Churches receive mailing on Brethren tsunami response.

Through partnership with Church World Service (CWS)--the global humanitarian arm of the National Council of Churches--and church organizations in the affected countries, "the Church of the Brethren was part of an immediate response" following the earthquake and tsunami in south Asia, according to Roy Winter, the General Board's director of Emergency Response.

Winter made the statement in a Jan. 6 mailing to Church of the Brethren pastors and church leaders. The mailing provided information about the Brethren tsunami relief effort and included a bulletin insert, information about how to give to the General Board's Emergency Disaster Fund, and assembly instructions for CWS Gift of the Heart Health Kits and Interchurch Medical Assistance (IMA) Medicine Boxes. The information in the mailing is posted at www.brethren.org.

"While other relief organizations are trying to mobilize staff, our local partners are responding, meeting the needs of survivors and assessing unmet needs," Winter wrote, calling it an "amazing level of response.... All these efforts are supervised by monitors and local CWS staff. This way we can ensure that our relief supplies are being distributed properly and used as intended." CWS has dispatched $1 million in immediate aid to the region and has set a goal of $5 million to be raised to support its recovery work.

Today an additional $40,000 grant from the Emergency Disaster Fund was approved for tsunami relief, which with the initial grant of $30,000 makes a total of $70,000 given in Church of the Brethren funds to date.

The day after the disaster, work began at the Brethren Service Center warehouses in New Windsor, Md., to assemble and pack material aid on behalf of CWS and IMA. Three shipments of over 35 tons of supplies were sent Jan. 4. Nine members of the center staff worked on the shipments, which included 5,000 blankets valued at $19,950 and 35,000 health kits valued at $420,120 for Indonesia; 7,875 health kits valued at $94,500 and 75 medicine boxes--providing basic medical supplies, medicines, and antibiotics for 75,000 people for a period of three months--valued at $270,000 for Sri Lanka; and 12 medicine boxes valued at $38,981.66 for Thailand.

The shipment to Thailand was prepared in a matter of hours by the board's Service Ministries staff and director Loretta Wolf following a request from CWS. The Embassy of Thailand was shipping a container of materials for the disaster survivors and IMA was able to make medicine boxes available as part of that shipment. The request came in at noon and Embassy personnel picked up the boxes at 4:30 that afternoon.

CWS assessment teams indicated humanitarian access to the province of Aceh, Indonesia, remains extremely limited, Winter reported in a Jan. 5 update on the situation in one of the worst-hit areas. "Team members describe `a tense and dispiriting situation in which most of those displaced by last week's tsunami have no shelter, experience shortage of food, no doctors, no hygiene materials, no cooking utensils and no blankets,'" he said. "Relief efforts in these very remote areas is made difficult because of limited transportation for supplies, a limited supply of fresh and clean water, and poor communication access. Nearly half of the province's residents are reported to have lost at least one relative, and trauma from the disaster has taken a serious toll on residents as they cope with the disaster. The Church of the Brethren will be working with CWS to address these needs."

"Another headline issue is all the children left homeless," he said. "CWS Indonesia is developing a proposal with local partners to provide 2,000 children who have been displaced by the disaster much-needed psychosocial activities. The program would focus on programs/activities for children ages 6-12 and in internally displaced camps located in Aceh. This will be one of several components of CWS' multi-tiered recovery effort in Aceh that the Emergency Disaster Fund grants will support."

The disaster has prompted increased giving to the Emergency Disaster Fund. Ten days after the tsunami hit, specific giving already totalled $18,165 according to LeAnn Wine, the board's director of Financial Operations. In addition, "it seems the volume of (unspecified) EDF donations coming in is higher than normal," she said.

See www.brethrendisasterresponse.org for more information. Tsunami-related resources from the National Council of Churches at www.ncccusa.org include worship and prayer resources, advice on connecting with Asian immigrant communities dealing with the tsunami aftermath, and action opportunities through FaithfulAmerica, the NCC's online advocacy ministry. Continuing coverage of the relief effort can be found at www.churchworldservice.org.

Source: 01/07/2005 Newsline