Kennewick First Lutheran Invites Your Help in Disaster Response
ELCA Domestic Disaster Response Update:
Gulf Coast Hurricanes One Year Later
One year later, the overwhelming generosity of the ELCA for the 2005 hurricane response continues to offer help and hope throughout the Gulf Coast. Nearly three-quarters of the gifts received will be distributed by the end of 2006 with the remaining gifts providing long-term assistance in 2007 and beyond.
Your gifts have walked with those who are struggling by
• Establishing emergency relief centers within congregations and social ministry organizations, providing health clinics, emergency shelters, housing for volunteers, and food and water distribution centers.
• Recruiting, coordinating, and equipping the 15,000 volunteers from throughout our church who have completed over 500,000 hours of work to date and organizing What A Relief!—a spring break service project by 1,100 college students from 55 different Lutheran campus ministry groups.
• Demonstrating a strong commitment to caring for the spiritual and emotional needs of children, offering over 60 camps for children to process their feelings about their disaster experience.
• Providing over $1 million in hardship grants to over 2000 survivors, with special focus on the elderly, children, and those who are disabled to help cover necessary short-term expenses not covered by insurance or FEMA aid, including housing, transportation, child care, food, medical equipment and other costs.
• Offering grants to over 20 Lutheran agencies for their work with displaced persons, meeting the unique needs of those forced to relocate following the hurricanes.
• Advocating for affordable housing, ensuring that those who are elderly, disabled, or living in poverty have a voice as communities rebuild.
Thank you for your generous gifts of money, time, and prayers that continue to make a difference throughout the Gulf Coast. Your financial gifts have sufficiently funded our multi-year response in the Gulf Coast for this disaster, but ongoing support is needed for disasters yet to come—both nearby and around the world. Additionally, your gifts to ELCA World Hunger Appeal offer hope to those living with the “silent disaster” of chronic hunger and poverty.
Find more information on our Gulf Coast disaster response and our response to other domestic and international disasters at www.elca.org/disaster -- including updates, reproducible inserts, and information on how you can help. Go to www.elca.org/hunger to learn how your gifts make a difference to people living with hunger and poverty through the ELCA World Hunger Appeal.
ELCA Domestic Disaster Response Update:
Gulf Coast Hurricanes One Year Later
“I wanted you to know that we used our [grant] money to buy children's clothes and food to stock up in our trailer. We are starting completely over in life, but I had to write to tell you that your organization gave us a head start in the right direction…Thank you so very much. May God bless you all.”
The writer of this thank you note, a single father from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, received a grant through ELCA Domestic Disaster Response after his home and nearly all his family's belongings were lost following the hurricane and flooding in New Orleans. The small grant he received–just $300– helped buy new school clothes for his three young children, and offered this father hope that he might have the strength to rebuild their home and life together.
The hurricanes and floods that ravaged the Gulf Coast the fall of 2005 were horrific. Now, a year later, we remember those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods as a result of the hurricanes and struggle with the knowledge that poverty and inequality amplified the damage. We find hope, though, in our fervent faith that the waters that unite us through Baptism run deeper than any flood and the winds of the Holy Spirit are mightier than any storm.
The generous response from the members and congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America after the 2005 hurricanes is living proof of that uniting and powerful Holy Spirit. Over $25 million flowed into the ELCA Domestic Disaster Response and Lutheran Disaster Response to provide immediate assistance to survivors and to fund a long-term effort to help communities build back stronger. Additionally, over 500,000 hours of service have been logged, with more scheduled and needed for years to come.
Thank you for your generous gifts of money, time, and prayers that continue to make a difference in our long-term response in the Gulf Coast. Your financial gifts have sufficiently funded our multi-year response in the Gulf Coast supporting the work of volunteers and caregivers in their long-term response. Thank you also for your gifts to ELCA Disaster Response that allow us to respond to those disasters yet to come, and to ELCA World Hunger Appeal which offers hope to those suffering from the “silent disaster” of chronic hunger and poverty.
Yes! I want to help respond to disasters at home and around the world!
? ELCA Disaster Response for disasters yet to come $_____________ D7
? ELCA World Hunger Appeal for the silent disaster
of chronic hunger and poverty $_____________ WH
Name____________________________________________________________
Address__________________________________________________________
City_________________________________ State_______ ZIP_____________
Give through your congregation or directly to: ELCA World Hunger Appeal and Disaster Response, P.O. Box 71764, Chicago, IL 60694-1764. Note “ELCA Disaster Response” or “World Hunger Appeal” on the check's memo line. To give by credit card, call 800-638-3522 or visit www.elca.org/disaster and click on “Giving” or “How You Can Help.”