Immediately after the tsunami struck on December 26, 2004, ELCA World Hunger partners and our companion churches in the region mobilized to provide immediate relief and to plan a coordinated and extensive response. Standing with these trusted partners, including Lutheran World Relief, Church World Service, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India, and ACT (Action by Churches Together), the ELCA committed funds for a comprehensive five-year response. We give thanks to God for our partners’ strong and capable life-saving ministry and for the abundant generosity of our church.
See www.elca.org/disaster for more information on our five-year response in South Asia. A sample of the transformative projects funded by gifts to ELCA Disaster Response includes:
India
• Launched an innovative psychosocial counseling program, training 1,427 community counselors for work with more than 50,000 people in 26 villages.
• Built nearly 1;000 new houses for displaced families.Indonesia
• Provided health care for over 22,000 people.
• Distributed the necessary food and household items for over 130,000 displaced survivors.Sri Lanka
•Brought 45,500 people relief supplies: food, water, tents, cooking utensils, clothing, medicine, school books and uniforms.
•.Replaced 55 boats and 25 traditional catamarans, 500 fishing nets, 30 outboard engines and 250 bicycles.Somalia
•Our gifts helped over 1,100 people access clean drinking water and restored fishing supplies to over 700 fisher folk.
Thank you for your gifts and prayers that have sufficiently funded this fiveyear response plan throughout Southeast Asia and in Eastern Africa. We invite your continued prayers of thanksgiving for the work of our partners and for the generosity of our church. Your continued generous support of ELCA Disaster Response is needed for those disasters yet to come and to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal for the silent disaster of chronic hunger and poverty. Thank you!