Nasarean effort: $50,000 and growing

The project sells lapel pins, zipper pulls and bracelets — each bearing the Arabic letter N, each black with the letter in gold — to bring attention to the crisis and raise money for Christian refugees.

They are sold online at Nasarean.org.

The Arabic N is the first letter in “Nasrani/Nasarean,” the Muslim word of contempt for Christians. The terrorist group has marked Christian homes with the Arabic letter N to identify them, much the way the Nazis marked the homes of Jews.

The project has raised about $50,000 for the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity founded more than 50 years ago to help persecuted Christians around the world. The charity now supports more than 5,000 projects in 145 countries, including refugee camps in Iraq and Syria.

Kiely marvels at how his Stowe-based fundraising project has grown so quickly.

“We’ve moved from being a mom-and-pop organization to being a national one,” Kiely said, “from giving lapel pins out at the end of Mass to sending them throughout the U.S.”

The project was already gaining momentum on Facebook and other social media when it got a big boost last month. A religion correspondent at Fox News learned about the project, and a network reporter who spent the day in Stowe. He attended a Mass celebrated by Kiely; interviewed Esbert Cardenas Jr., whose Stowe-based company Image Outfitters designed and ordered the Nasarean products; and visited the Stowe UPS Store where the orders are packed and shipped.

“They showed it on a Sunday and we went crazy,” Kiely said. “By Tuesday morning, we had 12,000 bracelets ordered and ran out of other products.”

The project’s Facebook page went from 150 likes to 1,300 likes during the same period, according to Kiely.

The project wouldn’t have been successful without the businesses and individuals who have volunteered their time and generous community residents who made donations to get the project going, Kiely said.

“It’s kind of amazing that we’ve been getting all of this stuff done with just our Stowe connection and a few people,” Kiely said.

Orders are now back to a steady trickle, but Kiely expects another surge if he’s invited to do more interviews with the national news organizations.

He plans to keep the project going. Iraqi and Syrian Christians are still fleeing to refugee camps and he expects there to be a need for aid for the foreseeable future.

“It’s still bad,” Kiely said. “In certain places it’s been pushed back, but in other places it’s pushing hard.”

Most of the displaced people are still living out in the open and in unfinished buildings. The Church in Need is working to set up schools, provide food and shelter, and meet other needs to keep the refugees from permanently leaving Christian communities have existed for as long as 2,000 years, according to Kiely.

Kiely describes the Nasarean project as “a conduit” rather than a charity. Its mission is to raise awareness and to collect money, all of which is forwarded to the Church in Need.

“It’s great knowing we’re doing a little something,” Kiely said. “People are popping up all over the place wearing our lapel pins. It’s been spreading like wildfire.”

While most orders have been placed from the U.S., there have been international orders as well.

A five-minute interview Kiely did on EWTN, the religious cable channel, prompted orders from Australia, Chile, England and Ireland.

He’s received orders from people of diverse religious backgrounds.

“You don’t have to be Catholic or even Christian to show solidarity,” Kiely said. “We had a rabbi in Florida who said, ‘We want to show our solidarity for the Christians, just as you did with Jews during the Holocaust.’ You can be an atheist and still wear the items.”

It’s important to keep a spotlight on persecuted Christians in the Middle East as news coverage wanes, Kiely said.

“It’s a very long-term story,” Kiely said. “Even if ISIS is defeated, it won’t be finished. It’s a global reality.”