RICHMOND, Va. — Almost $350,000 to assist victims of Haiti’s recent earthquake has been contributed in the past two months through the Baptist General Association of Virginia’s treasurer’s office, a financial officer said March 19.
Virginia Baptist individuals, churches and other organizations have given $348,267 since the Jan. 12 quake that devastated the country, and especially its capital, Port-au-Prince, said Leigh Ann Winston, controller in the treasurer’s office.
Dean Miller, who coordinates disaster relief for Virginia Baptists, prepares to ship buckets of food to Haiti. A portion of the almost $350,000 given by Virginia Baptist churches for relief helped fund the buckets.
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Most of the contributions will be used to address long-term needs in Haiti, said Dean Miller, who coordinates disaster relief projects for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. In the immediate aftermath of the disastrous earthquake — which killed anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 people — international government and nonprofit relief organizations rushed aid to the country, providing emergency food, shelter and medical care for survivors. But a long-term strategy for recovery is just now being developed, said Miller.
“We’re waiting for a viable and reliable plan to be in place before distributing the funds,” he said. “We’re in conversations with the Haiti Baptist Convention and the Baptist Haiti Mission,” two conventions of churches which are affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. Miller also is talking to several Baptist partners in the United States and with Hungarian Baptist Aid, a Budapest-based relief agency.
A message in French, Creole and English identifies the buckets of food as gifts from Baptists in the United States.
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“Our intent at this point is that Virginia Baptists will adopt a town or region and focus all our efforts there,” he said. “We would try to meet as many needs as possible – working with churches and schools, providing housing, offering micro-financing, meeting other basic needs. We can build a long-term relationship with one area and with several churches and orphanages and other institutions. That will focus our response and avoid the possibility of duplicating services, which is rampant across Haiti right now.”
Some of the $350,000 already has been distributed, including a $20,000 grant from the Virginia Baptist Foundation designated for Haitian relief, said Miller. Half of that amount was used to purchase 3,000 pounds of medical supplies, most of which were shipped to the Caribbean nation last month in partnership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Some of the medical supplies will accompany teams of Virginia Baptist volunteers who are expected to travel to Haiti in the next few weeks, in a partnership with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
The other half of the foundation’s grant helped fund “Buckets of Hope,” a nationwide emphasis of the Southern Baptist Convention to provide food for Haitians. Churches and individuals are filling five-gallon buckets with food items and dropping them off at central receiving centers for shipment to Haiti in mid-April.
Miller divided the $10,000 from the foundation grant into smaller grants of $300 each for churches to fill 10 buckets. Churches themselves provided the shipping cost of $10 per bucket.
Miller said about 1,500 buckets from Virginia Baptist churches will join the thousands being collected by the Florida Baptist Convention and which will be distributed in waves by the Confraternite Missionaire Baptiste d’Haiti, a third Baptist convention in the country.
Contributions continued to be welcomed, said Miller. For more information, click here.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.