Tsunami Relief Efforts Foster Historic Partnerships, Internat'l Cooperation
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
January 14, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Christian ministry is partnering with an Arizona city to help those suffering in the aftermath of the Southeast Asian tsunami. At the same time, the support organization for Wycliffe Bible Translators is deeply involved in the disaster relief efforts.The City of Phoenix and Food for the Hungry, an agency that strives to ease poverty worldwide, have recently announced a partnership to adopt the Indonesian city of Meulaboh. Some of the goals of the initiative include providing intervention for orphans and their families, training members of the surviving population in new trades, and helping rebuild relations between the U.S. and Indonesia.
Matt Panos of Food for the Hungry is calling this public-private collaboration a historic partnership. "As the Mayor of Phoenix said in a press conference, this could take a decade," he says, "so it's a long-term relief operation -- or, first relief and then long-term development."
The joint initiative has been dubbed "Rise to Help," and the Food for the Hungry spokesman says it has already begun to make a difference for the people of Meulaboh. The coalition is sending the vice-mayor of Phoenix, Food for the Hungry representatives, and a member of Scottsdale Bible Church to the area as part of an assessment team to help formulate the long-term strategy for rebuilding the Indonesian city.
Panos is urging prayer for the assessment team as they gather information on the needs of Meulaboh's tsunami victims. "Approximately one-third of their residents are dead," Panos notes, "so we're actually going back in there to help rebuild the city and to bring the residents back in, and provide relief aid."
The partnership between Food for the Hungry and the City of Phoenix is an effective model that the head of the Arizona city's government is urging others to emulate. Phoenix's Mayor Phil Gordon has challenged other U.S. cities to adopt reconstruction projects throughout the area devastated by the natural disaster.
Bible Translators Offer Assistance, Interpreting, Funding
Meanwhile, a ministry that is already well established in Southeast Asia is doing its part to help in the aftermath of the tsunami tragedy. Wycliffe Associates, the support organization for Wycliffe Bible Translators, reported no injuries or deaths among its workers; but, according to the agency's president, Bruce Smith, the organization is deeply involved in the disaster relief efforts, using its expertise, connections, and agency resources in a uniquely valuable way.
"Because we've been in that region for a lot of years already," Smith explains, "we're closely working with local groups, including local churches, as part of the response. And, basically, at this point we're ready to empty our emergency fund." That fund, he notes, contains about $200,000 that Wycliffe is prepared to spend in its entirety to help.
Because they speak the languages of the tsunami victims, the Bible translators are fulfilling an important role in the disaster zone, serving as interpreters for the foreign relief workers involved in the response. The head of Wycliffe Associates recently told Associated Press that the agency's linguists have set aside their long-term projects to help facilitate communication between relief workers and victims of the devastation.
The international response has been heartwarming to survivors. However, Smith points out that although several ministries are gearing up for short-term mission trips to the disaster zone, officials in the areas hardest hit are not yet ready for an influx of visitors.
"What they don't need right now," the Wycliffe spokesman warns, "is a flood of people who are ill-equipped and unorganized just arriving into an arena that already has too few resources for the people that are in distress." He says the people going into the area to help should bring a tent, all the food they will need, and preventative health remedies to keep themselves from getting sick.
"This is not an arena into which just everybody can pack a suitcase and go," Smith asserts, but he calls the effort to assist Indonesia's tsunami survivors "a great opportunity to just be a positive impact on them as Christians." The Wycliffe Associates president says his organization had people in the stricken region before the disaster, and he expects its workers will still be serving there long after the damage has been repaired.
