UMCOR Receives $6 million for Tsunami Relief, but Need Continues

By Linda Bloom

Posted: January 27, 2005    Print-friendly

UMNS, New York, Jan. 26, 2005: As Indonesian officials once again increased the estimated death toll from the Dec. 26 tsunami, United Methodists continued their efforts to assist the survivors. By Jan. 25, the denomination had raised $6 million for relief work. The United Methodist Committee on Relief is encouraging church members to continue making cash donations and collecting health and school kits and medicine boxes for shipment to South Asia.

Church members from Indiana and Missouri also have pledged to rebuild two Methodist churches damaged by the tsunami - providing additional space for community centers and clinics - in the Indonesian cities of Banda Aceh and Meulaboh.

BBC News reported Jan. 25 that Indonesia's health minister, Fadilah Supari, estimated more than 220,000 died or were missing and presumed dead because of the tsunami and preceding earthquake. A United Methodist delegation recently visited Aceh Province in northern Sumatra, where most of the destruction occurred, carrying donations of medicine with them.

The new estimate brings the total killed in 12 countries throughout the region - including Sri Lanka, India and Thailand - to more than 280,000.

Many of the survivors are homeless. Methodists in Indonesia are providing aid to the 8,671 internally displaced people living in 11 camps around the town of Bireuen. Children account for more than a quarter of the camp residents.

Working with the Indonesian Methodist Church, UMCOR plans to assist with cleanup in the Banda Aceh and Meulaboh areas, offer grief counseling and pastoral care, and embark on a pilot program for house replacement.

In Sri Lanka, the agency expects to work with Methodists on community-based projects that also help restore lost income for residents. UMCOR's partner in India, Churches Auxiliary for Social Action, already has provided emergency food and supplies to some 50,000 families and plans to build more than 800 temporary shelters. CASA has applied for approval to rebuild housing in 24 villages.

UMCOR has worked in partnership with Church World Service on the delivery of health and school kits to tsunami-damaged areas. Kristin Sachen, an UMCOR executive, said the ecumenical relief agency is anticipating making such deliveries for at least nine more months. "We will be helping them with the kits," she added.

Church World Service, one of UMCOR's ecumenical partners in this response, has been active in the region for more than 20 years and has more than 100 staff members in Indonesia, with offices in Medan, Banda Aceh and Jakarta. The relief agency's Pakistan emergency response team has been helping its longtime partner, the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka, respond to needs in that country.

As part of Action by Churches Together - a global alliance that also includes UMCOR and Church World Service - the National Christian Council is coordinating medical assistance to 10 camps for displaced people around Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Five of the camps are in church buildings, with about 1,800 lodged in the Methodist church.

Donated kits are processed at UMCOR's Sager Brown Depot in Baldwin, La. Gwen Redding, director of Sager Brown, reported that, as of Jan. 25, some 36,000 health kits already had been dispatched to the Church World Service warehouse in Maryland for shipment to the tsunami region.

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Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

Source: United Methodist News Service.

Students at St. Bernard Academy, a Catholic school in Nashville, Tenn., pack health kits for the United Methodist Committee on Relief. Credit: Mike DuBose/UMNS, January 2005.

How to Participate in This Response

Please give to Advance #274305 and designate "South Asia Emergency" on the memo line of your check written to UMCOR. Give through your local United Methodist church or mail contributions to: UMCOR, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Call 1-800-554-8583 to make a credit card donation.

One hundred percent of every donation to this appeal goes to support relief and recovery efforts in the disaster-stricken regions. UMCOR also needs donations of health kits, school kits, and Medicine Boxes for this response.

A Medicine Box^® contains enough over the counter and prescription medicines to treat 1,000 people for about three months. Congregations can assemble the over-the-counter drugs and contribute $350 for the remainder, or donate $425 per Medicine Box. Interchurch Medical Association assembles and ships the boxes for UMCOR. Requirements are online.

Health Kits focus on personal hygiene as a method of improving overall health. They contain soap-- the number one barrier to the spread of bacterial disease-- washcloth, sterile bandage strips, and other items. Requirements are online.

School kits contain ruled paper, blunt scissors, an eraser, a ruler, six pencils, a pencil sharpener, crayons and construction paper. Requirements are online.