VALLEY FORGE, PA. (ABNS)-After a record-breaking year of aid to tsunami and hurricane victims, attention should turn to the vulnerability and need of those who might suffer in future disasters, the General Board of American Baptist Churches USA was told during its five-day meeting here this week.
Describing 2005-2006 as a period "when crises revealed the chronic," World Relief Officer Lisa Rothenberger reported to the board that the church's contributions to tsunami victims and those of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita now have topped $6.3 million, an increase of nearly $1 million since her last report in November. Most of this additional aid was for Katrina relief.
The outpouring of aid showed that "the resources are there-people gave sacrificially," Rothenberger said. "It's interesting to ponder what could happen if that continued. That's the challenge."
"It was a year when the crises revealed the chronic needs of the world. Hurricane Katrina exposed to the world the poverty in which some Americans along the Gulf Coast had been living. The tsunami revealed the plight of those barely able to eke out a living along the coastlines of Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka.
"Their exposure was defined by the poverty in which they had been living-a condition which is chronic."
The denomination's World Relief Committee, meeting during the General Board session, approved 20 projects presented by its national and international ministries boards. Eight are in the United States and 12 abroad. With projects approved earlier, American Baptists will be spending $1,700,000 on a variety of requests in 2006.
In the United States, the newly approved projects include such things as helping the homeless in Washington, D.C. ($15,000), aiding immigrant children and their families in the Norristown, Pa., area ($30,000), and providing after-school education and recreation for children in Irving, Texas ($7,000). Some programs were approved for additional money in subsequent years.
Projects overseas included helping finance a job skills program in Cambodia ($15,000), build an irrigation system in the Democratic Republic of Congo ($8,220), provide teaching and reading materials for deaf children in western China ($14,850), and support job training in Bolivia ($7,400).
One of the larger contributions was a total of $65,000 over the next three years to assist hill tribes in Thailand. Also approved was $10,000 a year for the next three years to support relief work among refugees in Thailand near the Burmese border. This is part of a much larger multi-national project to assist 150,000 Burmese, many of whom have been stranded in the refugee camps for years.
Commenting on American Baptist response to natural disasters, Rothenberger noted that nearly $3.8 million had been given through this May for Katrina victims and more than $2.5 million for tsunami survivors.
Money is spent as projects are proposed and approved in the affected areas, she explained. To date, $2.1 million of the Katrina aid has been spent or committed, and $1.4 million of that which was given for tsunami relief.
"So much of what crises like Katrina and the tsunami do is to make visible the chronic problems that are already present," Rothenberger said. "People living in substandard housing. People without access to health care, or employment, or transportation, or even safe drinking water. Can we see these people even before the next disaster strips away the veneer of normalcy?"
"Media coverage is so fragmented that we aren't always able to see the chronic needs of the world. We have a sound-bite culture. But the resources are there to help-if people choose to address these needs."
Andrew C. Jayne American Baptist Churches, USA Mission Resource Development http://www.abc-usa.org/