Newsline: Children's Disaster Services works in Oklahoma

[CoBNews <CoBNews@brethren.org>]

Newsline: Church of the Brethren News Service, News Director Cheryl 
Brumbaugh-Cayford, 800-323-8039 ext. 260, cobnews@brethren.org

Children's Disaster Services works in Oklahoma

(Aug. 10, 2012) Elgin, IL -- Children's Disaster Services (CDS) on Tuesday, 
Aug. 7, opened a child care center in Glencoe, Okla., to aid families affected 
by fires. The center is located at one of the American Red Cross Multi Agency 
Resource Centers (MARC). CDS volunteers will care for children while their 
parents apply for aid to help them put their lives back together.

CDS is a ministry of the Church of the Brethren and a program of Brethren 
Disaster Ministries. It places trained and certified volunteer teams in 
disaster areas to help care for children and families, in partnership with FEMA 
and the American Red Cross.

Wildfires in Oklahoma have destroyed at least 121 homes, said an e-mail report 
from CDS associate director Judy Bezon, received earlier this week. Myrna 
Jones, the CDS representative to Oklahoma VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active 
in Disaster) has been participating in daily conference calls that review the 
disaster, the response, and the needs of survivors.

Agencies that offer aid to disaster survivors will have space at the MARC 
facilities to offer their services, Bezon said. "In past responses, the MARC 
have been our busiest sites," she noted. "Both parents and agency volunteers 
were grateful for our presence, as having children safely in the CDS center 
freed them to concentrate on the application process without needing to tend to 
children's needs."

A CDS workshop held last November has resulted in enough certified volunteers 
in northeastern Oklahoma to support this response. The volunteers live locally 
and will drive in on a daily basis and return home at night, giving more 
volunteers a chance to serve and saving on transportation and housing costs.

The CDS response in Oklahoma is funded by a $5,000 grant from the Church of the 
Brethren's Emergency Disaster Fund.

In more news from Children's Disaster Services, the program has scheduled a 
series of workshops this fall at which prospective volunteers may receive the 
required training. CDS training events are planned for

Sept. 7-8 at Johnson City (Texas) United Methodist Church;

Oct. 5-6 at Modesto (Calif.) Church of the Brethren;

Oct. 5-6 at New Hope Christian Church in Oklahoma City, Okla.;

Oct. 12-13 at Camp Brethren Heights in Rodney, Mich.;

>Oct. 27-28 at Camp Ithiel in Gotha, Fla.; and

Nov. 2-3 at Highland Christian Church in Denver, Colo.

For more information about the training events and requirements for becoming a 
CDS volunteer, visit www.brethren.org/cds/training . Find out more about CDS at 
www.brethren.org/cds and see photos from recent CDS work at www.brethren.org 
(click for CDS and BDM albums). Give to the disaster work of the Church of the 
Brethren through donations to the Emergency Disaster Fund at 
www.brethren.org/bdm/edf.html .

The Church of the Brethren is a Christian denomination committed to continuing 
the work of Jesus peacefully and simply, and to living out its faith in 
community. The denomination is based in the Anabaptist and Pietist faith 
traditions and is one of the three Historic Peace Churches. It celebrated its 
300th anniversary in 2008. It counts some 123,000 members across the United 
States and Puerto Rico, and has missions and sister churches in Nigeria, 
Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and India.

># # #

>For more information contact:

>Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford
>Director of News Services
>Church of the Brethren
>1451 Dundee Ave., Elgin, IL 60120
>800-323-8039 ext. 260
>cobnews@brethren.org