Church World Service Raises Katrina Appeal to $9.5 Million

- Effort to Include Assistance to Evacuees; Spiritual and Trauma Response Care
- Agency's Responders in Region to Develop Long-term Recovery Program

September 9, 2005

NEW YORK/HOUSTON - Following Katrina's first waves of destruction and flooding of New Orleans, and the unprecedented wave of evacuation from the devastated area, responding agency Church World Service (CWS) announced today it is raising its national fund-raising goal to $9.5 million and is expanding its immediate and long-term recovery response to include expanded trauma and spiritual care and relocation assistance for people displaced to other cities, working in concert with other state, federal, and CWS programmatic partners.

In addition, CWS has also processed a shipment of 20 Interchurch Medical Assistance Medicine Boxes to Louisiana, which is sufficient to serve twenty thousand people total for up to three months.

CWS Executive Director Rev. John L. McCullough says, "Given the enormity of need now and for a long time to come, we are increasing our efforts in our core strength as domestic disaster responders, that is, long-term recovery for the poor, elderly, disabled, for children, the impoverished, Native Americans, and others.

"We'll also be providing trauma and spiritual care and assisting Katrina's thousands of displaced throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and nationwide," he said.

From Houston, CWS Associate Director for Emergency Response Linda Reed Brown reports, "Thousands are lined up outside the (George Brown) Convention Center, waiting to go through FEMA processing. People are calm, subdued, though there's lots of anxiety."

CWS has almost 60 years of experience in disaster response and is the only national resettlement agency with a disaster response and recovery unit. Church World Service will assist with voluntary relocations for those families who remain displaced as result of evacuations and the destruction of housing in their communities.

This week, CWS disaster responders are in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, assessing needs, meeting with existing community-based long-term recovery organizations, and organizing new ones.

CWS predicts that as many as 25 new CWS-assisted long-term recovery groups will be formed nationwide as a result of Katrina. "Some of these groups are still working to help survivors of last years hurricane season," says CWS's Brown.

"Well be bringing our many years of expertise in helping displaced people," says McCullough. "We're now working with our network of affiliate agencies across the country to adapt and enlist the longstanding resources and systems already in place to help evacuees who resettle in a given city to tap the resources they need to re-create their lives.

"Our community-based affiliates and local church group volunteers know where to go and can help people find the resources they need to start a normal life again."

"Trauma for those directly and indirectly victimized by this hurricane may reach epic proportions," says McCullough, "affecting not only the survivors but also thousands of relief and rescue personnel and case management care-givers. They've exposed themselves physically, psychologically, and spiritually to the grief, frustration, and hopelessness of the overwhelming demands on their lives. Suicides within the New Orleans Police Department have already attested to this."

Within three days after Katrina struck, Church World Service delivered its initial shipment of immediate emergency medicines and supplies to Baton Rouge, the latter including blankets and emergency needs kits.

Response, Recovery, and Relocation
In addition to the Church World Service Disaster Response and Recovery Liaisons now in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, ten domestic responders in all will be sent to affected communities to support organizing work for long-term recovery.

CWS domestic responders and senior New York staff will work with leadership of state councils/conferences of churches on coordinated, collaborative activities of the faith community across the affected states, particularly in relation to relocation activities.

In particular, age, health, education, economics, ethnicity, religious heritage, gender, and geographic location can all serve to increase vulnerability and diminish capacity to recovery from a disaster.

Domestic responders will concentrate organizing activity in areas where significant numbers of vulnerable survivors are, to help assure that their unmet needs are identified and given priority. CWS encourages the research and training of community leadership to effectively organize new and diverse communities for long-term recovery. Case management is designed to help families establish and fund a recovery plan.

CWS activities will also include: seed grants for developing long-term recovery organizations; sustainability grants for long-term recovery staff and administration (3-5 years); and home reconstruction grants to long-term recovery organizations.

CWS will support programs for up to 500 people, or roughly 165 families, over an initial period of three months who remain displaced as result of evacuations and the destruction of housing in their communities. CWS works with resettlement affiliate offices in eight sites around the United States.

The initial phase of this support will focus on resettlement affiliates that have already received uprooted families, according to McCullough.

Spiritual Care and Care-for-Caregivers

McCullough also notes, "Spiritual and emotional care will be of primary concern in coming months--and for years--for those who are affected. We intend to give particular support to clergy and lay caregivers who are ministering in the early days of relief and rescue, to those churches who are helping the relocation operations in their communities and states, and faith houses that will provide a continuum of care for long-term recovery."

CWS programs offer local faith leaders training opportunities and support through its Interfaith Trauma Response Training (ITRT) that helps equip them for care within their communities and self-care for themselves. The agency also offers trauma care through its Spiritual and Emotional Care Response (SECR) cadre of volunteer professional counselors. Both programs were developed during recovery after the September 11 disaster.

CWS domestic responders with high expertise in disaster emotional and spiritual care will also support the development of a national strategy to provide appropriate trauma and psycho-social care in shelters, relocation communities, and for grueling public operations such as morgue and death notification.

CWS Blankets and "Gift of the Heart" Kits

To date, Church World Service has shipped more than $300,000 in donated material assistance to affected areas, including 18,100 CWS Blankets; 14,335 "Gift of the Heart" Health Kits; 500 CWS "Gift of the Heart" Kids Kits; and 1,000 "Gift of the Heart" School Kits. Shipments have arrived in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. A shipment of UNICEF school and recreation materials will be distributed over the weekend in Meridian, MS.

Contributions to support these efforts may be sent to:

Church World Service
Hurricane Katrina Response -- #6280
P.O. Box 968
Elkhart, IN 46515
Or call 800 297 1516, ext. 222. Or give online at www.churchworldservice.org <http://www.churchworldservice.org/> .