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Author: CEDAR Fund

Walking with the Refugees – An Interview with Christian Action

Banner image: (Left to right) The author, Executive Director of CA, Mrs. Cheung-Aug Siew Mei, CEDAR Staff, Jojo, and Director of CA’s Centre for Refugees, Justin Gaurav Murgai. Interviewer and Editor: Lincoln Chong Refugees are often viewed as a group of aliens in foreign lands who would only appear on the international news occasionally. The vast majority of Hong Kong people hold the same views, thinking refugees do not concern their well-developed city; yet we forget that our society was built by refugees escaping from civil wars. The waves of Vietnamese refugees in 70s to 80s were also an integral part of Hong Kong’s history. We visited the Christian Action (CA) to find out more about what Hong

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CEDAR Supporting the Refugees from South Sudan

Ever since the declaration of independence of South Sudan, the South African country was never free of ethnic and political conflicts. South Sudan’s President, Vice President, and the House Chair came from the tribe of Dinka, Bari, and Nuer—three of the largest ethnic groups of the country—respectively. The Vice President raised a coup against the President in 2013, and the political conflict quickly turned into a nation-wide civil war, involving over 20 military groups, and causing the deaths of tens of thousands of countrymen. An increasing number of regions were damaged by the violence exerted by both the government and the anti-government forces. The armed conflicts sent more and more Sudanese refugees to the neighboring Uganda, which accepted

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Myanmar Lisu Churches’ Journeying with War-ridden Ethnic Group

Banner image: A 72-year-old pastor partnering with a younger pastor to visit the refugees The Myanmar government and the anti-government forces were at war for the past 10 years. As the conflict was reinitiated in 2016, the estimated number of internally displaced population has reached 660,000. The conflicts in Kachin State alone forced close to 100,000 to flee to Yunnan, China. The peace-loving Lisu in Kachin State never took up arms, but their crops, livestock, even villagers, became resources targeted by both the Myanmar government forces and the opposing Kachin forces. The great unrest drove the Lisu away from home who became refugees in Thailand, Malaysia, India, etc.; a lot of them fled to other regions of the

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‘SHARE’ 224 – Refugee Ministry

Articles of this issue The Dwelling of God is with Men Written: Lincoln Chong, Jojo Poon In September 2015, the image of the body of the Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on the shores of Mediterranean Sea, drew the attention of the globe to the European refugee crisis and the wars in Middle East. Just a month ago in April, the equally disheartening image of a Syrian father holding the bodies of his little twins died from chemical attacks has once again stirred people’s sentiments. “Now the dwelling of God is with men,” (Revelation 21:3) This promise was not only applicable to the early Christians under Roman suppression, but also to the victims today who seem to

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The Letter from CEDAR | April 2017

Dear Friends of CEDAR, I’ve been asked “What does CEDAR do” a lot, to which I have prepared two pitches depending on the time allowed—The short and sweet, yet encompassing “Helping the poor and providing disaster relief,” and the “Reconciliation works” which is the actual personal choice if time permits. We can categorize the 70 something poverty alleviation and disaster relief projects of CEDAR into 9 categories—Humanitarian, Urban Development, Children at Risk, Anti-human Trafficking, Health, Church and Community Mobilization, Income Generation, Creation Care, and Advocacy and Education. We could all describe the specific challenges within each field, but ultimately, they are all the symptoms of our sins that broke us away from the harmony we once had, which

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Environmentally Sustainable Development in Thailand

Written by: Jojo Poon What is “development”? What kind of development will lead to better living? In what way will go by contraries? We might be able to find out more from the experience of the farming tribes in Northern Thailand. The aftermath of the Green Revolution The Lahus settled in the mountains in Northern Thailand as a result of a multi-generational search for farmable lands in the areas spanning across Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. They were caught in the Green Revolution[1] in 1960 when the Thai Government encouraged the farmers to focus on growing new types of valuable plants with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that boosted their yields. The Lahus started to homogenize the crops they grow and

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Cared for by the Creation

Author: Dr. Bernard Wong (Assistant Professor (Theological Studies) & Associate Dean, China Graduate School of Theology; CEDAR Board Member) “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not

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Sharing Land and Cultivating Lives

Traditionally, our impression towards children ministry might involve sponsoring a child or orphan in their daily expenses or education, but did you know that we could now combine children ministry with community resettlement and agricultural development? There was a rapid increase in the number of homeless and orphaned children in Myanmar due to civil wars and natural disasters in the past 60 years. CEDAR’s partner, Full Moon, started building children’s home 20 years ago to take care of the children affected by wars, disasters, and poverty. However, God has instilled a vision in Full Moon’s founder, U Ba Hla, that urged him to not only provide for the children, but to also fight for the welfare of the

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A Passion for Farming – An Interview with Hand the Farmer

Interviewer and Editor: Tsun Wan Yan In Hong Kong, we would often hear someone tell a person to “Go back to farming at your ranch” to tease one’s lack of wit. Now people don’t need to farm at a ranch, nor are they foolish to be a farmer. We found a perfect example of that in Wu Ying Luen, Hand—a young, humorous, and radiating farmer—from the Society for Indigenous Learning (SoIL) in Hong Kong, who differs greatly from our traditional image of a farmer. Hand did not grow up in a farming family, and he was just like any office young adults 4 years ago who would work in front of a computer every day from 9 to

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‘SHARE’ 223 – Agricultural Development

Articles of this issue Environmentally Sustainable Development in Thailand Written by: Jojo Poon What is “development”? What kind of development will lead to better living? In what way will go by contraries? We might be able to find out more from the experience of the farming tribes in Northern Thailand. The aftermath of the Green Revolution The Lahus settled in the mountains in Northern Thailand as a result of a multi-generational search for farmable lands in the areas spanning across Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. They were caught in the Green Revolution[1] in 1960 when the Thai Government encouraged the farmers to focus on growing new types of valuable plants with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that boosted their yields. The

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