Ecumenical & Interfaith
News Network - PCUSA

Ecumenical community pleads for responses to Haiti crisis

A new hymn written by PC(USA) minister Carolyn Gillette after the Haiti earthquake spread worldwide when Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), sent it to all WARC member churches. Ecumenical relationships of many types have been playing a role in the responses to the earthquake. As Ecumenical News International describes it (ENI #10-00940), "Humanitarian practice, even during relatively small emergencies, is hard and imperfect work, and this is a fact that donors and even non-emergency staff from humanitarian groups often do not fully understand." Some news:

• PC(USA) disaster specialist Carlos Cardenas is on the ground in Haiti as part of a response team of the ecumenical, Geneva-based ACT International (Action by Churches Together). Working with ACT and Church World Service (CWS), the PC(USA) Disaster Assistance Program is providing food, water, hygiene and baby kits, temporary shelter for the homeless, and initial assessments for psycho-social recovery.

• CWS is helping Haitians apply for Temporary Protected Status in the U.S.

• ACT points to the coming need to address trauma, especially in areas of Port-au-Prince where residents, particularly women and children, were vulnerable even before the earthquake. Fears of rape, sex trafficking, and trafficking of children are common, as the recent case of the arrest of U.S. citizens for attempting to take Haitian children into the Dominican Republic has demonstrated.

• The WCC secretary general has welcomed the pledge by G7 nations in early February to write off Haiti's debts with them. He has asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to follow the G7 example and make financial support to Haiti "grant-based and not debt-creating."

• A Caribbean Council of Churches (CCC) statement pleads for "genuine development cooperation."

• CWS is chronicling its active through a variety of resources online.

• The PC(USA) has had a long-term bilateral partnership relationship with the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. A diocesan school and its hospital will receive a substantial grant from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. The hospital is one of the few operating medical facilities in its region.

Other faith communities have responded as well. American Jewish World Service established a Haiti earthquake relief fund and emphasized work in communities not being serviced by large-scale relief efforts. Islamic Relief launched an appeal for £1 million. A message to the Muslim community from Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), said in reference to Haiti, "Our community knows very well the devastation caused to Muslim societies by colonialism and imperialism, but we do not often recognize that others in the world have also suffered from the same history."