our commitment over the next triennium as we Weave a Culture of Peace, Accompany Communities in Crisis and Build a Moral Economy.
Weaving A Culture of Peace with Justice
Goal: To advance peace with justice, human rights and democracy in the global South and North
God's dream for fullness of life is also a dream of peace with justice, yet on every continent justice and peace remain life and death issues, with millions of lives at risk. The World Council of Churches has declared 2001-2010 the 'Decade to Overcome Violence.' The United Nations has declared the same decade the 'United Nations Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World.' Peace is both simple and complex, but PWRDF's definition of peace is more than tranquility or the absence of war. Peace is a fabric of many threads spun from justice, cooperation, and understanding.
Advancing peace with justice may provoke conflict as injustice is challenged, but peace yearns for healthy living in healthy communities; and it is the process of transforming division and conflict into constructive relationships.
Every society has its particular ways of promoting and realizing peace. Western models of peace-making are not automatically effective in other cultures.
Peace shapes our individual relationships, social groups, communities, countries and our world. It is inclusive and thrives when the dignity of each woman and man is affirmed and all can participate equally in the decisions that shape our lives and partake of life's blessings. It is economic, social, cultural, civil, political and ultimately spiritual.
Equitable participation of all groups in the fabric of daily life is necessary if peace and full human dignity are to be a reality. Therefore, work to advance peace, human rights and democracy must embody principles of inclusion. Gender is the first of these principles as, in almost every society, men enjoy more privileges than women. However, racial, ethnic, religious, and social minorities are also frequently marginalized and majorities are at times disenfranchised. PWRDF'S work will actively promote this inclusion, and in particular will support the voices of the marginalized. The emphasis on restoring community, on transforming gender and other inequities, will be evident in our policies and governance structures, and in every region and function of our work. "Space" will be supported for the marginalized to support peace, promote and defend Human Rights, and advance democracy, as well as for exchange, learning and developing global solidarity.
Accompanying Communities in Crisis
Goal: To reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen capacities of communities in crisis
As a Christian development organization, PWRDF affirms the sacredness of life. The biblical values of sanctity of creation, love, justice and peace compel us to accompany communities in crisis in their suffering, their struggles and their hopes for peace and life with dignity.
On every continent, there are communities in crisis where people's lives have been severely or totally disrupted due to natural or human made disasters and/or oppressive, unjust or ill-advised socio-economic, political and environmental policies and practices. The consequences of such a disruption are severest on impoverished and marginalized peoples. Where social networks are disrupted, people's vulnerability and their capacity to cope are severely weakened. The destruction of social networks puts women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities at even greater risk.
Despite the disruption to their lives and increased vulnerability, communities in crisis bring to their new situations coping mechanisms, strategies for survival, skills, strengths, wisdom and knowledge. PWRDF affirms this. Thus, its accompaniment of communities in crisis does not start from ground zero but builds on a lifetime of experience, values, behavior pattern and traditions of communities who have survived and continue to survive immense challenges.
Accompaniment of communities in crisis involves meeting basic needs and supporting programs that aim to reduce people's vulnerabilities and strengthen their capacities to cope with disruptions. It, likewise, calls us to bear prophetic witness, to stand for the rights of the dispossessed and the voiceless and seek solutions to the systemic causes of crisis.
Building a Moral Economy
Goal: To advance people-centered, equitable and ecologically sustainable political economies in the global South and North.
The basic vision that guides our work around economic justice will hold up the following principles:
- We do this work in response to God's call for restorative justice, in an attempt to build hope for all. A moral economy celebrates the vision of abundant life, which we seek to create, as menders of the earth and repairers of the breach.
- God's economy is an economy of abundance, not one of scarcity.
- Due to the vast accumulation of wealth by the few, part of our work involves redistribution of that wealth, and promotion of an economy of enough.
- PWRDF seeks to promote the positive transition of the current economic system into a system that provides hope to all. In order to do this, we must empower a global response from the grassroots, calling for change.
- In order to promote sustainable changes in our economic system, we must also support the formation of new alliances and partnerships. In furtherance of a more holistic approach to the economy, PWRDF seeks to facilitate new linkages between those working at the microeconomic level, and those working at the macroeconomic level-both within and between regions.
Weaving A Culture of Peace with Justice
Goal: To advance peace with justice, human rights and democracy in the global South and North
God's dream for fullness of life is also a dream of peace with justice, yet on every continent justice and peace remain life and death issues, with millions of lives at risk. The World Council of Churches has declared 2001-2010 the 'Decade to Overcome Violence.' The United Nations has declared the same decade the 'United Nations Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World.' Peace is both simple and complex, but PWRDF's definition of peace is more than tranquility or the absence of war. Peace is a fabric of many threads spun from justice, cooperation, and understanding.
Advancing peace with justice may provoke conflict as injustice is challenged, but peace yearns for healthy living in healthy communities; and it is the process of transforming division and conflict into constructive relationships.
Every society has its particular ways of promoting and realizing peace. Western models of peace-making are not automatically effective in other cultures.
Peace shapes our individual relationships, social groups, communities, countries and our world. It is inclusive and thrives when the dignity of each woman and man is affirmed and all can participate equally in the decisions that shape our lives and partake of life's blessings. It is economic, social, cultural, civil, political and ultimately spiritual.
Equitable participation of all groups in the fabric of daily life is necessary if peace and full human dignity are to be a reality. Therefore, work to advance peace, human rights and democracy must embody principles of inclusion. Gender is the first of these principles as, in almost every society, men enjoy more privileges than women. However, racial, ethnic, religious, and social minorities are also frequently marginalized and majorities are at times disenfranchised. PWRDF'S work will actively promote this inclusion, and in particular will support the voices of the marginalized. The emphasis on restoring community, on transforming gender and other inequities, will be evident in our policies and governance structures, and in every region and function of our work. "Space" will be supported for the marginalized to support peace, promote and defend Human Rights, and advance democracy, as well as for exchange, learning and developing global solidarity.
Accompanying Communities in Crisis
Goal: To reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen capacities of communities in crisis
As a Christian development organization, PWRDF affirms the sacredness of life. The biblical values of sanctity of creation, love, justice and peace compel us to accompany communities in crisis in their suffering, their struggles and their hopes for peace and life with dignity.
On every continent, there are communities in crisis where people's lives have been severely or totally disrupted due to natural or human made disasters and/or oppressive, unjust or ill-advised socio-economic, political and environmental policies and practices. The consequences of such a disruption are severest on impoverished and marginalized peoples. Where social networks are disrupted, people's vulnerability and their capacity to cope are severely weakened. The destruction of social networks puts women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities at even greater risk.
Despite the disruption to their lives and increased vulnerability, communities in crisis bring to their new situations coping mechanisms, strategies for survival, skills, strengths, wisdom and knowledge. PWRDF affirms this. Thus, its accompaniment of communities in crisis does not start from ground zero but builds on a lifetime of experience, values, behavior pattern and traditions of communities who have survived and continue to survive immense challenges.
Accompaniment of communities in crisis involves meeting basic needs and supporting programs that aim to reduce people's vulnerabilities and strengthen their capacities to cope with disruptions. It, likewise, calls us to bear prophetic witness, to stand for the rights of the dispossessed and the voiceless and seek solutions to the systemic causes of crisis.
Building a Moral Economy
Goal: To advance people-centered, equitable and ecologically sustainable political economies in the global South and North.
The basic vision that guides our work around economic justice will hold up the following principles:
- We do this work in response to God's call for restorative justice, in an attempt to build hope for all. A moral economy celebrates the vision of abundant life, which we seek to create, as menders of the earth and repairers of the breach.
- God's economy is an economy of abundance, not one of scarcity.
- Due to the vast accumulation of wealth by the few, part of our work involves redistribution of that wealth, and promotion of an economy of enough.
- PWRDF seeks to promote the positive transition of the current economic system into a system that provides hope to all. In order to do this, we must empower a global response from the grassroots, calling for change.
- In order to promote sustainable changes in our economic system, we must also support the formation of new alliances and partnerships. In furtherance of a more holistic approach to the economy, PWRDF seeks to facilitate new linkages between those working at the microeconomic level, and those working at the macroeconomic level-both within and between regions.
