Faith communities step up for global vaccine efforts

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This article was published 02/07/2022 (1554 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeggers may have recently noticed more than the usual number of lemonade stands set up in neighbourhoods across the city. That’s because those lemonade stands are among the micro-fundraising, youth-oriented initiatives being encouraged by Love My Neighbour (LMN), a national, multi-faith movement devoted to global COVID vaccine equity.

Sara Hildebrand, a Toronto lawyer and social activist, was inspired to create LMN early last winter after reading in scripture about Jesus miraculously feeding 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. That parable led her to question vaccine availability and accessibility in Canada, in comparison to poorer countries, and to begin researching what the United Nations was planning for its vaccine rollout in the developing world.

“I learned about the international partnership, COVAX, and its ambitious plan to provide one billion COVID vaccines doses for 500 million of the world’s poor,” Hildebrand says, “(but) I couldn’t shake the simple math calculation that only 12 per cent of the poorest half of the globe would have access to this lifesaving vaccine in 2021 according to COVAX’s plan.”

Finding that fact unacceptable, Hildebrand — who is also the founder of the social justice and advocacy organization Millennium Kids — reached out to multi-faith advisers and acquaintances across the country with the idea of organizing Canadians to pay forward their receipt of free vaccines with vaccines to lower-income nations. Upon receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those she contacted, Hildebrand organized an inaugural Zoom meeting with more than two dozen faith and NGO leaders in order to put her plan into action.

“We shared our deep discomfort with finding our country at the front of the vaccine queue while so many global neighbours might wait years to receive their vaccine,” Hildebrand says. “As faith communities, this was a social inequity we were not prepared to live with.”

LMN, which launched publicly in May, currently enjoys the support of 37 Canadian religious communities and organizations. These include churches, synagogues, mosques and parochial schools, all of which are raising awareness about or funds for the organization and its cause.

In Winnipeg, the Manitoba Islamic Association has already raised thousands of dollars in partnership with Islamic Relief Canada to purchase vaccines for Yemen and India, while the Home Street Mennonite Church fundraised for vaccines under the auspices of the Mennonite World Conference’s LMN campaign. The local church also decorated its walls with people-shaped cut-outs as a means of keeping track of the number of individuals overseas who received vaccines as a result of the congregation’s generosity.

Congregation Etz Chayim, a conservative synagogue in Winnipeg’s North End, is also becoming increasingly involved with LMN.

“I plan to encourage members of CEC to get involved with LMN’s newest fundraising campaign,” says Rabbi Kliel Rose, the synagogue’s spiritual leader.

“In addition, I intend to encourage our members to utilize the LMN Jewish resources online.”

Those online resources, developed by a group of rabbis from across Canada, feature sermon materials, a conversation guide, classroom resources, a video, a petition and a call to action, and can be used by any faith community.

Rose also continues to meet virtually with other local and national LMN representatives and religious leaders to discuss additional ways in which Canadians can help alleviate vaccine inequity.

“The world needs people of faith, people of justice and compassion to arise, to say not on our watch, and then, with feet on the ground, to act together,” Hildebrand emphasizes.

“Collective advocacy for global vaccine equity has been a defining feature of LMN right from the beginning,” she adds.

Whether that advocacy takes shape as a sermon, a petition or a lemonade stand, it sends a message and makes a difference. The purchase of a glass of lemonade for a couple dollars on a sunny summer day in Winnipeg means someone somewhere in the developing world will receive two doses of a COVID vaccine that could save their life. And that’s rewarding and refreshing news for everyone.

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