Having just recently returned from a CWS staff trip to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, I am still trying to process an incredible wealth of new information, experiences, impressions, and stories. Associate Director Amy Porter and I were both part of this trip, and we were both profoundly impressed by the work of our local partners in both countries. Amy wrote up 37 pages of her notes and I’m still working through my 720 photographs, and we have yet to get through everyone else’s notes and photographs (there were nine of us including our trip leader, Don Tatlock, who is a CWS Regional Coordinator in Central America and the Caribbean)! I believe the processing will take months, but the experience will live with us for a lifetime.

I know that you would all be inspired to see, as we did, the ways in which Church World Service works with our local partners. This, as you know, is the heart and soul of what we do everywhere: working with local partners to empower people, equip communities, create sustainable development, and foster long-term relationships in which the dignity and self-worth of each person is cultivated and maintained through training, equal exchanges of ideas, and mutual respect. I’ve come back filled with inspiration at hearing the stories and testimonials of countless Haitians and Dominicans, about how their lives have been changed for the better through this work, how they are now able to make a living, send their children to school, learn to read, run a business, plant and harvest new crops, and face a promising future with hope and confidence. People couldn’t wait to tell us their stories! One man in Northwest Haiti, himself a leader in a thriving local cooperative (which was started with help from CWS and our local partner Christian Center for Integrated Development [SKDE]), stood up to tell his story and concluded with this: “We were a people walking in darkness, and now we are living in light.”

Our CROP Hunger Walks help to fund this kind of work. I’ve been a fan of Church World Service for years, but I came home from Haiti and the Dominican Republic even more convinced than ever that we do global disaster relief and sustainable development work better than anyone! You can all be proud that your work on behalf of CROP and CWS is bearing the best possible fruit in every part of the world where we are present. We’re all in it together, and together we really are making a difference!

Amy and I would be happy to come to your church to talk about our experiences in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Give us a call and we’ll set a date!

Peace & Blessings to each of you, and thank you for your continuing faithfulness on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Rev. Bert Marshall
Regional Director

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I believe in the mission of CWS because I have admired its work in the world for many years, and because I have participated in CROP Hunger Walks and find them to be one of the most outstanding vehicles I know for outreach, community-building, and effective action in the areas of peace and justice work. I am especially excited at the prospect of working ecumenically with folks in many denominations and settings toward common goals. There's nothing quite like the special exhilaration that comes at the end of a day of working and living out our biblical and historic call to compassion and service. I believe that CWS has offered me an opportunity to walk side by side with a great multitude of dedicated people everywhere who share my vision of a just and equitable world for all.”  - The Reverend Bert Marshall

Please Join us in welcoming the Reverend Bert Marshall as the new Regional Director for CWS/Northern New England!

Before joining CWS, Bert was the pastor of the First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Lee, MA.  He is a graduate of Yale University Divinity School, where upon graduation he was awarded the top prizes in “religion and the arts” and in “the public recitation of scripture”. Among his more important and highly-favored studies were two years of Biblical Hebrew and courses in the art of storytelling, narrative preaching, and the performance of Biblical texts.

A life-long singer/songwriter, Bert still writes songs and creates music for worship and other venues. He committed the Gospel of Mark to memory while on a three-month sabbatical in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2003, and now is in demand for his storytelling performance of the Gospel of Mark Alive, which he has given in dozens of churches and other venues over the past three years. In 2005, Bert also joined a group of ten CWS representatives on a ten-day journey to visit CWS projects and to celebrate 50 years of mission and ministry in Vietnam, led by CWS Regional Director Bill Wildey.

Bert is a native of Weeping Water, Nebraska, located between Omaha and Lincoln at the western edge of the dry-land corn belt, just south of the Platte River. In his younger years, he played professionally in a regionally-popular rock ‘n roll band based in Lincoln, NE. The band opened for groups such as The Who, Herman’s Hermits, The Grassroots, and the Detroit Wheels (without Mitch Ryder). In 1997, he and his band-mates (known as The Chancellors) were inducted into the Nebraska Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.

Rev. Marshall also spent ten years driving tractor-trailers for a New England health food distributor. Prior to that he apprenticed on a couple of Vermont dairy farms, co-managed with his wife a small farm and country inn in northern Vermont, and worked with troubled teenagers from New York City at a residential setting in Pleasantville, NY. The latter work was his alternative service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and was the reason for his move East from Nebraska.

Bert and Kare, his wife of thirty-two years, currently reside in Plainfield, MA. Kare is also the past coordinator of the Franklin County, MA CROP Hunger Walk, which she built into one of the the top walks in Massachusetts. Bert and Kare have two children, who are now young adults.

Welcome, Bert! We are looking forward to your leadership here in our Northern New England Region!

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Father Christopher Malatesta, pastor of St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, and The Reverend Robert R. Kyte of the First Congregational Church, both in Dalton, with a beaded cane from the Kenyan tribal elders. More information on the School Safe Zone project.

It was in December of 2004 that Bill Wildey, Regional Director of CWS/Northern New England, asked the Reverend Bob Kyte of the First Congregational Church in Dalton MA to consider sponsoring a piece of a school in Kenya for the School Safe Zone project.

Kenya has been designated as the pilot country for Church World Service’s School Safe Zones effort, part of the agency’s broader Africa Initiative. Free primary education was introduced two years ago in Kenya but is facing challenges, including insecurity, classroom congestion, lack of learning materials and desks. The School Safe Zone project will focus on primary needs such as fencing and perimeter walls to provide safety, classroom rehabilitation and teaching aids, sanitation facilities and water storage, and advocacy for girls to attend school. The cost of rehabilitation and supplies per school is $15,800.

When Bob Kyte heard what could be achieved with the money, he decided to take the project to the January clergy meeting, which is comprised of all five churches in town. Collectively, they agreed to take on the budget for rehabilitating an entire school as an ecumenical missions project.

What made it possible for the clergy to respond so quickly, according to Pastor Kyte, was that they all had previously worked together on the CROP Hunger Walk. Even though the churches – St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, Dalton United Methodist Church, Grace Episcopal Church, Berkshire First Church of the Nazarene, and First Congregational Church UCC - run the theological gamut, Kyte said there is great trust between them.

Each church took offerings for the project, and they also put on special events. Grace Episcopal Church held a spring “goods and services” auction, and voted to give one-third of the proceeds to the SSZ project. St. Agnes Church put special envelopes in the offering.

The First Congregational Church held a series of collections and events. The youth fellowship, wanting to do something on their own to help, organized a late afternoon service with contemporary workshop, reaching out to other youth in the community. The service, which they called “Take the Initiative,” raised $584 for the project. Their Vacation Bible School also took up a collection each day they were meeting, raising another $668.

Even the youngest congregants got involved. One first grader and her pre-school brother and friend put out a lemonade stand on their dead end street. Despite the shortage of traffic, when the children explained to one man and his friend who both stopped why they were raising money, a bidding war ensued, and they were able to collect $43. “Children helping children,” Kyte said.

The event that garnered the most attention in town was a very special art auction that was held on August 13. The inspiration for the auction was artist Han Hang, 23, one of Pastor Kyte’s parishioners. Hang came to him and said he didn’t have any money, but he had four paintings to donate, if that would help. The church had sponsored Hang and his family eighteen years earlier when they arrived from a refugee camp in Thailand after fleeing over the mountains from Cambodia. Now he wanted to help other children who, like him, were born into poverty.


In all, twenty local artists contributed paintings to the show. They included both professional, working artists, and beginning, student artists. The auction raised $2,665 for the School Safe Zone project.

Besides the support of the churches in town, other churches and organizations that contributed to the project included the Windsor Congregational Church, the First Church of Christ in Pittsfield, CBEC Vacation Bible School, Church Women United, students at the Berkshire Country Day School, the Pittsfield Lions Club, Dalton Lions Club, and the Dalton Rotary Club. At the end of the day, the total raised for the School Safe Zone project was $15,802.

At first, Kyte worried that the project might compete with the Dalton CROP Walk, which was scheduled for October 16. After all, Dalton, whose motto is “Heaven in the heart of the Berkshires,” is a town of just under 7,000 residents. But, in fact, the opposite happened. The CROP Walk also raised more than $16,000, the highest ever in its fifteen year history.

Surprised himself, Pastor Kyte found that what Bill Wildey had often told him in the past proved true – missions had energized the entire community. For his own church, Kyte said the members are now proud to have a reputation for being a missions-minded church, having also given generously in 2005 for tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery. He also said their own stewardship giving is up.

When Bill Wildey visited the clergy meeting in November 2005 to thank them, he presented them with a beaded cane from the Kenyan tribal elders. The cane is now being rotated among the churches as a symbolic link to the project. “We are a closer ecumenical community than we were before,” Kyte said. “Missions united us.”

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