LOUISVILLE — Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is proposing a long-term strategy for responding to the hurricanes of 2005 — a plan that would organize the Presbyterian response for five to seven years in Mississippi and for eight to 12 years in Louisiana.
“The affected area is so large that responding to all communities is not feasible,” states a report to the General Assembly Council outlining the plan.
But Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is working now in 15 communities in Mississippi and seven in Louisiana. It has set up six “Volunteer Villages” where volunteer teams from churches across the country stay when they come to assist with the relief work.
The volunteer tent villages each cost about $8,500 a month to operate. And the response from churches has been terrific, said Susan Ryan, who leads Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Volunteers have come to help from 40 states and three other countries, she said in an interview. In March alone, the villages hosted 1,890 volunteers who gave 12,372 days of work valued at $1.48 million.
The Volunteer Villages approach also is being developed into a model that could be used elsewhere in future disasters, the report states.
Through February of this year, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance had received $23 million for hurricane assistance. Only about $4.5 million of that has been spent so far — an intentional approach “to prevent PDA’s long-term response from falling short as media headlines about the disaster fade,” the report states. “PDA funds follow and do not replace governmental funds that are available in the early days of the disaster.”
About $4 million will be used to support the recovery of Presbyterian congregations in the affected areas and to support their staffs, the report states.
The Worldwide Ministries Division Committee also discussed a plan for a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) “mission blitz” for 2007. More than 20 missionaries and some national staff members would be sent out to 120 presbyteries during a week in the fall of 2007, speaking about Presbyterian mission in about 600 congregations.
Council member Frances Irwin of Moses Lake, Wash. told the Worldwide Ministries Committee April 27 that relatively few of the more than 11,000 Presbyterian congregations have any direct, ongoing contact with mission co-workers — but those that do tend to be particularly supportive with dollars and prayer of Presbyterian mission work.
“We have to understand we’re in a culture of 20 to 30 years of not doing this,” of not sponsoring such visits, Irwin said.
And Marian McClure, director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Worldwide Ministries Division, said she’d like to see the denomination do something every year to connect congregations with mission co-workers — an effort she described as developing a “mission habit” in the denomination.
