Like any century-old facility, Westminster’s physical plant has pressing needs that must be addressed as we look to our next 125 years. We have embarked upon a capital campaign – OUR LEGACY, OUR TURN – to take care of the most urgent needs.
Our goal for the campaign is $2,259,000. Gifts and pledges committed as of April 2019 are $1,600,000. We are deeply grateful to those who have already made a commitment. Already you can see brilliant colors streaming through the restored south window, hear the clarity and beauty of the restored organ, and find your car at night in the well lit parking lot without danger of tripping or wading through puddles! Our hundred-year-old stone exterior has been cleaned and repaired, and we have had heat all winter. The best news is that we raised over $84,000 for mission projects in 2018 and 2019.
Mission Gift Recipients
In keeping with our calling as followers of Jesus, we dedicate 10 percent of funds raised to three mission projects:
LIVING CULLY
Through its work in NE Portland’s Cully Neighborhood, Living Cully reinterprets sustainability as an anti-poverty strategy by concentrating environmental investments at the neighborhood scale and braiding those investments with traditional community development resources. Living Cully is an innovative collaboration that formed in 2010 between Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East, Hacienda Community Development Corporation, Native American Youth and Family Center, and Verde.
Westminster’s capital campaign gift to Living Cully will be used to support a new land acquisition fund. Because available land is often quickly bought, this fund will allow Living Cully to purchase land that may have once had a single family home and then to build several low income townhouses for purchase.
GUATEMALA PARTNERSHIP
For the past few years the Presbytery of Western North Carolina has overseen a microloan program for women in Guatemala, and Westminster’s funds will support this already-established program. The goal of this project is to help women find opportunity, hope, freedom, and economic resources for themselves and their families.
Examples of some of the projects funded by microloans include a special occasion cake-baking industry, a woman contracting with the local school to provide homemade snacks, and shops of goods sold at home or on portable carts.
MAJI DEVELOPMENT COALITION (MaDeCo)
Westminster member Caroline Kurtz has invited Westminster to be a partner in an international project to bring solar power to rural parts of Ethiopia.
The small town of Maji lies on the southwestern edge of the Ethiopian highlands, near the Sudan border. Today, the Ethiopian power grid ends many miles away and development has stalled. In fact, no aid or development organizations have ever worked in Maji District. Community members feel neglected and bypassed. Youth migrate to the cities looking for work. Men feel demoralized. Women do backbreaking work gardening, carrying water and wood, caring for children and the elderly, and providing food for their families. Over 60% of district households have no access to clean water. They are thrilled to have a development organization of their own.
One of the first projects of the development coalition is to bring solar power to areas that lie beyond the power grid. Westminster’s commitment to the solar power project of MaDeCo helps them move closer to their financial goal of $125,000, and helps bring light to that part of the world.
For more information about this campaign, or to make a gift or pledge, please contact one of our campaign co-chairs, Leslie Lehmann or Jack Robinson.