HOTLINE - week of October 03, 2005

Though Hurricane Rita didn't pack the wallop that Katrina did, it hit hard at the refinery towns of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, Texas, and left thousands of fishers, ranchers, and others in small towns and rural areas along the Texas/Louisiana coast to cope with lost property and livelihoods.

In Louisiana, low-lying fishing villages, shrimping ports, and agricultural areas from Terrebonne Parish to Calcasieu Parish on the Texas border were flooded when seawater was pushed as far as 20 miles inland. The two small villages of Cameron and Creole were virtually destroyed. And some 10,000 homes in Terrebonne Parish were destroyed or heavily damaged.

CWS is working with the faith community and other emergency responders along the Gulf Coast to provide immediate and long-term recovery assistance for families affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Thus far, CWS has provided more than $1.25 million in material assistance, including CWS Blankets, "Gift of the Heart" Health, School, and Kids Kits, Emergency Clean-Up Buckets, medical supplies, and UNICEF recreational/educational kits to assist uprooted and/or affected families and individuals in nine states. CWS is also supporting trauma care for caregivers and those directly affected by the hurricanes.

In a new, ten-state program, CWS is helping displaced hurricane survivors become self-sufficient in their new communities.

"CWS and its affiliates are adept at leveraging a wide range of community-based resources to welcome refugees and help them become self-sufficient," says Erol Kekic, Acting Director of the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program. "It's not a big leap for us to be able to adjust those resources to fit the needs of people in our own country who have also lost everything and are starting over in new places."

CWS is enlisting and training local congregations and other volunteers on ways they can provide moral and material support to evacuees. CWS will not be placing evacuees with host families, but rather will help evacuees find their own affordable transitional housing.

Support for these Gulf Hurricane Recovery efforts is urgently needed.

Violence has increased this past month in south and west Darfur, with humanitarian convoys regularly ambushed, civilians robbed, and villagers forced to flee.

In the past two years more than 2 million people in the Darfur region have been uprooted from their homes by militia violence, including the burning of villages. As many as 400,000 people have been killed or have died from hunger or disease. The U.S. Congress and others have named it genocide.

In the recent escalation, Arab militia also attacked a refugee camp, killing more than two dozen people and causing many more to flee into the mountains. African Union peacekeepers were able to restore calm to one area.

CWS partners are helping to provide a vital lifeline to people living in some of the most vulnerable parts of Darfur.

On October 6, the CWS-supported Dear Sudan campaign is supporting in an International Solidarity Fast for Darfur. The fast hopes to involve individuals and communities around the world in order to send a message that the international community recognizes its responsibility to protect the world's populations from humanitarian crises.

For more information about the Solidarity Fast for Sudan, visit www.darfurfast.org. For more on the situation in Sudan and CWS response, please visit www.churchworldservice.org/news/Sudan.

Your prayers and support - and your participation in CROP WALKS and the TOOLS & BLANKETS Program - make possible these and other life sustaining programs. For information on how to get involved, please call your Church World Service/CROP Regional Office toll-free at 1-888-CWS-CROP, that's 1-888-297-2767.

For information about free loan videos, please call 1-800-297-1516, ext. 338, or e-mail us at: videos@churchworldservice.org.

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