One Great Hour of Sharing helps empower people on the margins
Annual offering transforms lives and livelihoods around the world
High in the mountains of Nepal, hundreds of remote hill villages dot the landscape in a terrain that is as precarious and vulnerable as the people themselves.
People like Dilliram Bhatta.
Bhatta, his wife, Goma, their two sons and his elderly parents live not only at the edges of society but also on the margins of disaster in the world’s 11th most earthquake-prone country.
Because the village of Gorkha, where Bhatta and his family live, has historically had no source of clean drinking water, he and the other villagers regularly walked 45 minutes down the hill to get water for their households and livestock, only to have to carry it all the way back home.
Water scarcity became even worse for the village when in April 2015 a massive earthquake hit Nepal, killing some 9,000 people and injuring nearly 22,000 others in the worst natural disaster to strike the country since 1934.
And Gorkha was the 2015 earthquake’s epicenter.
The unprecedented disaster left catastrophic damage in its wake, including the destruction of the village’s closest water supply, leaving Bhatta and the other families no choice but to travel even farther for water. Their appeals to the local government for a solution to their water crisis proved fruitless.
But Juneli Nepal — a small nonprofit run primarily by women — heard their cries.
The organization works to empower Nepalese communities and individuals by addressing such systemic issues as inadequate infrastructure and lack of access to education, skills training, health-care services, proper hygiene, basic human and women’s rights and disaster preparedness.
Following the 2015 earthquake, Juneli Nepal worked in collaboration with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and the local government to provide the village of Gorkha with its own water supply. By 2018, a total of 75 households were provided with safe, clean drinking water.
“The villagers appealed for the drinking water,” said Juneli Nepal’s president, Anjila Khadka, “and thanks to PDA we were happy and lucky to solve the problem.”
The humanitarian mission of Juneli Nepal is made possible, in part, through a grant from PDA, which is in turn supported by Presbyterians’ generous gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing.
For more than 75 years, the Offering’s purpose of helping neighbors in need around the world remains constant, giving the PC(USA) and other Christian denominations a tangible way to share God’s love. In addition to PDA, One Great Hour of Sharing also benefits the ministries of the Presbyterian Hunger Program and the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People.
Although the Offering may be taken anytime, most congregations receive it on Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday, which this year fall on April 13 and April 20, respectively.
"The work that Juneli Nepal has done in partnership with PDA is a very strong testimony of what working together looks like for sustainable change,” said PDA director the Rev. Edwin González-Castillo. “Through our joint efforts, we are able to provide not just immediate relief but long-term solutions that empower communities in Gorkha to rebuild their lives again with dignity and hope.”
Thanks to One Great Hour of Sharing, life for the villagers has continued to improve.
Khadka could see it in the faces of Bhatta’s elderly parents when they asked her to express their gratitude to the PC(USA) for helping to solve the village’s — and their family’s — water issue.
“Giving to this Offering helps build a sense of global community and solidarity, reminding Presbyterians that their contributions are part of a larger effort to bring about positive change and address systemic issues,” said Khadka. “Giving generously to One Great Hour of Sharing is a way to live out the Christian values of compassion and service. It reflects the call to love and support our neighbors, both locally and globally, without any discrimination in line with Jesus’ teachings.”
Showing up for people with disabilities
Lyndsay Sullivan knew right away that she had found her people.
It’s not that the 39-year-old California native who grew up in the Chicago suburbs went out intentionally looking for community; she just immediately recognized when she had made that life-changing connection.
“At first I didn’t know anything about the disability rights movement,” said Sullivan, who lives with a disability. “I got involved with ADAPT Chicago by someone inviting me to go to one of their meetings because I was already at Access Living for another meeting and my ride didn’t show up. Since I was just going to wait around anyway, I thought, ‘Why not?’ So, I went to the meeting, and I knew that these were the people that I had been looking for!”
ADAPT Chicago, a nonprofit dedicated to disability rights, is one of nine organizations under the umbrella of the Alliance for Community Services, a grassroots, member-led organization that is partnered with the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP), a PC(USA) ministry that similarly seeks to change the structures that perpetuate poverty, oppression and injustice.
ACS was formed about 10 years ago when public aid offices were being closed and Medicaid benefits were being cut around the state. According to the group’s coordinator, Fran Tobin, and their published mission statement, ACS works to bring together people with disabilities, low-income families and front-line service workers “to resist threats, identify common ground and put the ‘Human’ back in Human Services.”
“ACS’s work can truly be described as transformative power incarnate,” said the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of SDOP. “Their emphasis on community ownership, organizing, empowerment and self-determination are all important values shared by the ministry of SDOP.”
At the mid council level, ACS benefits from the passionate, hands-on involvement of the Presbytery of Chicago’s Committee on the Self-Development of People, co-moderated by Hope Daniels and Paul Abraham and staffed by the Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Wilson, associate executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Chicago.
“What’s extraordinary and exciting about the work of this organization is that it’s the work of people on the ground advocating for themselves,” said Wilson.
Daniels, a retired broadcast journalist, college professor and media consultant, first became involved with the presbytery’s SDOP committee during Covid. And even though their initial site visit with ACS was conducted virtually via Zoom, Daniels said that “hearing their stories was just amazing.”
“They are looking for ways to get things done politically, because people are having things done to them without being a part of the process,” said Daniels, whose background also includes professional experience in government relations. “I have seen [the musical] ‘Hamilton’ way too often. They need to be in the room where it happens!”
Reiterating the strengths highlighted by the committee, Sullivan added that the reason she stays involved with ACS is that it’s an entirely volunteer, grassroots organization, which makes her if not exactly “excited” to be disabled, then proud.
“We’re not big, but we punch above our weight,” she said. “You would look at us on paper and say, ‘How are we doing the stuff that we’re doing? How do we have a bill in the Senate? How do we have all these organizations doing all these different things?’”
In 2024, members of ACS met with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to address the inequities in the taxi industry.
“If we were able-bodied people, we could call a cab in two to three minutes,” said Sullivan, “but now we’re waiting for an hour in certain places, and that’s not right. The mayor agreed, and he said that we need to look for ways to incentivize the cabs to take more wheelchair riders.”
Because Sullivan is completely disabled, she said she considers her job to be the work she does with the Alliance and ADAPT Chicago.
“We’re not huddled in the corners and shriveling away from problems,” she said. “We are attacking these problems and finding solutions. That’s what we do.”
Healing the violence inflicted on Native bodies and lands
When Nathana Bird chose to follow a passion for community organizing, she knew she would be walking a decidedly different path from the rest of her family.
And yet, in the end, it was a path that led her right back home.
Raised in Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico, but educated some 90 miles away in Albuquerque, Bird was always hungering for deeper purpose and connection with people from backgrounds like her own.
“I was trying to find my story within the narrative of my people, to embody the wisdom that has been passed down to me from the mothers and grandmothers in my life,” said Bird. “Knowing that I could make a difference in my own community rather than in other spaces, I was into that.”
Like Bird, Talavi Denipah Cook, also originally from Ohkay Owingeh, had left home to study environmental and conservation biology but ultimately found the pull of her people — and the call to return — to be all but irresistible.
“I wanted to come back and help the people know how to connect with the earth, work to combat climate change and do better for the world,” Cook said.
Both of their journeys led them to Tewa Women United, a multicultural, multiracial, nonprofit organization founded and led by Native women, where Bird currently serves as interim executive director and Cook as program manager for Environmental Health and Justice.
Named for the Tewa concept “wi don gi mu,” which translates to “we are one,” the organization is committed to strengthening leadership for Native women and girls, addressing environmental, social, racial and gender justice concerns, shaping policy and reclaiming the people’s agricultural legacy.
TWU also resonates with the energy of youth — which, not coincidentally, is how both Bird and Cook were first introduced to the organization.
Bird started as a youth volunteer doing environmental justice organizing, and Cook learned about the work of TWU from her young cousins, who were part of the organization’s A’Gin Youth Council and the A’Gin Healthy Sexuality and Body Sovereignty project.
And it is thanks to a grant from the Presbyterian Hunger Program, made possible by Presbyterians’ generous gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing, that TWU’s life-giving initiatives bring hope and healing to Indigenous women and girls while its food justice programs help connect youth with their elders, their people’s traditions and the land.
“We are trying to break the stigma by teaching women that it’s OK for them to practice their sovereign right to live off this land as well,” Cook said of TWU’s Pueblo Women in Farming circle. “The program is especially inspiring to our younger women because when they see other women doing it, it makes them want to do it, too. They had no idea that women could do this on their own.”
Like many not-for-profits, TWU began as a grassroots effort “around a kitchen table.”
A group of women from the local communities — mainly the Tewa-speaking communities from the Pueblos — first came together in 1989 to confront systems of oppression and patriarchy. In 2001, the group incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
“From the beginning, we wanted to create a space for women to uncover their own power, and also to encourage them to use their voice to create change in the community,” Bird said. “We also have witnessed the destruction that happens on our ancestral homelands and sacred areas in our own backyard. A big part of our work is to address the violence that has been inflicted on our bodies and our land.”
And reclaiming tradition.
“When we’re exchanging seeds and exchanging the knowledge of making certain soups, dishes or holding traditional ceremonies,” observed Cook, “wow! I’ve never seen this kind of support system before or such a trading of knowledge between Pueblos.”
Jennifer R. Evans, PHP’s associate for Communications and National Partnerships, said that the program’s partnership with Tewa Women United is deeply intentional because the organization’s work is grounded in Indigenous wisdom and community values.
“By prioritizing the well-being of families, mothers, and children, they are also healing our Mother Earth,” said Evans. “Through their Food and Seed Sovereignty projects, Tewa’s Environmental Justice Program revitalizes traditional practices such as seed-saving, ensures access to culturally appropriate food, supports language restoration, and much more. By fostering these practices and empowering community members to advocate for better policies, we learn to care for both God’s people and creation more effectively.”
And as both Cook and Bird — alongside TWU’s small staff, its board and dedicated volunteers — seek to continue the legacy of their elders, they intend to stay firmly planted right where they are for the sake of Indigenous women, children and the most vulnerable.
“The land and the culture are what really make us a people here,” Cook said. “We’re special people, and to have our environment and us going through this genocide — very silent and really slow — I want future generations to have clean water and clean air and to keep practicing their dances and learning their culture.”
Future generations like Nathana Bird’s own children.
“This work inspires me because I have three daughters and one son, who also have participated in our programs,” she said. “They know this is their place and not just for me. But it’s also for all the young girls that come after me — that grow up here, participate in herbal medicine making, grow their corn, learn how to skateboard, connect back to their Tewa and cultural roots. For me, it’s about them. I started as a youth organizer and I do my best to show up for these organizers, just like someone did for me. That’s why I do the work every day, and that’s why I come back.”
You may freely reuse and distribute this article in its entirety for non-commercial purposes in any medium. Please include author attribution, photography credits, and a link to the original article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeratives 4.0 International License.
