One month ago, the category 5 Super Typhoon Haiyan (locally name Yolanda) barreled into the Philippines archipelago. The typhoon made landfall six times, battering the central islands and leaving a path of almost total destruction in nine of the country's 17 regions. The statistics are daunting: 15 million people affected, 4 million displaced, 5,924 killed and 1,779 still missing, and 1.12 million houses damaged or destroyed. A number of remote Philippine islands are still cut off from sufficient aid, electricity and water.
The needs are almost overwhelming, but World Renew has made a good start – thanks to the generous support it has received from the Christian Reformed Church and from other Christian relief and development organizations from North America to Europe to Australia. Our Senior Project Manager Grace Wiebe was there within a week, and was soon followed by volunteer International Relief Managers (IRMs) Harry & Annie Bergshoeff, Bernie Schaaf, and Greta & Harry Harsevoort. They are working closely with the Christian Reformed Church in the Philippines and have already completed a first distribution of food, personal items, sleeping mats, blankets, pails and plastic bags to nearly 4,000 families. In the next phase, World Renew will provide stoves, sleeping mats, mosquito nets, buckets, jerry cans, towels, dishes, cooking utensils and flashlights. Soon we will move on to permanent shelter reconstruction. World Renew, along with the numerous other organizations who have flocked to the Philippines, is making a difference.
For me personally, it was very hard to not be there! I had pre-existing travel commitments during the past month to visit World Renew projects in Kenya & Uganda, lead a Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB) media tour in Jordan & Lebanon, and then attend CFGB meetings in Winnipeg, Manitoba. These meetings and events were taxing enough in and of themselves, but with World Renew’s growing Philippines response on top of them it certainly became a very busy and stressful month! The media tour in the Middle East was particularly impactful, given the needs in that region – which are almost as large as those in the Philippines and certainly much more intractable: 9.3 million people in need, 6.5 million internally displaced people, 2.2 million refugees, and approximately one third of all buildings in Syria – which had a population of 21.4 million – have been damaged or destroyed. Visiting the Middle East while being preoccupied with the Philippines was overwhelming, and it was hard not to compare the two disasters, as well as the global response to them. While we are very grateful for the tremendous outpouring of generosity towards the people of the Philippines, we also want to be able to do much more for displaced people and refugees in the Middle East!
May God grant us wisdom and discernment as we seek to show His love to all disaster-affected people, so that no one may be overlooked in the administration of mercy.