Six recent grants from the Emergency Disaster Fund and the Global Food Crisis Fund have totaled $141,500 for disaster and hunger relief around the world. The funds are ministries of the Church of the Brethren General Board.
The Global Food Crisis Fund has given a grant of $50,000 to provide seed and plastic film supplies to farms in North Korea, through the Agglobe Mission. The funds will not only help boost food production, but will help improve the living environment and civil society of the North Korean people. A similar grant was issued in 2005.
The Emergency Disaster Fund (EDF) has made an allocation of $40,000 to provide vital medical supplies for the Christian Hospital Association of Liberia. The grant responds to an appeal from Interchurch Medical Assistance Inc. (IMA), and follows a previous EDF grant to help resettle 500,000 refugees and displaced persons in Liberia. Some of the medical supplies will be shipped from the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md.
EDF has allocated $25,000 to fund medical treatment for Palestinian people at the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem. The grant supports a Church World Service (CWS) appeal. The funds will help provide dialysis, radiation, chemotherapy, endoscopy, and head and neck treatments.
A grant of $20,000 from EDF supports a CWS appeal following heavy rains and flooding that have left over 41,000 people homeless in Angola. The funds will help support recovery work and provide food, blankets, plastic sheeting, medical kits, and hospital beds.
An EDF grant of $3,500, also in response to a CWS appeal, gives aid following a massive landslide that buried a Philippine village. The funds will help provide emergency assistance to 500 families, including food, medicine, seeds, farm tools, and reconstruction materials.
The Grant Review Panel for the Global Food Crisis Fund has allocated $3,000 from the Church of the Brethren Foods Resource Bank account to provide food security for displaced people in Serbia. This assists a multi-phase, ongoing CWS project there.
For more information about the Global Food Crisis Fund, go to http://www.brethren.org/genbd/global_mission/gfcf.htm. For more information about the Emergency Disaster Fund, go to http://www.brethren.org/genbd/ersm/EDF.htm.