An Episcopal parish in Memphis, Tennessee, was at the center of an interfaith effort that raised more than $102,000 for the victims. Hundreds of volunteers from Church of the Holy Communion, St. Mary's Episcopal School, Temple Israel and Idlewild Presbyterian Church spent more than 12 hours on January 5 collecting donations on street corners, serving coffee and snacks to contributors and counting donations. Funds will be directed to UNICEF and Direct Relief International. In addition, $3,698 was collected during Sunday services on January 2 to go to Episcopal Relief and Development for tsunami victims' relief.

Following the fund drive, about 70 people attended an interfaith worship service in Holy Communion's Quilling Chapel, led by youth from all three congregations. Rabbi Meir Feldman and the Rev. Tom Momberg then led an open-forum discussion on "God and the tsunami disaster" in Holy Communion's youth room.

Two neighboring Hawai'i parishes -- Christ Memorial Church in Kilauea on the island of Kauai and St. Thomas' Church in Hanalei on Kauai -- share the same priest and often join forces in outreach projects. In one week the churches raised $18,350, which will be used to provide clothing and to pay local tailors in Bangkok.

In Minnesota, Bishop James Jelinek has urged more than 100 congregations to receive special offerings to aid the tsunami victims throughout the month of January. Jelinek has pledged $15,000 from his discretionary fund as matching funds for this ingathering.

On January 2, registered nurse Sandy Stone, a parishioner at St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church in Beaverton, Oregon, left with a team of other medical professionals to assist with relief efforts. From their initial destination of Banda Aceh, the team took a 7-hour boat ride down the northwesterly coast line to reach Lamno Sumatra, a small village located close to the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the tsunami.

During a telephone conversation with her husband January 12, Stone reported that "the team is treating many survivors, they are experiencing many aftershocks and the military has made their presence known by requiring them to be escorted everywhere they go." This is Stone's fifteenth trip overseas doing humanitarian medical relief work since 1979.

Within days of the disaster, Episcopal Relief and Development provided initial emergency relief such as food, shelter, medicine, and other critical supplies. As part of a comprehensive relief and development program, ERD is now partnering with local communities to help them rebuild.

"We are sending a team to work with affected dioceses and partners on the ground," said Don Hammond, ERD vice president. "The team will assess the best way to respond to both immediate and long-term needs," The trip includes visits to Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India, as well as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

"The totality of this disaster is so enormous. Millions of lives have been ruined," said Mark Spina, ERD program director. "This tragedy hit people where they live and where they work. It is particularly difficult for societies that depend on the sea for their livelihood."

"The problems and conditions are complex and it will take years to rebuild," agreed Sandra Swan, ERD president. "We want to work at a community level to help people strategize and take part in their own solution. We'll remain with communities for several years and employ our resources to restore lives in South Asia."

ERD is planning an integrated program to repair infrastructure, such as homes, schools, and clinics, and to work with local partners to identify the best ways to spur economic growth.

"It is easy to give boats and nets to people who've lost their livelihood," said Spina, "but ERD is involved in strengthening communities from within. That's what makes our work sustainable."

Representing the Episcopal Church and ERD, Bishop Johncy Itty of Oregon will extend a pre-arranged trip to India later this month to visit tsunami-affected areas in Chennai and Sri Lanka, offering solidarity and observing the relief efforts of the church. “The earthquake and the resulting tidal waves in the South Asia Pacific region have presented us with an urgent need to work together,” Itty said, in a pastoral letter to his diocese January 4.

The Episcopal Church's missioner for Asian American Ministries, the Rev. Dr. Winfred B. Vergara, and the Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry-New York have been in coordination with the staff of ERD in keeping up with news and updates in relief and rehabilitation efforts. Various EAM congregations and ministries -- such as the Church of our Savior (New York, NY); the Church of the Holy Spirit (Safety Harbor, Florida); the Metropolitan Filipino Ministry (New
York) -- have responded with fund-drives and are remitting their contribution to ERD.

"We commend the generosity and readiness of our people," said Vergara. "While global efforts are still being done, the focus in long-term is to move from relief to rehabilitation, that of rebuilding homes and communities ravaged by the calamity, restoring the livelihood of fisher folks and farmers, starting cooperatives and providing loans, etc. so that the survivors can have the needed tools to get back on their feet and move on."

In the first two and a half weeks following the tsunamis, ERD raised $2.1 million for its South Asia Relief Fund and donations continue to come in daily. ERD was able to send life-saving assistance to vulnerable families immediately after the disaster and before the outpouring of Episcopal compassion from both individuals and churches.

In the meantime, ERD continues to work with other communities affected by war and natural disasters:

Sudan

ERD is working with partners to provide emergency assistance to Sudanese in the Darfur region of Sudan and neighboring Chad, after a 19-month conflict in the region which has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than one million people. More than 100,000 have fled across the border.

ERD is providing humanitarian assistance to refugees in three camps in Farchana, located in central region of the Chad border. ERD is also partnering with Church World Service to provide food, medicines, emergency health care, and access to clean water. People will receive supplies such as fortified cereal, oil, and soap. The program will also give families tools and seeds.

Through another partnership with Christian Outreach Relief and Development, vulnerable children and women will receive mental health care services. Children will attend school at the camps and their mothers will receive both life skills and health education.

Haiti

The Haitian economy is one of the most underdeveloped in the world, with a per capital income of only $250 per year. Political unrest and violence in early 2004 crippled many communities. Several cities in northern Haiti most affected by the unrest are struggling to rebuild.

ERD's food security program gives people living in poverty skills, training, and education so they can earn money and support their families. During and following the post-coup crisis period, ERD continued to help the Diocese of Haiti with food security interventions and emergency assistance in areas where the church can make a difference. As food supplies in Haiti became scarcer, ERD helped arrange shipments of rice and cooking oil for distribution by parishes to needy communities in western and southern Haiti, specifically in the Leogane and Port-au-Prince areas. Funds for clothing, emergency food, shelter and education needs of vulnerable populations were also provided to the Artibonite and northern regions, centered in the cities of Gonaives and Trou du Nord.
 
ERD is working in partnership with the diocese to supply vulnerable children and families with food such as rice, beans, and cooking oil. Through the Hospital Ste. Croix in Leogane, families receive medicines and other emergency health care that were halted during the prolonged political and humanitarian crisis. ERD is providing building materials to help reconstruct homes for families displaced by the violence.

For the long term, ERD and the Diocese of Haiti are building the Bishop Tharp Business and Technology Institute in Les Cayes, Haiti's second largest city. The goal is to produce skilled technicians who participate in creating new businesses in Les Cayes and fill mid-to senior-level positions with local companies. Modeled after associate degree programs in the United States, the Institute's first year curriculum includes basic business skills, literacy, and English as a Second Language training. In the second year, students attend college-level courses in business management and computer systems. By developing a pool of educated and skilled workers, the Institute's business management and computer technology programs will have a profound impact on the entire Les Cayes region. A broader goal is to attract new businesses to the region and bring further opportunities for economic development.

Iran

In December 2003, a devastating earthquake in southeastern Iran killed almost 45,000 people and destroying almost 70% of homes, businesses, and hospitals in the area. Many of the people in the city of Bam and surrounding villages were left homeless as well.

ERD's initial emergency assistance gave critical supplies such as tents, blankets, medicine, and water to affected families. As the city rebuilds, ERD is committed to long-term rehabilitation in Iran through a partnership with Mercy Corps. ERD is also building temporary shelter for displaced families and constructing schools and health clinics. The program will renew damaged agriculture and repair the city's irrigation system. Families will receive psychological and trauma counseling.

ERD is helping reestablish at least 25 health care centers in the region's rural communities. The centers will offer health education, vaccines, maternal and child healthcare, and basic disease control such as sanitation, to over 5,400 people. Before the earthquakes, the centers were a main source of health care for the city's rural population. Local health promoters will be hired to work with communities, families, and social service providers, which include caring for the chronically ill.

Honduras

ERD has committed a little over $800,000 to continued work with people left homeless by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. With these funds, ERD is currently working on a 112 house housing site in Amarateca that will house families whose homes were swept away in Tegucigalpa and who were then shunted from shelter to shelter in search of permanent housing since the storm. The Episcopal Church's Amarateca site will also include a school, a church and clinic, and facilities for water, sewage, electricity, and rain water drainage.

The population, originally settled in an area known as Nueva Esperanza (a neighborhood of Tegucigalpa), lost 3,000 of its members when the hillside collapsed due to heavy rains. The Episcopal Church has been accompanying them, feeding, and tending to them ever since. 

ERD got involved with Amarateca in the fall of 2002 after completing its community of over 220 houses in northern Honduras, outside of Tegucigalpa. ERD continues to accompany these very same families to whom it is committed even though it has begun a new housing program. The burgeoning community of Faith, Hope and Joy now has over 300 children in its school, an active clinic which sees 100 patients a week, a social worker stationed in the community, and numerous church-led community activities. The population has swollen in the area of Faith, Hope and Joy to serve about 3,500 people.

El Salvador

ERD has been working alongside the Episcopal Church in El Salvador since earthquakes destroyed 90% of the rural infrastructure in January and February 2001. In response to the devastation, ERD began a $2.2 million integrated community development project that includes housing, schools, water provision, electricity, psycho-social counseling, medical care, and economic investment in four sites in the country. Two housing sites have already been completed in Izalco and El Congo, which house about 450 men, women and children; three schools have been built or rebuilt; and the medical program has recently opened its 12th clinic. ERD has also rebuilt the economic livelihoods of farmers in about 20 additional villages with investments in new livestock and training and vaccination for animals among other kinds of agricultural support.

First Sunday in Lent to be EAM-Tsunami Rehabilitation Sunday

The first Sunday in Lent -- February 13, 2005 -- has been designated by Episcopal Asian American Ministries as EAM-Tsunami Rehabilitation Sunday.

"On this particular Sunday, we appeal to congregations to have a Special Collection or a Second Offering and designate the collection towards the work of tsunami rehabilitation," said the Rev. Winfred B. Vergara, EAM's missioner. "We are asking that you include a Prayer/Intercession for the victims of the tsunami and for the efforts of those who minister to the affected communities." Checks may be sent to "Episcopal Relief and Rehabilitation-South Asia" in care of the Asian American Ministries Office, The Episcopal Church Center, 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017 or directly to the South Asia Relief Fund at www.er-d.org or 1-800-334-7626, ext. 5129. Gifts can also be mailed to: Episcopal Relief and Development, South Asia Relief Fund, PO Box 12043, Newark, NJ 07101.