Emergency Response News Briefs

January 11 , 2007 • Archive

CWS Staffer Follows Up on Support for Lebanon Response

CWS International Disaster Response and Recovery Liaison Steve Weaver just returned from a December15-23 visit to Lebanon to follow up on Church World Service support of efforts by partners, the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) and International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), in response to the war there. In addition to financial support CWS contributed 780 cartons of canned turkey and 10 Interchurch Medical Assistance Medicine boxes through the MECC and a container of CWS Health Kits and jerry cans to IOCC.

Steve visited Naba'a, an eastern suburb of Beirut, a highly populated and very poor area. CWS and MECC support has assisted the Medical Social Center of the Orthodox Bishopric of Mt. Lebanon. Mona Ghreichi, a Center social worker, said the support of the MECC, as well as the CWS canned turkey shipment, has helped the center provide food packages to families most in need of it.

DRRL Providing On-Site Training, Assistance in Alaska

Disaster Response and Recovery Liaison (DRRL) Lesli Remaly-Netter is in Alaska working with the faith community members of the state’s Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) to help build the long-term recovery groups working to address family needs from fall storms and disaster damage. Travel comes at the request and funding of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Remaly-Netter will work in concert during her Alaska visit with National VOAD Recovery Committee Chair Robert Tribble.

CWS has partnered with the National VOAD Recovery Committee to jointly distribute a listing of support resources for long-term recovery in disaster-affected communities. As has been done for more than a year, Lesli Remaly-Netter will continue to compile this listing which will now be distributed nation-wide to more than 150 state and local VOAD and long-term recovery leaders.

DRRL Tom Davis is working in Washington state to pilot the Long-term Recovery module of the forthcoming “Community Arise” curriculum. Davis will be training, in conjunction with Jay Deboer of Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, community leaders in 3 long-term recovery groups formed in the wake of fall flooding through the work of DRRL Neil Molenaar.

Roundup of Current CWS Shipments

Church World Service has sent 5,650 blankets to the Faith Gospel Foundation Church in Sokouraba (Association representant La Fondation des Eglises de plein Evangile a Sokoraba) in the west African nation of Burkina Faso.

The blankets will be used to assist residents of the community who had worked in neighboring Cote d'Ivoire but who returned because of political instability there. The blankets are needed because of the so-called “harmattan” season – marked by cold weather and dusty winds that spread diseases.