INSIDE: Giving hope to 438,300 survivors of the war in Ukraine. PAGE 2
Providing aid to survivors of climate disaster across the United States, including those displaced by floods in California. PAGE 6
Your compassion for the helpless and troubled inside.
How the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) —with support from people like you—is alleviating the suffering of people in war-torn Ukraine.
In February 2023, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reached its one-year anniversary. The humanitarian crisis has uprooted 27.3 million people worldwide, including 6.5 million who remain internally displaced.
In the city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, air raid sirens scream day and night.
On the war’s frontline, Mykolaiv is never safe from rockets, artillery and cluster bombs. The air raid sirens have become a permanent fixture of a city under constant siege.
pre-cooked meal kits complete with utensils simplify consumption when kitchen amenities are limited or nonexistent. And the medical resources are life-savers to the hundreds of people injured daily by shells and bombs.
Of the tens of thousands of people who remain in Mykolaiv, some are previous evacuees who had no choice but to return when their money ran out. Others remain in the ravaged city because they have nowhere else to go.
Thanks to people like you, UMCOR is distributing ready-toeat meals, medical resources and other humanitarian relief to survivors hiding out in basements and bomb shelters. The
Since the invasion of Ukraine, more than 20 million people have fled the besieged nation for other parts of the world. But 6.5 million—including 1.2 million children—remain. These internally displaced people—unable to cross the border because of poor health, family obligations or lack of resources—suffer from the many perils and indignities of people with little choice or agency. 438,300
Heavy fighting eventually forced Tatiana and her sevenyear-old daughter to flee their home in Kherson, a Black Sea harbor town in southern Ukraine.
After two months of living with a friend, they moved into a hotel-turned-shelter in southwestern Ukraine. But the building’s lack of beds and central heat drove them to look for alternatives.
Eventually, Tatiana was connected with an UMCOR-IOCCsupported Eleos-Ukraine shelter in the Chernivtsi region in the eastern Carpathians.
“Everything was different from the hotel,” says Tatiana. “Good infrastructure, a clean room and staff who always listen to you and try to solve your problems.”
After receiving medical checkups and legal consultation, the pair qualified for state social assistance. Soon Tatiana found a job and her daughter was placed in a nearby school.
“We live as if in paradise,” says Tatiana. “Lots of people we don’t know care about us and want to help. I have only one dream now: that my parents (who still live in Kherson) will see their granddaughter again.”
Maryna stayed in her hometown as long as she could. But the war razed most of the houses and schools, closed the shops, and reduced food shipments to a trickle of bread imports. Once her house lost access to water, electricity and gas, she packed up her children and fled to Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. Family members helped her find an apartment, but she had no job, few necessities and no assistance accessing government or humanitarian aid.
Then Maryna learned of a local UMCOR-IOCC-supported relief center for internally displaced people. There she was given food, clothing and medicine and connected to social workers, psychologists and lawyers.
At the center, Maryna also made new friends with others in similar circumstances.
“Before I started visiting the center, my life was very difficult,” she says. “I had a feeling nobody cared about me and my children, and I did not know who to approach for help. The center became a place where I started feeling secure and where I discovered that I too can also help others in my community.”
Those who are hurting are seen when we partner together. Use the reply card enclosed or visit giveumcmission.org/see.
Olexander Vlah, a 79-year-old widower, lives in the Bolhrad Municipality’s Reception Center in southwestern Ukraine. Sadly, Mr. Vlah's three sons all died in Mariupol, which endured heavy fighting during the three-month-long siege by Russian forces beginning in February 2022. Once a week, Mr. Vlah visits a food distribution center in Bolhrad and receives free food to last until his next visit. Mr. Vlah is one of many senior Ukrainians who lack income and family assistance and who receive vital aid from UMCOR – support enabled because of people like you.
Prior to the war in Ukraine, many African nations had relied heavily on Ukrainian grain imports for food. But when Russia blocked Ukraine’s ports, African trade with Ukraine dwindled, exacerbating food security issues that already exist across the continent due to climate change and political instability. Now, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are on the brink of catastrophic famine, with over 1.5 million people displaced by drought and hunger.
UMCOR emergency grants to partners in these countries provide for famine refugees’ basic needs. And with your support, United Methodist churches across Africa are making agricultural innovations to resolve food insecurity and prevent future humanitarian disasters.
In 2022, Global Ministries approved over $4 million to the Yambasu Agriculture Initiative, named in memory of the late Bishop John K. Yambasu, who passionately supported sustainable agriculture in Africa. Since 2020, initiative grants have helped over half of the United Methodist conferences in Africa, including those in Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, turn church-owned land into productive farms.
“The initiative has two key objectives,” explains Dr. Kepifri Lakoh, director of the Yambasu Initiative. “One is [to] develop … revenue streams through agriculture that are needed to sustain the church. The other is [to] support smallholder farmers in our communities to increase income levels.”
Churches partner with local farmers for both trade and labor, growing local economies as they increase their capacity to raise, harvest and sell crops and livestock. Through reinvesting the proceeds of their initial harvests, churches will eventually earn sufficient revenue to both scale their
agricultural businesses and sustain their ministries.
This is already happening in Sierra Leone and Mozambique, where conferences are reinvesting 100% of the profits from initial grants into their second year of production in projects such as fruit tree orchards and cattle husbandry.
This year there’s an added burden for the Yambasu Initiative: inflation that has bloated the cost of agricultural inputs such as seeds, tools and machinery by 30-50% in Africa.
“If prices keep going up,” says Lakoh, “and we don’t find a way to cushion that inflationary effect, the businesses will not succeed. … We need to find a way to provide relief for these conferences to deal with the shock caused by Ukraine and inflationary market effects.”
Thanks to your generosity, the Yambasu Initiative is expanding into additional conferences, thousands of farmers are being trained in sustainable agricultural techniques and agricultural trade is happening across conferences. With continued support to meet the current economic challenges, African churches will thrive, and when future famines occur, they will have the financial and agricultural resources to help.
Late 2022 and early 2023 brought an onslaught of natural disasters to regions across the United States. In late December, a deadly blizzard hit the Buffalo, New York, area. In January, heavy rainstorms inundated the American West. Flooding in California and Nevada caused between $5-7 billion in damage and claimed at least 22 lives. In the same month, a series of tornadoes slammed the Southeast, killing at least eight people and devastating whole communities.
Through your compassionate giving, UMCOR helped affected communities mobilize an immediate emergency response. The California-Nevada Conference, Alabama-West Florida Conference and North Georgia Conference each received financial assistance to support food and water distribution, cleanup, repairs and the deployment of Early Response Teams to help families with both immediate needs and the logistics of rebuilding.
California’s monumental flood damage was particularly devastating to those in vulnerable housing situations. In San Mateo County, Pilarcitos Creek flooded about 20 homes in an affordable
Below are some recent measures of support your generosity has provided to areas that have experienced severe weather:
Ź Puerto Rico received aid in long-term recovery after Hurricane Fiona
Ź Mississippi received aid in long-term recovery after Hurricane Ida
Ź Jack County, Texas, received aid in long-term recovery after tornado damage in March 2022
Ź Texas received aid in ongoing rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey
housing community for low-income and agricultural workers. A mobile home community near Lodi was severely flooded, and its residents lost their perishable food in a prolonged power outage.
Steve Elliott, Conference Disaster Response and UMVIM coordinator for the California-Nevada Conference, collaborated with local United Methodist congregations to provide over 350 households in these communities with gift cards, food and cleaning supplies. He expressed appreciation for UMCOR’s immediate help and confirmed that the conference would be “providing further assistance to this flooding recovery and others as needed.”
In Selma, Alabama, more than a dozen tornadoes affected at least 600 households during storms on January 12. Church Street United Methodist became a hub of compassionate support for residents, serving hundreds of meals a day for weeks after the tornadoes decimated the area.
“While [January 12] was, perhaps, one of the most terrifying days of my life,” says the church’s senior pastor, Rev. Diane Everette, “I was never alone, thanks to my brothers and sisters in Christ in
this conference. It will be a long road ahead for Selma, but our conference disaster response team
Early Response Teams (ERTs) and local churches also mobilized quickly throughout the North Georgia Conference, where the same storm system destroyed 200 homes across eight counties.
In the wake of the storms, Griffin First United Methodist Church in Griffin, Georgia, immediately opened as a shelter and deployed their Early Response Team to begin the first phase of cleanup and repair. Over 20 churches in the conference assembled cleaning buckets and hygiene kits, set up centers and hosted Early Response Teams, provided hot meals and gift cards, and helped community members begin the process of accessing government assistance for rebuilding. While North Georgia Conference churches jumped into action less than 24 hours after the storms had passed, their efforts continue: “Almost a month after the impact, ERTs are assisting with residential requests for help," says Conference Disaster Response Coordinator, Rev. Scott Parrish. “… We continue to need many teams responding. We’re also in conversations with the range of partners required to assist with long term recovery, so there will be ongoing mission needs for the next 2-3 years.”
Your continual support for UMCOR disaster relief not only enables churches and Early Response Teams to reach out with an immediate compassionate response in the wake of tragedy, it also helps communities complete the lengthy recovery from life-altering disasters.
The needs continue to grow, but UMCOR and its partners are responding to the hardships of those who have been forcibly displaced. Below is a snapshot of the most recent activity supported by your gifts.
Ź CZECH REPUBLIC: Food, hygiene items, medical supplies and transportation; additional assistance to Ukrainian Roma who have migrated to the Czech Republic, including psychosocial support services for adult and youth refugees and integration courses for Czech teachers.
Ź MOLDOVA: Food, non-food items, livelihoods support, psychosocial counseling and medical services and legal services for refugees.
Ź POLAND: Increased access to short-and medium-term housing for Ukrainians; supermarket vouchers for refugees; cash assistance to Ukrainian refugee families and Polish host families; 75 hours of Polish language classes for Ukrainians; and legal advocacy for refugees.
Ź ROMANIA: Supermarket vouchers for refugees and anti-trafficking and safeguarding training.
Ź UNITED STATES: Legal and humanitarian aid to Ukrainians coming to the U.S. for shelter.
Your support powers this work. Use the reply card to make a gift to UMCOR and bring hope to those who have been displaced.
When you respond today, we can be ready to meet immediate needs for annual conferences affected by natural disasters.
will walk with us every step of the way.”
Now
Ź Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Ź Strengthen, develop and renew Christian congregations and communities.
Ź Alleviate human suffering.
Ź Seek justice, freedom and peace.