Special Opportunity: Family Pilgrimage to Transylvania this Summer
Project Harvest Hope invites you to join our 2008 family pilgrimage to the Unitarian Homelands of Transylvania, Romania!
Unitarian Family Camp and History Pilgrimage
July 10-22, 2008
Join with UUs from across North America as we become pilgrim travelers. This trip is for families and others who would enjoy a cross-cultural camp experience and the gift of serving others. Adults will enjoy seminars and historical outings while children and youth participate in a folk camp, learning stories, songs and traditional crafts. We’ll all stay in local homes, share a work project, enjoy day trips to Unitarian historical sites, hike in the Carpathian Mountains, and visit the mysteriously beautiful cities of Transylvania.
View this program's 2008 brochure and itinerary.
For questions and/or to request a pilgrimage DVD, please email Julie.draper@comcast.net or call her at 603-531-9366.
Update on the status of our church's relationship to this program (August, 2007)
Project Harvest Hope was born in our church, fifteen years ago, from our passion to bring economic justice to our religious cousins in Transylvania. We called ourselves the Transylvania Economic Development Task Force and focused our energy on helping the village of Ok’land begin to recover from the many decades of communism and an ethnically repressive dictatorship.
The villagers wanted to control the production of their single most important food -- bread. So we helped them build a flour mill and bakery. They grew the grain; they began to mill the grain; they then were able to bake their own bread. (most homes did not have ovens that made this possible house by house). Later we helped them build a dairy farm, which along with producing high quality and saleable milk, provides some heifers to the local farmers so that the valley’s entire dairy herd will continue to improve. Remember when many of you bought the cows? Together, we bought pregnant EU certified cows so that the animal husbandry standards would be upgraded. Because of all of our work and generosity, the dairy farm, FARMA, has just received a generous grant from a EU funding agency because of the high quality of this farm. It serves as a model in the area; all thanks to friends like yourself.
The big picture is that we, here in this church, along with Rev. Levente and Eva Kelemen in Ok’land, were very intentional about forming a partnership that was designed to grow and harvest HOPE for the local farmers and villagers in Ok’land and to give them some of the tools needed to take back some control from the repressive Romanian government.
Thus, more than a decade ago, Project Harvest Hope (PHH) in the States, and Harvest Hope pro Homorod (HHpH), the name of the valley in Transylvania, began our deepening journey together.
What began in this church has grown so much larger than we ever envisioned. We are now a national non-profit, with supporters throughout North America.
PHH now has an additional partner in Transylvania, CIVITAS, founded and led by economics professor Gabor Kolumban, who is also the President of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania in Koloshvar.
This partnership has begun to recruit, train, and nurture a local grass roots organizer in each of the villages. This volunteer staff person's role is to help the villagers self-determine what economic development efforts would be best for that specific village, utilize newly developed grant writing skills to get the funding now available through the EU, and see that such projects actually happen and fully comply with the strict standards of the EU.
This is American "can do" at its best. We partner with local indigenous organizations, who do the actual training and empowerment. They utilize modern organizing techniques and skills along with centuries-old (way-pre-communist era) culturally sensitive community building and organizing techniques. We support and nurture their leadership development.
Together, Americans and Transylvanians, are encouraging the villagers to build upon their native skills and intelligence in ways that honors the villagers respect for the sustainability of their land, and their pride in their courage and history.
This all started here in the First Unitarian Church of Oakland. We should all be very proud of our vision and commitment. Stay tuned for further developments.
For more info, visit the official Harvest Hope web site.