Many Gifts Boost Famine Relief Aid
Episcopal News Service. March 21, 1985 [85059]
NEW YORK (DPS, March 21) -- The response of Episcopalians to the tragic famine in Africa -- including a gift from hard-pressed Philippine Episcopalians -- has enabled the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief to award nearly $320,000 to relief and development projects in Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya.
Bishop Manuel C. Lumpias said of the $271 that the Diocese of Central Philippines had collected at its convention that it was "so little that we can give, but we give it with sincerity and as our collective and united response to the call of the Presiding Bishop... to come to the aid of our suffering brothers and sisters in Africa." In responding, Canon Samir Habiby, Fund director, told Lumpias that "such a gracious gift coming from a diocese in a developing country expresses the real sense of Anglican interdependence."
The Fund uses the gifts to assist drought and famine victims through a number of channels: direct support to Anglican diocesan and provincial programs; national programs such as Ethiopia's Christian Relief and Development Agency; the massive interchurch efforts of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches relief and development agencies and independent agents such as Africare.
The largest grant in this latest round is $178,000 to an Africare project that will put two teams of medical volunteers into the Ethiopian relief camps for a year and provide them with the necessary equipment and supplies for the same period. Each team will consist of a physician, nurse, nutritionist and lab technician, and the volunteers are expected to stay for three months before rotation and replacement. The grant from the Presiding Bishop's Fund --$100,000 immediately and the remainder when the first teams are assembled -- will provide about half of the total annual funding for the project. This includes travel, vehicles, camping and hospital tents, surgical and medical supplies and support costs.
At the same time, the Fund sent $60,000 to the Christian Relief and Development Association; half through the NCC's Church World Service and half through the parallel agency of the WCC. These funds will be used both for direct relief and to provide seed, farming tools and support for a water management project for Ethiopia.
Another grant to the World Council agency --$10,000 -- will help the Kenya Council of Churches respond to the famine there, since Kenya's early requests were reportedly "not taken seriously" because that country had not been listed as one of the 24 nations most desperately affected by the drought. This was in spite of the fact that Kenyan experts had characterized the drought as the worst ever to hit their country, which has traditionally been able to feed itself and even export some food.
The Fund also has sent $30,000 directly to the Church of the Province of Kenya and anticipates sending an additional $20,000 shortly.
The last recent grant was of $40,000, with a matching sum to follow, to the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. While suffering from its own famine and civil strife, that country is host to more than a million refugees from Ethiopia and Chad. The Sudan Council of Churches runs refugee camps in the east and south and has been asked by the government to take on similar work in the western portion of the country.