Port-au-Prince, October 4, 2017 – When Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti one year ago today, it destroyed crops and houses and killed as many as 1600 people throughout the Caribbean island nation. Yet for survivors in communities where the ACT Alliance partners with local groups to support reconstruction, the anguish of the storm is slowing giving way to a more resilient future.

“I feel safe at home now,” said Christiana Herard, a 69-year old woman in Djondgon, a village near Jean-Rabel in northwestern Haiti. “When the hurricane hit here last year our mud walls just shook and then finally crumbled. We fled to the church, and we ended up living there for three months. Then we moved into a temporary shelter under a tarp, but at the end of April we moved into our new house. It has cement walls, so if another storm comes I’m not scared of what will happen.”

Herard’s home was built with support from Church World Service, one of several members of the ACT Alliance that works in Haiti. For years CWS has supported local efforts in the drought-plagued Northwest to help farmers improve soil fertility and crop yields while producing a healthier variety of foods. It’s a long term commitment in a region where poverty and environmental degradation have left communities extremely vulnerable to disasters.

Supporting community-based solutions is slow work, says Margot DeGreef, the country representative for CWS, but it yields better results in the long run. “Some NGOs come here after a storm and hand out roofing to thousands of families, and then claim they have helped a huge number of people,” she said. “We’re building 81 houses in the Northwest, but they are sturdy and resilient houses. The families that live in them won’t have any problems during the next hurricane.”

When Hurricane Matthew hit, life in Ganthier still wasn’t back to normal after being ravaged by the 2010 earthquake. Servicio Social de las Iglesias Dominicanas, another ACT Alliance member, has worked in several poor villages in the area since coming to Haiti from the neighboring Dominican Republic in the days after the quake. It is building over 350 houses for Matthew survivors, but a lot of its effort is devoted to disaster risk reduction–helping poor residents lower their vulnerability to the frequent natural hazards that torment the area.

SSID has trained 25 youth as first responders, equipping them with jackets, boots, tools, ropes, megaphones, shovels, lamps–everything they might need in a crisis. The group’s main focus is on prevention, including spreading the alarm that people need to evacuate from high-risk areas. During Hurricane Matthew they put their newly acquired skills to the test, pulling people from flooded houses and overflowing rivers.

Members of the ACT Haiti Forum including CWS and SSID continue to be present in Ganthier, Djondgon and many other communities, working with residents to rebuild, become more resilient, and improve their lives.

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Story by Paul Jeffrey

Nations and communities in the Caribbean are yet to come to terms with the actual losses, damages, and suffering that Hurricanes Irma, Maria and others have wrought. The increasing intensity and frequency of hurricanes in some areas of the region and droughts in others have increased the vulnerability of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Hurricane Irma made landfall in Cuba as a category 5 storm, lashing the country for 72 hours, causing flooding in the north coast. As a result, the extent of the damage suffered by Cuba has been the worst experienced in 100 years.

The increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as Hurricanes Irma and Maria, confirms that climate change is indeed occurring and that its impacts will continue to affect lives and livelihoods, disproportionately affecting the vulnerable. The losses and damages resulting from the changing climate are well beyond the capacities of vulnerable nations and communities to handle. Urgent and comprehensive measures must be put in place to support them.

The developing countries and small island states of the Caribbean have had very little responsibility for causing climate change, yet are faced with the most severe impacts of this global phenomenon. The same can be said of island states in the Pacific facing typhoons, or nations in the Horn of Africa facing drought.

The reality of a disproportionate burden posed by climate change makes it necessary to undertake a comprehensive approach to resilience, beginning with addressing Hurricanes Irma, and Maria to name the most current. Such an approach must combine climate change adaptation and mitigation, emergency preparedness and response, disaster risk reduction along with long term transformative development. Developed countries should contribute to the financing of these efforts in accordance with the principles and commitments of the Paris Agreement and the climate Convention.

ACT Alliance believes that a climate resilient approach, coupled with disaster risk reduction and sustainability, drawn from existing global frameworks including the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework for DRR and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development will help us to understand and be better equipped to face not only hurricanes, but the collective burden of climate change.

As a faith based network, we believe that a testimony of accompaniment to individuals and communities working together to protect the lives of people and the environment from a resilience approach must have at its core the restoration of the faith and hope in people and communities. Therefore, in ACT Alliance, we find it necessary to strengthen our prophetic voice in advocacy and actions to create greater awareness and understanding of climate resilient sustainable development in communities. We continue to encourage and accompany the advocacy efforts of our members, forums and communities as they hold policy holders and decision makers to account.

A key message in our advocacy efforts is for those most responsible for contributing to climate change, who also happen to have a greater capacity and access to resources to respond, to take the necessary measures to comply with the Paris Agreement, especially with regard to substantially financing climate action in vulnerable countries and particularly for adaptation measures and losses and damages. The upcoming UNFCCC COP23 must make significant steps towards this goal.

On our part as ACT Alliance, together with our partners in the ecumenical movement, we commit ourselves to reinforce our humanitarian, development and advocacy work and to promote innovative ways to enable multi-sectoral efforts to address climate change.

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Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, ACT Alliance General Secretary

Read more about the ACT response to the Hurricane Irma here
Photo gallery of the response in Cuba here

Geneva, 22 Sep 2017 – ACT Alliance joined with other NGOs today in presenting a statement at the UNHCR Standing Committee session.  The statement calls upon governments in the Global North to be more active in addressing the global refugee crisis and emphasizes the importance of civil society participation and inputs from the regions in the formulation of the Global Compact on Refugees.  The NGOs’ statement praises the progress in implementing the UNHCR’s Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) in Africa and Latin America.

The consultations for a Global Compact on Refugees are a direct outcome of last year’s summit on large movements of refugees and migrants at the UN General Assembly, which resulted in the New York Declaration.  This declaration committed states to develop a Global Compact on Refugees and a Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. ACT Alliance, the largest protestant and orthodox network engaged in humanitarian, development and advocacy work in the world, has been at the forefront of coordinating global advocacy from its members and faith-based allies, as well as ensuring representation of inputs from regional and national levels.

“The New York Declaration was a landmark for stepping up global efforts to protect refugees,” said Susan Muis, Regional Program Coordinator for Central Africa at the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), an ACT Alliance member, who delivered the NGO statement. “We are using opportunities like the Standing Committee to remind states of the commitments they made last year, and to track progress in the implementation of practical measures. Currently, we are seeing a continued pattern of less developed countries of first asylum providing most of the desperately needed assistance to large numbers of displaced people, while others are looking on. This is a worrying trend which needs to be broken if we want to achieve meaningful responsibility sharing in next year’s Global Compact.”

ACT Alliance has a strong presence on the ground in Ethiopia, Somalia, Guatemala and other African and Latin American countries where pilot programmes are feeding into the CRRF process.  ACT fully endorses the NGO statement, which noted the pilot programmes’ contribution to legal reforms allowing refugees greater freedom of movement and access to education, work, and services, most notably in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. However, the statement also highlighted the “pronounced regional imbalance […] in the design and implementation of the CRRF framework, which continues to focus on less-developed countries of first asylum.”, and called upon developed states to assume greater responsibilities for refugee protection in order to ensure a truly comprehensive response.

The statement commends UNHCR’s efforts to include refugee voices in the process, and further indicates that “NGOs are willing to work alongside UNHCR to make sure [refugees’] voices are meaningfully heard, including by providing space and support for refugee leaders and refugee-led organizations to effectively contribute.”

The UNHCR Standing Committee meetings are convened in Geneva three times a year, examining thematic issues, as well as UNHCR’s activities and programmes regionally and globally. They are attended by member states and other stakeholders, including NGOs active in refugee protection around the world. The International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), of which ACT Alliance is a member, is a network for increased collaboration and coordination between NGOs and other humanitarian actors. ICVA coordinates the drafting of statements through a wide consultation with NGOs. Those statements are delivered at UNHCR events such as the Standing and Executive Committee meetings and aim to reflect the diversity of views within the NGO community.

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CONTACT: Simon Chambers, Head of Communications, ACT Alliance – Simon.chambers@actalliance.org +1-647-939-5758

Hurricane Irma hit the shores of Cuba on September 7, a category 5 storm with sustained winds of 295kph.   For four days, Irma battered the north coast of Cuba. 2,000,000 people fled to shelters, churches, or the homes of relatives and neighbours.  9 metre waves swept inland, contaminating fresh water sources, destroying crops, homes and businesses.  Coastal dunes, forests, fruit trees, granaries, health centres, schools, markets, bridges and roads were all heavily damaged or destroyed.  Power and communications went down and remain down in many communities.  10 people lost their lives.

The ACT Cuba Forum is responding to the widespread humanitarian need, targeting 20 municipalities in 10 provinces in a $2.5 million USD appeal which will bring water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), food, shelter, livelihood recovery, and psychosocial support to 20,000 households, reaching 100,000 Cubans.

“Teams of volunteers and staff from the Cuban Council of Churches are on the ground now, conducting initial assessments and coordinating with local churches and governments,” said Carlos Rauda, ACT Alliance’s Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.  “They are already providing water and sanitation, especially to the elderly, and psychosocial support to children.  The Council of Churches has a presence throughout the country, and is ready to carry out the necessary relief work.”

The ACT Appeal, will help 800 families to repair the roofs of their homes, provide household supplies to 3000 families, 4100 households will receive food, 5000 households will receive hygiene kits and awareness raising about good hygiene practices, 2250 households will have access to clean water through community water systems, 500 households will have support in restoring their livelihoods, and 20,000 households will receive psychosocial support in coping with the trauma of the experience of Hurricane Irma.

The ACT Forum will coordinate with community and church leadership, local governments, the national government as well as the UN Network (including national and international organisations responding to the emergency).

The full ACT Concept Note is available here.

ACT members in the Dominican Republic and Haiti are also responding to the damage caused by Irma in their countries, although both countries were spared a direct hit by the storm.

Prospéry Raymond, country manager for ACT member Christian Aid in Haiti and Dominican Republic said: “The people of Dominican Republic and Haiti are resilient and experience hurricanes every year. We were preparing for the worst possible scenario, but thankfully we escaped the eye of the storm and damage has not been as severe as we feared. If the rain continues, there are risks of landslides in the coming days in some of the areas affected…

“We are working with our partners to assess the needs of the most severely affected communities in the coming days and will then determine what support they need, but flooded roads mean getting aid to remote communities could be challenging.”

Both the Haiti and Dominican Republic Forums will be supported by the ACT Rapid Response Fund for their work in providing relief to those affected by Hurricane Irma.

In the months following the December 2013 political conflict, violence raged in some parts of South Sudan and not in others. In the northwestern city of Wau, for example, residents watched from afar, seemingly unconcerned that the politically-manipulated ethnic violence could spread there. And then it did. The victims ran for the city’s churches.

“It wasn’t safe anywhere, but people said that if they were going to be killed, they preferred to be killed in the church because this is the place that Jesus is present. They wanted to die in the church rather than die in their homes,” said Father Germano Bernardo, a Catholic priest in Wau.

Although tensions had been building for months, intense fighting broke out in June 2016 between soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, who are mostly members of the dominant Dinka tribe, and a mixture of local opposition groups and members of other ethnic communities. Civilians rushed to the city’s churches and a nearby United Nations base.

More than 400 people were killed and over 120,000 displaced in the initial phase, leaving churches, aid groups and United Nations agencies scrambling to respond. The churches got help from the ACT Alliance and other groups.

ACT members in South Sudan continue to provide food, water, household items, livelihood support and more to tens of thousands of displaced people in South Sudan.

Sporadic fighting around the city continued into this year, pushing more civilians out of their homes. In January, for example, a group of government-affiliated cattle keepers attacked local farmers they believe are aligned with anti-government rebels, and thousands fled neighbouring villages for the safety of Wau’s churches.

In April, after two high-ranking army officers were killed in an ambush nearby, SPLA soldiers and Dinka militia members rampaged through Wau, murdering and robbing non-Dinkas. The United Nations said at least 16 people were killed; other local sources reported double that number. Another 8,000 people were displaced.

Wau has long been a centre of tension between pastoralists and farmers. Violence between the two groups led to the displacement of thousands in 1996, but most returned home within a few days. Yet the current crisis, like many local conflicts in the world’s newest nation, has been exacerbated by the broader political crisis centred in Juba, the nation’s capital.

Catholic leaders played a key role in mediating the 1996 crisis in Wau, led by Bishop Rudolf Deng Majak. Yet Bishop Deng, who died in Germany in March, had been sick for some time and living outside the country. The bishop kept in touch by phone throughout the crisis with Father Bernardo, yet Anne Masterson, the country representative of Norwegian Church Aid, an ACT Alliance member, says things might have been different had he been present.

“He had been the priest of some of these military commanders and knew everyone. So perhaps people felt a bit lost without him. His absence may have allowed some of the clan divisions to be manipulated for political purposes, something the bishop had worked all his life to prevent,” she said.

In Bishop Deng’s absence, the South Sudan Council of Churches mounted a local peace initiative, with strong support from Norwegian Church Aid.

The church council pushed for face-to-face meetings between all parties, finally pulling together a three-day workshop of civil society leaders with government and military officials in December. Those in power made promises, which church leaders say they either didn’t keep, or local officials were replaced by the central government with people who had no interest in honouring the commitments of their predecessors.

According to the Rev Bang Akuei, the regional director for the South Sudan Council of Churches, government officials did try to mitigate the violence by mounting a campaign for civilians to turn in weapons. Yet the same day it convinced a group of cattle keepers to hand over their assault rifles, a large number of cattle were stolen from them. In the wake of the cattle raid, few listened to the government’s appeal to disarm.

And so the displaced wait.

“I’m a university graduate but I’ve been sitting in this camp for almost a year,” said William George, a resident of the cathedral camp. “This morning I didn’t eat anything. Nor did my children. If I had $100, I’d leave for Egypt or somewhere else, anywhere other than here. My house was burned and all my things were taken. There’s no future here because there’s no accountability. They can kill someone and there’s no response, no judgment.”

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Written by Paul Jeffrey

Not everything happens for good reason. The devastating floods triggered by unceasing rains in the second week of August 2017 spelled a disaster in the life of Bale Nepali, a resident of Bhajani municipality in Kailali. The flood not only destroyed his house and peanut farm but also swept away cattle and chickens, rendering his six-member family starving and homeless.

“The floods came early in the morning and it changed our normal life to a tragedy,” says Nepali, who lives near the Pathariya River. “While we were trying to escape, the flood water came in through the door of my house,” he says.

Nepali was one of the recipients of ACT member LWF Nepal’s relief package in Bharthaha village of Bhajani Municipality. LWF provided relief to 123 flood-affected families in the village. They were given beaten rice, instant noodle, water, rice and pulse.  The people had been starved for more than 3 days.

As of August 22, 2017, LWF Nepal has provided immediate relief to a total of 574 flood-affected families in Morang, Jhapa and Kailali districts. LWF Nepal has reached 258 flood-affected families in Jhapa and 210 households in Kailali and 106 families in Morang districts with relief packages that included food, kitchen utensil sets, blankets and urgent clothing items. LWF Nepal and its implementing partner in coordination with District Disaster Relief Committee (DDRC) provided the relief materials.

ACT Members’ Response

Members of ACT Alliance Nepal Forum have been responding to the humanitarian crisis in different districts. Dan Church Aid (DCA) has been providing relief package that include food, tarpaulins and mosquito nets to flood-hit people in Saptari and Bardiya districts. Most importantly, DCA deployed its staff in Saptari immediately after the flood and partnered with local radio to produce and broadcast information on the flood.

Lutheran World Relief (LWR) has provided food items to 2,376 families in Bardiya and Nawalparasi districts while Christian Aid has been distributing non-food items to flood victims in Bardiya, Banke and Dang. Similarly, ICCO Cooperation has been providing food items to 600 families in Rautahat district.

Quick and Timely Response

Members of ACT Alliance in Nepal have responded to the emergency immediately. People in Jhapa Rural Municipality (RM) in Jhapa district responded that LWF Nepal was the first organization to reach to their village with relief materials. “LWF Nepal and its implementing partners, which have been working on Disaster Risk Reduction and Livelihood promotion in the village, reached first,” says Jaya Narayan Shah, chairperson of the RM.

Similarly, DCA reached to flood affected area in Saptari immediately and it partnered with a local radio to produce and broadcast information on the flood. The radio program was effective to disseminate the information to the affected communities and to collaborate with other agencies working in the district,” says Cecial Adhikari, Program Manager-Recovery Program in DCA. 

ACT Members Plan Joint Response

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), the flood has killed 143 people and injured 43 and 30 have gone missing. There has been a huge loss of property particularly the stock food grains, standing crops, seeds, livestock, poultry and fish whose accurate data is yet to come.

According to the MoHA, as of Tuesday, around 80,000 houses have been completely destroyed and 144,444 partially damaged. As per the initial reports received from the affected districts, 75 schools in Banke, 58 in Bardiya, 2 in Dang, 20 in Saptari, 178 in Parsa, 37 schools and 5 madrasas in Dhanusha, and 8 Early Childhood Development (ECD) centers in Chitwan have been damaged.

ACT Alliance Nepal forum is developing a joint plan to respond to the humanitarian crisis. “Considering the devastation in 18 affected districts in the southern part of Nepal, ACT Alliance is devising a joint plan to support affected population,” says Dr Prabin Manandhar, Country Director of LWF Nepal and Convener of ACT Alliance Nepal Forum.

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Story written by Umesh Pokharel/LWF Nepal

Mary Kuol carries water home from a well dug by the ACT Alliance in Yang Kuel, a village in South Sudan’s Lol State – Credit: Paul Jeffrey

Mary Kuol carries water home from a well dug by the ACT Alliance in Yang Kuel, a village in Lol State, South Sudan where the persistent drought has destroyed crops and forced people to eat wild leaves to survive. Kuol is seven months pregnant with her third child.

The well was drilled in 2016 by a local partner of ACT member Christian Aid. The organization has also distributed food vouchers to hungry families in the region.

“We came here a year ago because, as bad as things are here, they were worse in our village. At least we have safe water now, so my children are much healthier, even though most of the time all I have to feed them are wild leaves and fruits,” Kuol said.

Atouc Dut lives in neighboring Malek Miir, where drought has also wrought hunger. She spends much of each day collecting wild leaves to feed her four children, while her husband cuts skinny trees in the bush to sell as poles. With that small income and a cash voucher from Christian Aid, the family can buy some sorghum and soap. She says they’re not going anywhere, though she wishes there was a school in the village for her children.

“We have food most every day. It’s not much, but there’s nowhere we can go where it would be any better,” she said.

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Story by Paul Jeffrey

Nidier Atak cooks wild leaves in Rumading, a village in South Sudan’s Lol State where more than 5,000 people, displaced by drought and conflict, remain in limbo. Credit: Paul Jeffrey

In South Sudan’s Lol State, Nidier Atak sought to flee from the violence that swept through her village of Wanalel, where people already suffered from serial crop failures due to a persistent drought. Her husband had left the parched village in 2016 to look for work, but he didn’t return. “He used to be a farmer, but for several years there has been no rain when we needed it. So he went looking elsewhere for work, but we haven’t heard from him. He finds it painful to return home empty-handed,” she said.

In January, Atak and her five children started walking to neighbouring Sudan, hoping that as refugees there they could obtain international assistance. After several days of walking, they got as far as Rumading, where they met other drought victims returning from the border with reports that it was closed to the passage of refugees. So she and her children camped out under trees, eating wild leaves as the rainy season approached. She says her husband doesn’t know where they are.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. Back home there was nothing to keep us alive. Going north is now out of reach. So we stay here and wait, though I don’t know what we’re waiting for,” she said.

Within weeks a spontaneous settlement of more than 5,000 people materialized, all displaced people denied entry to Sudan. They drew water from a muddy pond and walked farther and farther into the bush every day to harvest wild leaves.

“There’s nothing other than leaves to eat. My kids are malnourished, but there are no alternatives,” Atak said.

In early April, ACT member Norwegian Church Aid,  began drilling a well in the informal settlement and distributed sorghum, beans and cooking oil to the most vulnerable families. It carried out the emergency response in coordination with government officials and the local Catholic parish.

“People were there for three months, hidden in the bush before we became aware of them,” said Father Paul Ariath, whose rambling Awiel-based parish includes the displaced. “There was too much hunger and people were dying. When I learned about them I talked with NCA, and they came and saw for themselves. They brought in some food, but it wasn’t enough, and they brought in a big machine to start drilling for water.”

Ariath says some of the displacement is due to conflict. He notes there are few men in Rumading.

“Many of the men have been killed fighting, or they are off on operations. There are too many militias in our land, and so there is a lot of fighting,” he said. “Families flee from one place because of the war, leaving all their belongings behind as they escape with just their lives. And then the fighting soon finds them in the new place, and they have to flee once again.”

The changing climate has been causing problems for years, the priest reports. “The rain doesn’t fall easily like it did before. There’s no flooding like we used to have. As the rivers dried up, the people slowly sold off their cows and goats in order to survive. But now they have nothing left, so they are forced to move,” he said.

Ariath says when he speaks with the displaced, he encourages them not to lose hope. “I tell them to keep praying for help. That’s why the ACT Alliance and the church are there. We come in response to the prayers of the people,” he said.

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Written by Paul Jeffrey

Adhieu Deng Ngewei and other women work together on April 12, 2017, in a community vegetable garden in Dong Boma, a Dinka village in South Sudan’s Jonglei State.  Credit: Paul Jeffrey

Dong Boma, South Sudan – When the war reached her village in early 2014, Adhieu Deng and her husband grabbed their seven children and headed for several islands in the middle of the White Nile River. The treacherous currents and featureless swamps around the islands have long provided cover for displaced families hiding from men with guns. And Deng and her husband knew how to get there. After being displaced by another war in 1991, they hid in the islands until returning home in 2003.

When political conflict once again broke out, beginning in Juba in December 2013, it quickly spread to several other parts of South Sudan. As the violence closed in on her village in Jonglei State, Deng knew where to go.

“When the fighting moved near to us, the roads were closed and the food supply was cut off. People were getting hungry and the rebels were passing close by. If we didn’t want to die of hunger or bullets, we had to leave. Some of my neighbours left for Kenya or Uganda, but I know the islands better than other countries, so we headed for the river,” she said.

Life on the islands was hard. “We survived on fish and wild foods. If you didn’t catch any fish, you usually spent the entire day without food. The children sometimes went to sleep without food. It wasn’t easy hiding there, but no one could reach there to kill us. We had no mosquito nets nor shelters, so we slept in the open and the children were sick a lot. There were no medicines or doctors. No NGOs came to the islands,” she said.

“After a while, the fishing nets were so torn they wouldn’t work. Without any food, we either had to return home or die there. We decided to come back home. It was the right choice because the ACT Alliance has helped us rebuild our community.”

Since the family returned to Dong Boma in 2016 to find their house in ashes, Deng has had to construct a new home. She’s done that with help from the Lutheran World Federation, one of the several members of the ACT Alliance working in South Sudan.

According to United Nations officials, more than 3.5 million South Sudanese are internally displaced or have fled to neighbouring countries as refugees in response to the current conflict.

Yet in some locations, as fighting has ebbed and flowed into other areas, a few of the displaced, like Deng, have cautiously returned home. In Dong Boma, the ACT Alliance has helped the returnees rebuild houses, drill wells, patch holes in a dike that keeps the village dry during seasonal floods and support a group of women–including Deng–who organised a giant community garden.

As the community rebuilds, Deng hopes she won’t have to flee again. “Over the years we’ve had too many wars, too many cattle raids. There’s always some kind of fighting going on. I’d love to live in peace,” she said.

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Written by Paul Jeffrey

Romania was one of the countries hit hardest by the cold snap which began around Europe in late January, associated with heavy snowfalls and a deep freeze. Thousands of people were trapped during January for long days in the Southern and Eastern parts of the country.  Many elderly people died from hypothermia after temperatures dropped consecutively to -25 degrees Celsius for more than a week. More than 40,000 people were affected from 250 villages in 17 counties of Romania.

Read the ACT Rapid Response Fund HERE

ACT Alliance Response

Within the first days of the disaster, a needs assessment was immediately undertaken by the Field Work Team of ACT member AIDRom Emergency Unit. There was high demand for fresh drinking water, bread, and canned food, as the provisions of the people were seriously depleted.

AIDRom Emergency Unit, together with the local community leaders paid special attention to promote solidarity within the communities between those severely affected and those less affected by the severe winter.

Thanks to the swift reaction of the ACT Alliance to the application of AIDRom for the Rapid Response Fund, AIDRom Emergency Unit, a shipment of 400 consistent and quality family food and mineral water parcels as well as 200 family hygiene kits were brought and distributed in the affected, isolated rural communities from the targeted areas.

Outcomes

The assistance provided by AIDRom through the Rapid Response Fund met the most urgent needs of the victims in terms of nutrition and hygiene.

Food Security & Drinking Water: 400 households received food parcels, assisting 1.164 persons. 98% of them reported that the food received met their needs fully and alleviated their suffering. The exceptions were families with infants who needed additional specialized food.

Sanitation and Hygiene: 200 households received hygiene kits, which benefitted 587 persons. 96% stated that hygiene kits received met their needs fully. Again, the exceptions were families with infants who would have also needed diapers or elderly who were lacking incontinence diapers.

Non-Food Items: 400 households received clothing of all sorts according to the composition of the family (men, women, and children) and reached 1.285 individuals. 80% of the people stated that clothes received met their needs. In some cases, the sizes of the clothing were not correct, but this was solved many times by people exchanging some of the items between them within the village (coats, trousers, pullovers).

Technical Assistance: 52 households were assisted with temporary loans of winter sleeping bags, appliances for home heating, dehumidifying equipment, and power generators, assisting in this way a total number of 148 persons, who showed 100% satisfaction for the opportunity.

We feel and believe that this program had a major weight in improving lives of many affected people. In the name of hundreds of people helped through this program, we would like to thank you in their names for the splendid way in which the ACT Alliance and its coordinating office helped to care about them and to express the most sincere and deepest appreciation for the fine spirit and hearty contribution. (Rev. Miklós Ménessy, Emergency Unit Coordinator)

Source: Ecumenical Association of Churches in Romania – RRF Final Report