SPECIAL REPORT

CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN SUPPORTS TSUNAMI RELIEF EFFORT OF CHURCH WORLD SERVICE.

Church of the Brethren disaster relief is supporting Church World Service (CWS) relief work in Asia following the earthquake and tsunami of Dec. 26. Enormous tidal waves swept across the Indian Ocean striking coastal regions of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, and low-lying islands that make up the Maldives. The Associated Press estimate of the death toll from the disaster stood at 67,000 on Dec. 29, reported the General Board’s Emergency Response director Roy Winter, who said that number is expected to increase in the days and weeks ahead.

CWS is focusing initial support in at least three of the hardest-hit areas in Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka; and is sending initial emergency material assistance shipments with a value of more than $900,000. It deployed an emergency assistance team Dec. 27 from its Indonesia office to aid in recovery efforts in Aceh, Indonesia, the hardest-hit area on Sumatra’s northernmost tip. CWS also deployed an emergency response team to Sri Lanka. In India, CWS is supporting regional response by longtime partner Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action. The material assistance as of Dec. 29 included 500 family shelter kits; 75 Emergency Medicine boxes that will provide basic medicines and antibiotics to 75,000 people for three months; 44,000 Gift of the Heart Health Kits; and 5,000 light-weight blankets. CWS also is undertaking regional deployment of rapid response support and emergency material airlifts of additional shelter and hygiene materials.

Acknowledging the personal struggle to face such a disaster during a time of celebration of the Savior’s birth, general secretary Stan Noffsinger urged Brethren to remember that “all who perished and all who survive are created in the mind of God, as we all have been. We feel so hopeless,” he added. “We can’t all jet off (to Asia), yet what an opportunity to show our goodwill. The appropriate people will be there. Our presence is not the gift, our unselfishness is our gift.”

The Emergency Response/Service Ministries program of the denomination’s General Board is requesting an initial grant of $30,000 from the board’s Emergency Disaster Fund to support the CWS effort, and expects to send more funds in the near future, Winter said. Staff at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md.—which warehouses relief supplies for CWS and other agencies—will be shipping light-weight blankets, health kits, and IMA medicine boxes as part of the response.

“We need churches to respond by shipping more health kits and financial support,” Winter said. “Our focus will be to purchase relief supplies closer to south Asia because of all the shipping costs when sending from the US. A good example is the family shelter kits which Church of the Brethren funding will support,” he added.

Contributions to the tsunami relief effort can be sent to the Emergency Disaster Fund, 1451 Dundee Ave., Elgin, IL 60120. For information about how to assemble Gift of the Heart Health Kits go to www.churchworldservice.org/kits. For more information about the disaster and for situation reports from Church World Service, see www.cwserp.org.

Newsline is produced by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford, director of news services for the Church of the Brethren General Board, on the first, third, and fifth Friday of each month, with other editions as needed. Newsline stories may be reprinted provided that Newsline is cited as the source.