Emergency Aid Eases Burden Of War
Episcopal News Service. June 28, 1979 [79216]
NEW YORK -- The bitter civil war in Nicaragua has sent at least 50,000 refugees streaming into neighboring El Salvador and the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief has moved quickly to supply emergency aid for their needs.
The Rt. Rev. G. Edward Haynsworth must cope with both the war and the refugees since he is bishop in charge of El Salvador and holds episcopal oversight for Nicaragua. He told officials at the Episcopal Church Center that his own diocesan center in San Salvador was home for nearly 800 people who desperately needed food, medicine and shelter. The only official agency functioning in Nicaragua is the International Red Cross and Bishop Haynsworth works closely with that group.
The Fund sent two grants of $5,000 each for Red Cross work in Nicaragua and for immediate aid for the refugees and also secured a huge amount of vital drugs and medicine through the Interchurch Medical Assistance agency.
That latter body was able to purchase and ship, with a $16,000 Fund grant, drugs worth about $600,000 on the retail market. Bishop Haynsworth will arrange to have the shipment sent to Nicaragua through the Red Cross.
A tornado in Texas and Oklahoma in the Spring affected thousands of families and the Fund responded through ecumenical agencies.
A $4,000 emergency grant through the National Council of Churches' Church World Service helped the Interfaith Disaster Services group establish an 18-month long program that will coordinate relief and rebuilding efforts in Wichita Falls, Tex. That town was struck April 11 by a tornado that affected 7,231 families. An earlier grant of $5,000 was made by the Fund to the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas for immediate assistance to the Wichita Falls victims.
A grant of $2,000 helped Church World Service and the Area Interfaith Services, Inc., establish a program to help the Lawton, Okla., area which was hit by the same storm. 486 families were affected there.
In response to an Executive Council request, staff and networks of the Episcopal Church Center have been working to coordinate new refugee ministries and a $15,000 grant to the Diocese of Los Angeles provides the first pilot program for that effort.
The project will attempt to provide direct pastoral services -- and eventually to create a parish community -- for the hundreds of Indochinese refugees. It will be based in an Orange County parish which already houses an active refugee social service agency and will build on that base to create the Christian congregation. The Diocese of Los Angeles is providing $5,000 in support of the work which was developed through Los Angeles - EAST and the Asiamerica ministries office of the Church Center.
The efforts to rebuild Uganda continue to claim Church attention and the Fund was able to supply $5,000 so that a national Christian reconstruction committee could launch its work. The retreating forces of former dictator Idi Amin looted and vandalized Church offices and the grant - - made to the Anglican Church of Uganda's African Evangelistic Enterprise in Kampala -- will be used for office equipment and supplies for the reconstruction and reconciliation effort.