News : International
Myanmar earthquake - church responds – 1 Apr 2011
Tearfund partner’s are helping people hit by strong earthquakes on March 24th in north east Myanmar (Burma). Tearfund Ireland Chief Executive Reuben Coulter visited these partners in January of this year and met with Burmese church leaders.
Three powerful tremors struck close to northern Thailand and the border with Laos, and more than 100 people died. One of the biggest losses of life was at a church in north east Myanmar where the whole building collapsed killing 25 members and injuring 50 others.
Tearfund partner agencies – Myanmar Baptist Convention (MBC) and Mekong Minority Foundation (MMF) – have jointly initiated an emergency response. They have assessed the imediate needs and are now working in five badly affected communities – providing temporary shelter, food and medical help to affected people. Initial assessments show that the greatest damage and loss of life is in and around the Shan town of Ta Lar, where several dozen structures collapsed.
Tearfund is making emergency funds available to support MBC, MMF and other partners. They are planning immediate relief such as temporary shelter, food rations and meeting basic medical needs – as well as continuing longer-term support for the region. This will include working with communities to reduce the risks when facing further earthquakes and other disasters.
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Myanmar, Emergencies -
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World AIDS Day: Church in China – 1 Dec 2010
World AIDS Day: December 1st
More than two million souls live in the Chinese city of Baoshan which lies in the province of Yunnan near to the border with Myanmar (Burma). This proximity inevitably brings a movement of people between the two countries. The nearness of the infamous Golden Triangle also means a flourishing drugs trade.
Because drugs can be bought easily and cheaply, there’s a human cost in terms of addicts and the transmission of HIV. Latest statistics show there are more than 2,000 people living with HIV in Baoshan.
Through the work of Tearfund partner Cedar Fund, the local church is addressing these issues. A network of churches is working with local government health and social services to transform the lives of people affected by HIV.
Cedar Fund is training pastors in HIV prevention and drug awareness, while also helping them to understand that the church has a role to meet the physical needs of people as well as spiritual ones.
Rehab
Pastor Xu Chenyun took part in our partner’s training. He said, ‘I started to see the role of the church and that we shouldn’t only focus on what’s happening inside the church itself.
‘Instead we should have knowledge of what’s happening in society and meet the needs with the power of our Lord.’
Pastor Xu has shared his learning, and with church colleagues has built a team to work on HIV prevention and raising awareness. Visiting a drug rehab centre inspired him to get involved in setting one up himself and he now divides his time between it and the church. He’s one of a new generation of church leaders being equipped to meet the pressing social needs of the urban poor and to be a tangible sign of hope where all too often there is none.
- Give thanks for the work of the local church in Yunnan as it meets the needs of people living with HIV and drug addicts.
- Pray that more of the city’s 40 churches develop a wider community awareness and become involved in ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the people around them.
- Pray for those affected by drug usage and that greater awareness leads to fewer lives lost to addiction.
Pakistan floods update - three months on – 22 Oct 2010
It’s nearly three months since the worst flooding in living memory struck Pakistan, killing 1,700 people and affecting 20 million others. As the waters slowly recede, we report on Tearfund’s progress to help survivors recover.
Janat’s story
Janat recently returned to her village which the flood waters forced her to flee. It was a grim homecoming. Her home was destroyed, her crops obliterated and her life was effectively ruined by the raging river Indus which left the community under four feet of water. Along with others from this Sindh province village, the 55-year-old labourer fled to the relative safety of a raised embankment to stay in a government school.Back in her village of Mohammad Khan Joyo, Janat is relying on Tearfund partner SSEWA-Pak. Staff provided the plastic sheeting under which she sleeps. They also gave her food, cooking utensils, cutlery, plates and hygiene kits. It will take many more months until her house is rebuilt.
Mosquito threat
Bashira is a widow who has a three-year-old son in need of ongoing medical support. Since the floods, she has suffered food shortages but that’s eased thanks to supplies from our partner. Mosquito nets are also proving valuable to Bashira and her son.
The floods in Mohammad Khan Joyo did not discriminate between rich and poor. Akhtar Ali, 30, used to farm two acres of cotton, sugar cane and rice but all were destroyed by the floods. His five-room house was taken too and all possessions were lost as Akhtar’s family had no time to save anything during the desperate 4am rush to safety. He too has been assisted by SSEWA-Pak.
Basic essentials from SSEWA-Pak represent the only outside help Janat, Bashira, Akhtar and their fellow villagers have received. No aid has been forthcoming from the Pakistani government.
Rob Schofield, Tearfund’s acting Disaster Management Director, who met villagers being helped, said; ‘People were very happy to receive the goods from SSEWA-Pak but it’s clear that they face long term challenges to restore their lives.’
Vulnerable
With many people losing their homes and now sleeping out in the open, there is a widespread sense of vulnerability. Large parts of the Sindh country side are still flooded. There are other problems too. Handpumps to access water no longer work and the road into the community is still cut-off by the water.
SSEWA-Pak, which has provided emergency aid to more than 25,000 people from the north to south of Pakistan, will be helping communities like this get back on their feet but this will take time due to the widespread damage to lives and livelihoods. Other partners, such as the Adult Basic Education Society (ABES) are also assisting the post-flood recovery effort.
Trauma help
ABES has set up transition centres in six Punjab villages offering free check-ups, medicines, nutritional supplements, psycho-social support and ways of purifying water.
Staff are working with children, teaching them about hygiene, and offering play and other learning activities to those who have been left traumatised by the flooding. The Association of Humanitarian Development (AHD) has also distributed 2,000 kits of food, cooking goods, shelter materials and hygiene kits in Thatta district of Sindh.
Another partner, the Diocese of Hyderabad, is distributing food to flood affected people in their target villages and also repairing school buildings that were damaged due to flooding.
You can continue to support the ongoing rehabiliation and recovery work in Pakistan by donating here.
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Pakistan, Emergencies -
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Christmas dinner & traditional healers – 23 Dec 2009
Tearfund has been operating in Darfur since 2004. The staff are preparing for Christmas in the refugee camps but the work is relentless. A Tearfund nutritionist reports on how training traditional healers and using a high-energy peanut paste is dramatically reducing malnutrition rates.
Sakina, a traditional healer
The wind lifts the plastic sheet covering Sakina’s roof blowing dust into her small dwelling as she busies herself with her herbal remedies treating patients that come to her for healthcare. Sakina is a traditional healer. One man waiting for his turn, has burnt his foot in a fire. A teenager comes in with a stomach upset. As Sakina treats these members of her community she notices a woman approaching with a small lifeless body in her arms. She beckons the lady in expecting the child to start crying but there is only silence. She looks at the child who struggles to sit up on her mothers lap and whose breathing is almost non existent.
Sakina has seen this before. She has seen it countless times. She is glad that she has recently had training from Tearfund on how to check whether the child is truly malnourished and how to then refer the child to a Tearfund feeding centre. She had a traditional way of dealing with children who are malnourished but it often didn’t work and children died. Sakina learnt about traditional healing through her grandmother who was a traditional healer. When she was a young girl she used to watch her grandmother treat patients and she then took on the practice herself.
She still uses one of the methods of traditional healing with these children but has discontinued the other. She used to take sugar and rub it into the child’s palette until the palette would bleed, believing that this would help to remove any toxins making the child malnourished. She no longer uses this method but she still takes the bark from a tree believed to have healing properties and ties it around the child’s wrists, ankles and waist.
Since receiving the Tearfund training she now also uses the coloured MUAC tape placing it on the mid upper arm of the child checking to see if it is within the referral criteria (red in colour). When she finds the arm is in that bracket she refers the mother to the Tearfund nutrition centre. If the child is not malnourished, she still gives the mother advice on feeding practices and on how to prevent the child from becoming malnourished.
Sakina says; ‘Before I never knew about nutrition and could not give advice to the mothers apart from the traditional healing that I used on the child. Now Tearfund have taught me about nutrition and I feel that I can really help these children. It is good that the child not only receives help from my traditional healing, but is also able to receive medication and food from the Tearfund nutrition centre. Through these two methods the child is healed much quicker. I am grateful to Tearfund for the training they have given me’.
In Darfur the first option that mothers turn to when their child is sick is to take them to a traditional healer. By training these healers, Tearfund is now able to reach malnourished children quicker as they are referred by the healers to the nutrition centres and therefore Tearfund can assist them before their situation gets too desperate. The traditional healers themselves are grateful to Tearfund for the training they have received and feel that this has increased their knowledge and understanding on nutrition which they previously knew little about. Because of the strong belief in traditional healing in Darfur, Tearfund does not try to influence the healers into giving up all their traditional methods of healing, but rather encourages them to integrate internationally recognised methods of diagnosis and treatment into their traditional practise.
Peanut paste, a Christmas dinner
Christmas dinner for the malnourished children is a simple affair. At the Tearfund feeding centres the children receive plumpynut (a peanut paste with micronutrients, high protein and high energy) or a premix consisting of a corn soya blend, with sugar and oil. This is dependant on whether the children are moderately malnourished or severely malnourished. It doesn’t taste great but it has a miraculous effect on the children and helps them regain a healthy weight quickly.
Tearfund’s Disaster Management Team (DMT) has been operating in Darfur since 2004. Last year, Tearfund’s teams provided over 137,000 people with access to clean water, and constructed sanitation facilities for around 50,000 people. Almost 100,000 women and children attended weekly health clubs, over 19,000 farmers received seeds and tools, over 6000 children were treated for malnutrition through Tearfund’s feeding centres and more than 26,000 at risk children were given food to prevent malnutrition.
- More about:
Sudan, Emergencies -
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An unwanted gift - Christmas Appeal – 23 Nov 2009
Happy Christmas! There are two children who I’ve spent time with over the past year. One is my nephew Noah, who has just celebrated his second birthday this week. And the other is Peah –whom I met in Cambodia in February.
Noah couldn’t be more loved or wanted. My sister and brother-in-law have albums of photos of almost his every waking hour! My parents love showing him off to all their friends!
In contrast, Peah had a very different start to life. He was an unwanted gift. There are more than 100 million children around the world without a family, living in the harshest circumstances. But there is hope. Tearfund’s amazing church partners reach children like Peah every day, and place them in loving families.
Can we count on you for a Christmas gift of €32, €86 or €125? Donate here
Help us to support Little Conquerors in Cambodia and IMCAREs in India to continue their work next year. Tearfund’s church partners work tirelessly to address immediate needs, while also dealing with the underlying issues that cause children to be vulnerable, that means our work is sustainable and has a lasting impact.
Little Conquerors, Cambodia – €27,300 to fully fund this project in 2010
The Little Conquerors project helps children with disabilities to reach their God-given potential in all areas of their lives: physically, emotionally, spiritually, educationally and socially. This ensures these children get vital physiotherapy, specialised equipment and access to basic education. Read more about their work here
IMCARES, India – €29,500 to fully fund this project in 2010
IMCares works with local churches to care for vulnerable people, including children orphaned by AIDS, in the poorest slums of Mumbai. They provide food, clothing and education, and search for loving foster families to take in the orphaned children. IMCares also supports AIDS-affected families with counselling, home visits, nutritional support and other material help, and helps teach children in the slums about the reality of HIV and AIDS.Read more about their work here
- More about:
Cambodia, 
India, Forgotten Children -
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Kidnapped Irish aid worker set free – 17 Oct 2009
Two kidnapped aid workers from the Irish aid agency GOAL were released this morning in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region after more than 100 days in captivity, a government official said.
Sharon Commins (32), from Clontarf, and her colleague Hilda Kawuki (42), a nutritionist from Uganda, were abducted at gunpoint after armed men stormed their compound in the north Darfur town of Kutum on July 3rd last.
“They were released earlier this morning,” Sudan’s state minister for humanitarian affairs, Abdel Baqi al-Jailani, said.
‘It is a real relief to know that Sharon and Hilda are free’ says Reuben Coulter, Chief Executive of Tearfund Ireland ‘Our prayers have been answered’
Sharon was a colleague of Reuben during the 2 years he worked with GOAL as operations manager for North Sudan.
Tearfund in Darfur
Reuben Coulter, Chief Executive of Tearfund Ireland, worked with Tearfund’s Disaster Management Team (DMT) in Darfur for almost 2 years as a public health manager. ‘Two of my Sudanese staff were killed in a riot in the displaced-people’s camps in 2005’ says Reuben ‘Darfur is an extremely dangerous place and aid workers face daily risks to bring relief to the people.’
Tearfund’s Disaster Management Team (DMT) has been operating in Darfur since 2004. Last year, Tearfund’s teams provided over 137,000 people with access to clean water, and constructed sanitation facilities for around 50,000 people. Almost 100,000 women and children attended weekly health clubs, over 19,000 farmers received seeds and tools, over 6000 children were treated for malnutrition through Tearfund’s feeding centres and more than 26,000 at risk children were given food to prevent malnutrition.
2009 marks the sixth year of the recent conflict in Darfur. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed and over 2 million displaced. Two thirds of the population is dependent on aid for basic survival. There are about 250,000 refugees from Darfur currently living in Chad.
‘But for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my saviour; my God will hear me’ Micah 7: 7
Please pray for:
- Recovery from the ordeal and peace for the families of both women .
- The political will among the UN and other major governments to move the peace process forward in Darfur, for the establishment of justice and for the cessation of hostilities.
- The protection of Tearfund and partner staff as they go about their daily work in a very insecure environment.
- That Tearfund and other organisations would have the finances and resources to fill the gaps created by recently expelled aid organisations
- More about: Sudan, Emergencies
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