Brethren staff member joins coordinating group for mass care operation.

The General Board’s Emergency Response/Service Ministries has a long history of responding to disasters, and that experience is being tapped by the American Red Cross. The Red Cross mass care operation based at their headquarters in Washington, D.C., has assembled staff from key disaster response organizations to coordinate efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Disaster Child Care, a ministry of the Church of the Brethren General Board, has been asked to be a part of this vital group. Roy Winter, executive director of the Brethren Service Center and the Emergency Response/Service Ministries in New Windsor, Md., will be working out of the Red Cross headquarters on an as-needed basis.

Disaster Child Care also has been asked to deploy volunteers to family assistance centers by both FEMA and the American Red Cross. Details for this deployment are being finalized.

The Service Ministries Distribution Center at New Windsor has sent an additional shipment of relief material to Louisiana this afternoon that included Church World Service blankets.

Disaster coordinators for the Church of the Brethren districts are ready to respond when the flood waters recede, and when clean up and rebuilding can begin. “Volunteers are asked to be patient, since it may be months before the community is ready to invite us in to do rebuilding,” said Jane Yount, Brethren Disaster Response coordinator. “While we cannot send volunteers to Louisiana or Mississippi now, we have two other disaster response projects that desperately need volunteers--Pensacola, Fla., and Glencoe, Ohio.

Stan Noffsinger, general secretary of the General Board, also said that congregations may consider preparing for possible opportunities to house refugees. He anticipates that housing initiatives will be put in place by federal and state governments, and that churches will be invited to take part.

“Now is the time for patience,” Noffsinger said. Emergency personnel and aid workers on the ground “need our prayerful support, and our encouragement,” he added. “They are all working at a feverish pitch to do the right thing.”

For more about the Church of the Brethren response to Hurricane Katrina, see www.brethren.org or www.brethrendisasterresponse.org.