It’s all over the news, the Web and social media. The images are showing up everywhere. The statistics are unbelievable, but they’re real and that’s why we keep hearing about it.

I’m talking about the drought in East Africa.

East Africa is currently facing its worst drought in 60 years; high food prices and failed crops have left millions of people at risk.

Dozens of relief organizations have rushed to the scene. They’re hard at work calculating the need, raising funds and bringing in lifesaving aid.

You’ve watched as this crisis has unfolded, you’ve been praying and now you’re ready to respond.

But wait — we have some questions from the audience:

“Where is Compassion?”

“What is Compassion doing amid this crisis?”

“How can I give to Compassion concerning the drought in East Africa?”

Inserting a donation link to our disaster relief fund and asking you to give, right now, is a timely thing to do. But before you click on the link, let me explain how this crisis is affecting our programs.

Our child development centers operate in five countries near the areas affected by the drought:

• Kenya
• Ethiopia
• Rwanda
• Tanzania
• Uganda

We do not work in Somalia, the hardest-hit country. But where we do work, our local church partners are seeing higher food prices due to poor crop yields caused by the drought. And our church partners are experiencing an influx of refugees into the areas they serve.

Because we are a holistic child development organization working through the local church our program model often protects our beneficiaries against the potentially crippling impact of famine and drought.

Our Child Survival, Child Sponsorship, and Leadership Development Programs are each designed to help meet the ongoing needs of the families, children and students we serve. The programs help our beneficiaries become self-sufficient and better able to weather disasters, such as droughts.

However, when a crisis does arise, the local churches where our child development centers are located identify the immediate and specific needs of the children, families and students we serve.

The churches have access, through our programs, to critical assistance, such as disaster relief, clean water, medical assistance, etc.

Our ministry focus is on long-term development of children from their time in the womb until an age where they’re self-sufficient. While we focus on prevention and responding to the needs of our program beneficiaries, we applaud other organizations that do widespread disaster relief.

One of these organizations is the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), one of our partners in 58:.
In addition to its major drought-response projects already underway in Kenya and Ethiopia, CRWRC is expanding its aid to Somalia.

You can learn more about CRWRC, how they are responding to the drought, and ways you can help at crcna.org.

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Ketsana hit the Philippines on a Saturday, the day when registered children gather at the student centers. But on September 26 not many arrived at Marikina Foursquare Student Center. Ketsana was already pounding hard.

However, some children did come.

Bernadette, the center director, fed them and instructed them to go home immediately. And as she planned to visit the homes of other children to give them some food because the floodwaters were rising fast, she was called by her own family. Her home was flooded too.

“What I have learned from this is not to look back on the possessions I lost, but rather focus on saving myself and my loved ones. On that day, I couldn’t attend to the needs of the children since my own home was in disarray.”

In the following days Bernadette reports that none of the children from her student center were hurt, although all of their homes were flooded, damaged in some way or destroyed completely.

The student center and its surrounding communities were completely submerged under water. And five days after the typhoon, homes and communities were still flooded, muddied, stinky and a mess.

Mirasol, a mother at the church, says,

“It is still a nightmare for me. I still vividly recall images of people being swept away by the water. I couldn’t sleep thinking that I was not able to help them as they were crying, as they were swept away towards the river. My child was crying the loudest, ‘Mother, Mother, the water is so high already!’”

Two of Mirasol’s children, Maribel and Dominic, are registered at the student center. They are safe but their home is still under water.

Miguel, another child from the student center, says he was so afraid because he got separated from his father when his father took his mother to safety first, but could not come back for Miguel and his younger brother because of the dangerously strong current.

Miguel and his brother were rescued by a neighbor, also a Compassion parent, as the boys jumped from roof to roof. They were reunited with their parents the next day at the church, but their tiny home was washed away completely.

Miguel’s father confesses,

“I pounded on my heart in anguish, crying. I was thinking of my boys all the time. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to look for them several times. I even waded back and forth in the water calling out for my sons.”

But despite the situation he and his family now find themselves in, Miguel’s father says,

“I won’t complain because I still have what truly matters.”

His family.

When natural disasters strike, Compassion’s Disaster Relief Fund provides sponsored children and their families with food, clothing and basic supplies to help rebuild their lives. Learn more about the Disaster Relief Fund.

*Editor’s note: In the wake of a disaster we contact each sponsor who has a child affected by that disaster. We do so once we receive details from the country office about the child. If your child was affected by either Typhoon Ketsana or Typhoon Parma, you will be contacted when we receive information about your child.

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Banda Aceh was one of those communities devastated by the tsunami. We had no active program in Banda Aceh before the tsunami, and in fact, none of the areas where we worked in Indonesia before the tsunami were affected.

But when the tsunami hit, we initiated temporary relief work under the name ‘ARIEF’ or Aceh Relief for the tsunami victims. This local name was chosen in order to allow a local ministry to take over the relief and do follow-up work for the beneficiaries of the programs after our initial relief work ended. Our relief work was initially planned for one year.

Bambang, a current Aceh Relief director who now handles the follow-up programs, regularly travels across the Aceh area in the effort to identify areas where the next relief or development effort could best assist those impacted by the tsunami.

These visits identifiy the future target areas for Aceh Relief as well as the approach and plans to provide the best support program and right personnel.

After ARIEF ended, Aceh Relief has continued to provide emergency relief work in Banda Aceh through a partnership with Pelayanan Desa Terpadu, or Integrated Village Ministry, and known well as PESAT. They still use the Aceh Relief name for the sake of familiarity among the beneficiaries. Compassion has established a well-known, reputable name under Aceh Relief.

In six months’ relief work, Aceh Relief funded the restoration and replacement of new homes, roofs, latrines and running water systems for the houses in Loh and Lempuyang villages in Breuh Island. A Compassion initiative worked to rebuild 83 homes inhabited by more than 500 people.

Arief has set up a team of teaching units for traumatized children who live in the shelters. These units provide school facilities and social assistance, including financial support for school or apprenticeship equipment and fees, as well as temporary classes for children and family mediation.

Resti, a former teacher in Compassion’s education relief center who is now working with another non-governmental organization says,

“The repeated exposure of many children to severe forms of tsunami trauma resulted in low self-esteem, limited social skills and high likelihood of quitting school among young people.

“It also caused children to behave in ways which increase the risk of child abuse, such as running away from home and spending entire days in the street, leaving them vulnerable to sexual abuse.”

Resti used to travel with other fellow teachers to several “school” sites in Ujung Batee and Blang Cut townships – both located in Masjid Raya district, the area that felt the brunt of the tsunami destructive force. It took them an hour by car; add half an hour if they used public ground transport.

These volunteer teachers helped the children overcome their trauma by teaching songs and assisting them in regaining their self-esteem and social skills. Basic education was also given as balanced cognitive resources for children, so they might still be educated according to their age.

• Learn more about how Compassion responds to crises.
• Make a donation to the Disaster Relief Fund.

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• 1,300 city blocks disappeared.
• 24,000 people were evacuated.
• 83 of Iowa’s 99 counties were declared disaster areas.
• Nearly every river in Iowa flooded that week.

As I watched the floodwaters rise, my 4-year-old turned to me and said, “Mama, I think we need to get on the ark!” Had there been an ark in the vicinity, I may very well have gotten on it.

In the end, we Iowans are going to be just fine. The prayers of the nation have been with us, and we thank everyone for that. Help has arrived from all corners — from churches to government agencies. So many people have mobilized to get us back on our feet. We know it will be a slow process but, as a community whose roots are in farming, we have learned to be patient — patient with the growth of our crops, patient with the regrowth of our city.

But the impact of the floods on the world community is yet to come.

Iowa is the number one producer of corn and soybeans in the United States. It is estimated that 1.3 million acres of corn and 2 million acres of soybeans — roughly 16 percent of our grain crops were destroyed. (1) And this disaster is just one of many that decimated global crops in 2008.

So how does this impact the global food supply? In a nutshell, it means higher prices and a shrinking supply of food.

For countries in the developing world, this is a cataclysmic combination. In regions where people are already spending 80 percent of their salaries on food, the prices are going to get higher.

If 100 percent of a family’s income goes toward food, how then do they afford clothing, shelter, medical care and an education for their children?

And when the price of food eclipses what a family is able to earn, who in the family goes without? Parents, grandparents, children? How does one make such a decision?

As Thornton Wilder, the author of Our Town, once said: “I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for….”

We must stand together in the fight against poverty and hunger.

If you have a heart for flood victims, consider sponsoring a child in Haiti, Mexico, Bangladesh or India. These are countries that experience regular flooding, often with much loss of life, and an infrastructure that makes it difficult for families to recover.

You may also consider a donation to the Disaster Relief Fund. In the event of a natural disaster, Compassion provides food, blankets, shelter and replacement belongings to children and their families.

Please do what you can.

(1) Iowa State Farm Bureau

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