Shipments of relief materials continue one year after Katrina.

On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, shipments of relief materials responding to the Gulf coast hurricanes is continuing by the Service Ministries program of the Church of the Brethren General Board. The program based at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md., prepares and ships relief supplies following disasters around the world.

This month’s shipments included hurricane response supplies for Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, sent on behalf of Church World Service (CWS). A shipment on Aug. 7 sent 716 cartons of Gift of the Heart Baby Kits, School Kits, Health Kits, blankets, and cleanup buckets.

Service Ministries staff this month also facilitated shipments to Lebanon through CWS, including a 40-foot container with 59 bales of blankets, 232 cartons of Gift of the Heart Health Kits, and seven pallets of five-gallon water jugs shipped to Beirut on Aug. 18; and at the end of the month a shipment of 40 medicine boxes. Today a shipment of 525 cartons of Gift of the Heart Health and School Kits are being picked up to ship via Mercy Flights to Jordan for Lebanon relief.

August has been a busy month for the program, which has moved tons of supplies, reported director Loretta Wolf. Staff have pulled and loaded 13 40-foot containers weighing 474,374 pounds, Wolf said. “Each pound is lifted and packed into the containers in the form of bales or cartons, the beginning of a labor-intensive process to move the requested supplies to the areas in need,” she said.

In addition to shipments to the Gulf and Lebanon, “currently three 40-foot containers of quilts for India are being loaded...110,800 pounds of quilts,” said Wolf. “We will be working on eight containers for Sierra Leone during the next two weeks.” Other shipments include more than 10,000 pounds of medicine and supplies to Azerbaijan on behalf of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, via Interchurch Medical Assistance (IMA); 10 bales of CWS blankets and seven cartons of Gift of the Heart Health Kits to Tulsa, Okla., for homeless and disadvantaged families; and container shipments of quilts, clothing, soap, and kits to Lutheran World Relief programs in Niger, Malawi, and Tanzania.

For more about the disaster relief ministries of the General Board, go to www.brethren.org/genbd/ersm/index.htm.

Source: 8/31/2006 Newsline
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