Love Must Act

ut relationships. As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has said, “Everything is built on relationships — real relationships where people actually get to know each other. And then shared ministry and programmatic kinds of things emerge out of that relationship." The end is love among human beings. Our roots are in The Episcopal Church, a United States-based religious denomination with a presence in 17 countries around the world and an even wider global footprint through the 80-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion, of which The Episcopal Church is part. The Episcopal Church has a strong record of supporting its international partners in many ways including through its international development agency, Episcopal Relief & Development. The Episcopal Church also has a remarkable network of schools, both in the United States and abroad, with a reputation of excellence, which provides a ready-made community of common interest having significant gifts and experience to offer. Our partnerships for sustainable education begin with relationships. Working through The Episcopal Church and the other Churches of the Anglican Communion, we recruit and prepare a community in North America — a congregation, diocese, or another group — to form a relationship with a similar community overseas. We bring the communities together to get to know each other, including in person, investing time and effort to build genuine friendship and trust around the principle that each community has riches to share with the other, be they spiritual, financial, or something else. Everyone brings something others need. Working with the partnered communities, we then identify and develop a project, normally the building and operation of a school in the overseas partner community, that will be the focus of sustainable-education partnership. We assist the American partner community with raising the necessary funds to complete the project, and provide technical expertise to carry out the project through an asset-based approach, which uses the pre-existing skills and strengths of the communities in order to foster local ownership, self-sustainability, and freedom from poverty. In all aspects of the work, we emphasize measurable deliverables for programmatic success and spiritual transformation in both of the partnership communities.