Hands-on skills for pastors
In this new BGR iWitness video, Jeff Palmer takes you to Delhi, India, where pastors and church planters are learning hands-on skills for community development projects in their home countries.
Kingdom Development in India
This just received from BGR international prayer coordinator Lori Funderburk: BGR has formed a partnership with a Singapore-based development organization that is establishing a farming operation in India. This farm will help support Indian workers in several states. BGR is providing community development training to 30 of their national workers from 9 states in India as well as Nepal, Bangladesh, Singapore and Bhutan. The training will be Oct. 27-29. Additionally, BGR has arranged for an expert in goat farming to come during this same time and provide some training to the farm workers in the best, most productive methods for raising a healthy herd of goats. Pray that BGR personnel will be able be effective communicators of community development principles. Pray for the success of this farm. Pray that those trained this week will take what they learn back to their places of service and that they will see Kingdom Development take place.
Ministry reaches out to families ravaged by HIV/AIDS
By Pamela Swithin
PIETERMARTIZBURG, South Africa – The HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping African nations is destroying entire families – from grandparents to children. One Christian ministry, with the help of Southern Baptists, is making a difference in the lives of thousands of adults and children.
A feeding project conducted by Tabitha Ministries in Pietermartizburg, South Africa, aims to alleviate much of the suffering caused by this deadly disease by providing food and assistance to adults and children who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
Most of Tabitha Ministries’ work is done in the surrounding community of Sweetwaters, where thousands of people are infected with HIV. Tabitha Ministries itself ministers to more than 4,714 children and 1,500 adults in that area. Because so many more people in Sweetwaters are in need, Tabitha Ministries focuses its limited resources on those whose needs are most desperate. A six-month segment of the feeding program used money provided by the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund to help 645 people children and adults with no income at a cost of about 40¢ per day.
Providing food is an important ministry strategy, according to project director Gail Trollip, not only because of the pervasive hunger in Sweetwaters, but also because AIDS patients cannot fight the disease and maintain their anti-retroviral drug treatments unless they are getting a certain level of nutrition.
“Due to the devastation caused from the AIDS pandemic, many adults and children in Sweetwaters are sick and dying from the virus,” Trollip said. “When an adult becomes ill, he is no longer able to provide for himself and has no income. When it is a child, they are unable to care for themselves, as there are no longer adults to provide for them as a result of their deaths from the virus.”
Tabitha Ministries’ community efforts are built around 29 volunteer caregivers who travel Sweetwaters’ streets, checking on patients. Some of those caregivers – called “Mobile Moms” – are women who have been specially trained to work with children, many of whom live in child-headed households because their parents’ lives were claimed by AIDS.
An important aspect of the ministry is that children who are forced into the position of being heads of their household often resort to immoral or illegal ways to provide food and care for their siblings, Trollip said. Providing food relieves some of that pressure so they don’t have to struggle to survive.
In several ways, the project exemplifies the compassion of Christ for people in need, Trollip said.
“This project only responds to those who are the poorest of the poor,” Trollip said. “These are the people who are unable to work due to the fact they are sick. The project allows children to attend school instead of going out to find ways to make money or find food for themselves and their siblings. The project is able to help keep people healthier due to better nutrition and the ability to have food in order to take their ARV’s. This project also responds to the nutritional needs of the HIV-positive caregivers, as well as the 24 AIDS orphans living at Hope Center.”
Tabitha Ministries has been working in the Sweetwaters community for almost 10 years, and each year the ministry grows as the number of those infected with HIV grows, Trollip noted. The volunteer caregivers and Mobile Moms live in the community and bring to light families in need – ones who are infected and dying from the disease and can no longer work or take care of themselves. The provision of food and assistance to these patients is essential to alleviate their suffering and for their survival.
“This ministry is a truly biblical one,” said Susan Hatfield, who with her husband, Mark, directs work in Sub-Saharan Africa for Baptist Global Response. “It helps orphans and widows in their distress, visits people who are sick and helps those who are destitute.”
The fact that Southern Baptists care enough to give to their World Hunger Fund literally makes the difference between life and death for those who receive the aid, Trollip added.
“Our grateful thanks to Southern Baptists for past assistance,” she said. “This has enabled us to serve and share Jesus with the people who are in desperate need, both physically and spiritually in the Sweetwaters Community.”
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Pamela Swithin is a collegiate correspondent for Baptist Global Response.
Donations to HIV/AIDS response projects can be made on the BGR Giving page.
Roma children flourish with WHF meals
By June Lucas
SKOPJE, Macedonia – Roma children commonly watch from the public school yard as their classmates purchase snacks during the lunch hour. Many of the Roma children will wait several more hours for their single meal of the day – which most likely will consist mainly of bread.
The Roma are among the poorest people in Europe. In Macedonia, the unemployment rate among the nearly 200,000 Roma is around 80 percent. Children from these families commonly suffer malnutrition, evident in anemia, hair loss, loss of skin color, and increasing occurrence of tuberculosis. Bread, which is both inexpensive and filling, makes up the bulk of their diet, but it does not provide the protein and many of the vitamins the children need.
A lunch program, supported by Southern Baptists through their World Hunger Fund, helps fill the rumbling stomachs of nearly 400 Roma schoolchildren each day.
The meal program, modeled on the Headstart program in the United States, was identified as a way to counter the effects of hunger on Roma schoolchildren. Children who are hungry throughout the school day also suffer from lack of concentration and attention span and decreased retention of material. Through the initiative, conducted in partnership with Baptist Global Response, 400 Roma children were provided three meals a week, consisting of milk, an egg, bread and chocolate-covered raisins or peanuts.
The lunches are served in two education centers that help prepare Roma children for school and assist them with homework once they begin school. One center serves about 300 children daily in Topana, the oldest Roma community in Macedonia’s capital, Skopje. The other center, located in Shutka, the largest of Skopje’s Roma communities, hosts 75 to 100 children a day.
Field partners working with the project are going to be able to literally measure the impact of the program.
“One of the things we are doing in conjunction with this project is compiling statistics of various physical measurements – height, weight, arm measurements, general physical health – as well as looking at scholastic results,” project director Betty Easter said. She explained the measurements were taken at the start of the project in March, again in June and in September, and also will be taken at the end of the meal program. A report detailing the impact of the project will be written from those measurements.
Emily Harrison, who also helps with the project, said some Roma children initially resisted the meal.
“It took a little while for the children to warm up to us,” Harrison said. “There were many days in the beginning where the more prideful ones refused to eat. But after some time, they began to show a little more gratitude and desire to be there.”
Harrison said Igber, an older woman from the community, helped facilitate a friendlier relationship between the Roma children and the field partners involved in the project. Igber played music for the children and encouraged them to dance before the meal, and her storytelling kept the children quiet as they ate.
The meals have opened up relationships that extend into the larger Roma community.
“I love serving these kids,” Harrison said. “My favorite job is handing them their dessert on the way out. Usually it’s a piece of fruit, but getting to look each one in the face and say ‘Bye’ or ‘Have a great day’ or ‘See you later’ is so fun.
“After about a month of it last semester, I started to notice the kids would look me in the face right back …. Now it has grown to be where they will yell my name and chase me down in the street to say ‘Hi.’ Oftentimes when I am stopped, talking to a child or two, their parent will cross our path and invite me into their home.”
The initiative is an excellent example of the way Southern Baptist gifts to their World Hunger Fund open the door for disadvantaged children to discover lives of meaning and purpose, said Jim Brown, U.S. director for Baptist Global response.
“Every dollar given to the World Hunger Fund is used solely for ministry purposes, because Southern Baptists cover administrative costs through other giving channels,” Brown said. “Through ministries like this meal program, children in need experience the love of God for themselves – because people who care are willing to give.”
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June Lucas is a collegiate correspondent for Baptist Global Response. For information on giving to the World Hunger Fund, please visit the BGR Giving page.
Manila relief teams ‘git busy and git ‘er done’
MANILA, Philippines – Thirty Southern Baptist disaster relief specialists have completed a week’s labor in the Philippines capital, helping local partners and community residents dig out from a flood that inundated vast sections of the city.
Faced with monumental disaster, residents of Manila hardly knew where to begin trying to put their lives back together. (Photo/Gloria Fern)
“The past few weeks have been filled with disaster, starting with 16 inches of rain in one day that left metro Manila 80 percent flooded,” said Gloria Fern, a Southern Baptist field partner in the Philippines. “Then a typhoon made landfall three times up north, flooding out the top part of Luzon and destroying the entire rice crop. Landslides cut off the major roads, the major dams are all full and gates had to be opened, causing more flooding. The Luguna de Bay lake left surrounded towns in knee-deep flooding that will take five months to subside. And there are two more storms on the horizon.”
The Philippines government has estimated about 6 million people were affected by typhoons Ketsana and Parma. More than 287,000 people remain in evacuation centers.
The Southern Baptist volunteers – 29 men and one woman from Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky – have been helping local residents shovel out their homes, enduring difficult work conditions and the stench of rotting debris, Fern said. Some of the work has been done in pastors’ homes and church buildings, while the rest has focused on the community in general. A public school was on the agenda for Oct. 12.
“We took them to Malanday, Marikina, which was flooded up to the second story in many areas,” Fern said. “I was so impressed with their expertise, commitment and just good old ‘git busy and git ‘er done’ attitude! And yet taking time to talk to people and even pass out lollipops to the kids.
“The smell was putrid, rotting two-weeks-old sewer and garbage – yet everyone there smiled and chatted with us like it was just another normal day,” Fern added. “We are so proud to see these brave, rugged Baptist men who are trained to go to some of the worst diasters ever and clean up!”
Southern Baptist disaster relief specialists get to work in Manila, helping residents dig out after flooding that inundated 80 percent of the city. (Photo/Gloria Fern)
One volunteer, Ray Fultz of Crestwood Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., was injured when a nail pierced the middle finger of his right hand while he was helping clean out a church building, according to Kathy North, another Southern Baptist field partner in the Philippines. While Fultz was up to date on his tetanus shots, the finger became infected over the weekend and a doctor was tending to the wound.
Flooding often is followed by severe medical concerns and that is the case in Manila, noted Jim Brown, U.S. director for Baptist Global Response.
“News reports indicate the water is still waist-deep, even chest-deep in places,” Brown said. “It has been standing for three weeks now. The longer water stagnates, the greater the risk of diseases like malaria, dengue fever, diarrhea – even typhoid.”
Fern echoed that concern: “The cities of Marikina, Cainta, Pasig are in dire need of medical teams, but even before that they need front loaders and more dump trucks to even make a dent in the mounds and mounds of garbage heaped less than a foot from their doors.”
Residents of the community where the volunteers are working have been deeply moved by the fact that Southern Baptists care enough to come help people in need, even in the most difficult of circumstances, Fern said.
“Thank you for caring about our fellow Christians in this community and the lost people around them,” she said.
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To help with the cost of the Philippines relief effort, contributions may be made to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund or BGR’s Disaster Response Fund by clicking here.
More photos from Manila may be found on Gloria Fern’s Facebook site.
India flood disaster prompts emergency response
A vast multitude of poor villagers in southern India are trekking back to washed-out homes and ruined farmlands after the worst rains in 100 years set off devastating floods in early October.
Southern Baptist field partners are assessing needs and preparing an emergency response for some of the estimated 1.5 million people who are leaving relief camps to see what, if anything is left of their homes, said Francis Horton, who with his wife, Angie, directs work in Central and South Asia for Baptist Global Response.
“Local partners tell me conditions are very bad and it appears the principal needs right now are emergency food and water,” Horton said. “Please pray for the affected people in this area to get the relief they need. The state of Karnataka has been a focal point for persecution of Christians this past year.”
About 300 people are confirmed dead and thousands more are missing in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka states, according to news reports. The floods came just as many farmers had planted winter crops – much of which now has been washed away or damaged. To compound the problem, family food stores were destroyed with their homes, leaving many people with nothing to eat.
The area had been suffering from months of drought before the week of torrential downpours that caused the flooding.
“We’re able to respond quickly in emergencies like this because Southern Baptists have given so generously to their World Hunger Fund and disaster response. They are truly people who care about people in need,” said Jim Brown, BGR’s U.S. director. “With so many disasters in recent weeks, we hope they will make an extra effort to reach out to the millions of people in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines who need to experience the compassion of Jesus Christ in their time of need.”
Updates on the relief effort will be available at gobgr.org, along with information on how to give to Southern Baptist disaster response and the World Hunger Fund.
Prayer call issued as Asia disaster trauma deepens
Traumatized residents of the Philippines and Indonesia face more difficulty as another strong earthquake rocked Sumatra and a new – even stronger – typhoon is bearing down on the Philippines.
Read more at http://www.baptistglobalresponse.com/new/details.php?id=87
Relief teams gear up for Philippines
Southern Baptists are gearing up a major disaster response in the wake of a typhoon that flooded the homes of 2.3 million people in the Philippines.
Read about it here.
‘Major’ disaster response underway for Philippines
MANILA, Philippines – Southern Baptists are gearing up a major disaster response in the wake of a typhoon that flooded nearly 2 million homes in the Philippines.
Typhoon Ketsana slammed into Manila and surrounding provinces Sept. 26, dumping a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours. Relief organizations say it is the country’s worst flooding in 40 years. At least 284 people have been reported dead or missing and nearly 380,000 people have sought shelter in evacuation centers, according to news reports.
Southern Baptists are assessing ways to address relief needs in the wake of the storm, said Jim Brown, U.S. director for Baptist Global Response. The organization is communicating with ministry partners in the Philippines and interacting with Southern Baptist disaster relief teams on standby for emergency response.
“Local ministry partners went to work immediately after the storm, providing emergency food and water provided by the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund,” Brown said. “After receiving preliminary assessment information from local field partners, we are gearing up for a major response in the wake of this typhoon.”
Contributions toward the relief effort can be made here. Updates on relief efforts can be monitored by signing up for BGR’s AlertNet newsletter at http://gobgr.org.
