Dear Friends,
 Today the Nobel Peace Committee announced this year's peace prize recipient, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The Fellowship of Reconciliation congratulates OPCW for this achievement, and in so doing we also pay tribute today to Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu, who turned 82 years old this week.
In honor of our long-time friend, the Fellowship of Reconciliation has reached out halfway around the world to support one of Bishop Tutu's favorite causes, a South African microenterprise project launched by local craftswomen called Zuko Dolls.
Zuko Dolls grew out of a sewing group formed more than 30 years ago to teach South African women a marketable skill. The group, originally named Masiphatisane ("let us all work together"), learned sewing skills by creating patchwork, jackets, bags, and table mats. As their skills became more refined, the Zuko Dolls were born, with the dream that the dolls would eventually become a dependable source of income for the women.
As a special thanks to our supporters who donate $150 or more in response to this message, FOR will send you this unique Bishop Desmond Tutu doll, handmade by South African women artisans from the Zuko Dolls collective and endorsed by Bishop Tutu.
 I am so excited that FOR has the privilege of offering these one-of-a-kind dolls in the likeness of a beloved peacemaker I have esteemed throughout my life.
As a youth, during South Africa’s apartheid era, my family’s church in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. had a “sister” relationship with a small rural congregation in the Anglican Diocese of Johannesburg. In those early years the diocese's cathedral dean was an inspiring preacher-organizer named Desmond Tutu (when I was a teenager, he became its first black bishop). Our Hudson Valley parish was among a network of churches that helped South Africans receive respite and recuperate from the trauma of the conflict.
As a university student in the mid-1980s, I became deeply committed to the global solidarity struggle: taking South Africa courses, doing research at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility on multinationals that helped prop up the white racist apartheid state, and helping mobilize activists on campus. We nonviolently occupied our college’s administration building for weeks to protest its unwillingness to divest from U.S. corporations doing business in South Africa.
In the midst of that direct action campaign, I went to New York City with two other students to meet with then-Archbishop Tutu and received his strong endorsement for our effort. Shortly thereafter, I was arrested for the first time in my life, together with dozens of others as the police ended our civil disobedience action.
After college, in 1989, I was hired by the Episcopal Church’s national peace and justice office. We worked for racial justice and human rights worldwide, with a strong focus on South Africa and Namibia. Our office helped host Anglican leaders from that region, including Archbishop Tutu, as the transition toward a democratic nation finally approached. It was an amazing time; I will never forget meeting Nelson Mandela during his first U.S. visit.
 For more than half my life I had dreamed of the day I would visit South Africa. In April 2000, it finally came true when I joined a pilgrimage from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, CA, to St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. We visited the sprawling, impoverished Khayelitsha township, where hundreds of thousands of blacks lived just miles from the city’s wealthy elites. We were hosted by St. Michael’s and All Angels’ Church, which had launched an orphanage, school, crafts market, and other social services.
At the crafts market, our group of pilgrims was introduced to local artisans and musicians. Many of us were drawn to the Zuko Dolls: these beautiful handmade creations included a Bishop Tutu version, endorsed by the icon himself. It was the most wonderful doll I’d ever seen. I bought three as gifts directly from the women who made them.
 I have been blessed to return to South Africa, which I now consider a second home, three times since. In 2001, I enjoyed an amazing dinner with Bishop and Mrs. Tutu in 2001 at the home of the dean of St. George's Cathedral. Most recently I went back to Cape Town in 2012 and reconnected with the Zuko Dolls collective. We talked about how difficult the local economy had become due to the global recession and the deep devaluation of South Africa’s currency (the Rand) against the dollar and Euro, and I envisioned a large purchase through the Fellowship of Reconciliation to support their microenterprise initiative.
Now, that vision has come to reality. A limited quantity of handmade, 20-inch-tall, Bishop Desmond Tutu dolls are in Nyack, N.Y., and one will be yours with a special gift of $150 or more to FOR. My four-year-old child loves his Bishop Tutu doll, as his older cousin loved the one I first brought home 13 years ago.
Help us pay tribute to Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu, on the occasion of his 82nd birthday, by honoring the handiwork of the Zuko Dolls craftswomen with your generous gift to FOR.
Support our ongoing work for truth and reconciliation as we have supported Bishop Tutu's prophetic vision of truth and reconciliation.
As the end-of-year holiday season approaches, the Tutu dolls provide an opportunity to share your commitment to truth and reconciliation as a gift to a special person. This limited offer is available through October, as supplies last.
In peace,
 Ethan Vesely-Flad
Director of Communications
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Photos:
(1) Bishop Desmond Tutu, August 2001, by Ethan Vesely-Flad at the centennial celebration of St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town.
(2) Bishop Tutu Dolls, courtesy of the Zuko Dolls collective, from Estelle Wools-King.
(3) Irene, the "chief dollmaker" of the Bishop Tutu dolls (left), with her fellow artisan daughter (center) and craftswoman/bookkeeper Ethel (right).
(4) Ethan Vesely-Flad with Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nomalizo Leah Tutu, at home of the Very Rev. Rowan Smith, then-dean of St. George's Cathedral, August 2001. |
