HOTLINE - week of June 12, 2006

"My house? Oh, it's gone," says a volunteer working at the Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Chamber of Commerce. Those are words that can still be voiced by thousands of people, says Linda Reed Brown, Associate Director for CWS Domestic Emergency Response, as she cites the evidence of empty lots and destroyed homes along the Gulf Coast. The devastation remaining nine months after Hurricane Katrina speaks volumes about the daunting recovery ahead.

One family--a grandmother raising three grandchildren--living in a FEMA trailer adjacent to their destroyed home in Bayou LaBatre, Alabama, is receiving a new three-bedroom home. "Without Carol, I'd have nothing," says the grandmother about her disaster response caseworker.

The home is being built with the combined resources of several long-term recovery groups--groups that CWS helped establish and that are now addressing the needs of more than 1,400 families in the Bayou LaBatre, Coden Beach, Fowl River, and Dauphin Island areas.

Church World Service continues to respond to the needs of hurricane-affected communities. CWS has provided grants to local partners across the hurricane-affected area to assist with recovery efforts, and is partnering with Habitat for Humanity to help people repair homes damaged by the 2005 hurricanes. CWS also has helped to resettle more than 5,000 evacuees from hurricane-affected areas, provided CWS Blankets, CWS Kits, medicines, and recreation kits for affected families and communities, and grants to 13 schools in Mississippi and Louisiana for repairs and supplies.

Read more about Katrina recovery.

"We need protection. That is why we fled to Nyala," says one newly-displaced man. Over the last month, some 4,000 families have fled to Nyala, in South Darfur, to escape fighting between militia and rebel groups in Gereida and militia attacks on villages around Buram, an area that lies south of Nyala.

A young woman from the Buram area says her village was attacked three times by militia groups, forcing the villagers to flee to the surrounding bush each time. During the final attack she told her children to run, while she escaped with the family's horse, and with her youngest child on her back.

"One of the militia men followed me. Another one said that he should shoot me, but then said he would not do it because I am a woman. He only took my horse," she recounts.

"I was so scared." Her fear still evident—not only in her voice, but in her whole body language, in the way her hands slice through the air to underscore her words. "I thought I would die and that there was no way to escape."

She ended up walking for five days along with 24 other families to a town where they managed to get a bus ride to Nyala. The children took the donkeys.

"I am trying to cope with our new situation, but it is difficult. I still miss the ones that were killed," the woman says. She lost eight relatives who died during the attacks. Two of them were her brothers.

The families from this remote part of the province were unaware of the Darfur Peace Agreement, but did not put much trust in it when they were told about the talks and the recent developments around the agreement.

In Dereige Camp, a CWS local partner is assessing the group's basic needs, and will facilitate and co-ordinate the distribution of non-food items, such as plastic sheeting.

Church World Service, as part of the Action by Churches Together, ACT, coalition, is helping to meeting the humanitarian needs of families and communities uprooted by the violence in Darfur. In partnership, CWS is helping to provide food, medicines, water and sanitation, agricultural inputs and tools, as well as a supplemental feeding program for malnourished children.

Read more about the crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

CWS is assisting its partner, Developers Foundation, in providing training for 45 farming households--some 216 people--in Aklan region, southern Philippines. About half of the households are headed by women. The farmers are gaining new knowledge in hog and small livestock raising, crop diversification for commercial sale, waste management, and organic farming methods.

Purchase agreements with local markets for produce and livestock are also being negotiated, and the farmers are learning how to keep records and manage group-based production plans involving loans, skills training, and technical support services. Developers has established its own locally-based rural enterprises--including cut-flower production and marketing, wholesale rice trading, and hog production--into which small producers can channel what they raise.

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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