South Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief has concluded its response to February’s earthquake in Chile, reporting Southern Baptist efforts as both “accomplished” and “successful.” The story is not the same for Haiti, however, as mission efforts shift from medical relief to helping Haitians rebuild their homes and lives.
Billy Chanaberry (right), a math major at Middle Georgia College, untangles rebar from a destroyed home in Haiti. Chanaberry and 10 other college friends worked with Haitian Baptist volunteers to move 35 tons of reinforced concrete by hand. A South Carolina Disaster Relief official says the Baptist response in Haiti has now shifted from medical relief to demolition and rebuilding.South Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief led the Southern Baptist Convention in aid to Chile, working through Baptist Global Response of the International Mission Board.
“Chile is a prosperous country that easily gets back on its feet following a tragedy like this,” said Cliff Satterwhite, director of the SCBC disaster relief group. “Our goal was to go in and teach the nationals how do to mass-care feeding and build temporary housing units. It was a project that went very smoothly. In fact, nationals began seeing themselves as part of the disaster relief effort, and that means we were very successful.
“This is one of the first times that we’ve actually been able to enter a country and fully accomplish the goal of teaching people to care for themselves,” Satterwhite said.
Meanwhile, the response to Haiti continues, as the Florida Baptist Convention distributes “Buckets of Hope” across the region and Southern Baptist churches plan mission trips to Haiti.
Satterwhite said missions teams will now be going as overall disaster relief work begins to shift its response from emergency medical missions to demolition and ministry teams.
South Carolina churches interested in sending missions teams to Haiti should contact the North American Mission Board, especially regarding summer work with children and adults, Satterwhite said.
“I would still caution churches about sending teenagers and young people to Haiti,” Satterwhite said. “I believe college students and adults can go there easily, but there remains that sense of a security problem.”
Satterwhite said there is no truth to the rumor that the Buckets of Hope, collected by Baptist churches for Haiti relief, are not going to be delivered as anticipated.
“More than 120,000 of the buckets were collected throughout the SBC,” Satterwhite said. “Due to issues at the Haitian border, those buckets will enter the country in incremental shipments. The first 20,000 have been delivered. We’ve actually been told that incremental shipments will be more of a blessing to the Haitian people simply because overall aid will diminish during the rainy season. The buckets can fill that gap.”
He said South Carolina Disaster Relief is also turning its attention to help flood victims in Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and will be sending teams to all three locations. – SCBC