Although the women of Malawi are accustomed to doing anything and everything from farming to running small-scale businesses to support their families, Tropical Cyclone Freddy sorely tested Tinenenji [tee-nan-an-gee] Kalamba’s resilience.
Yet Kalamba was undeterred.
The above words came from a Syrian woman displaced from her homeland and forced to flee to Italy, but they’re words that could be voiced by thousands who face a similar migration journey to often-unwelcoming countries; a journey that frequently leads refugees to be terrified, broken, and fragile at their destination.
Wednesday’s installment in the “Connecting the Dots” webinar series gave voice to three women who live on Vieques Island in the southeastern region of the Puerto Rico archipelago, an island that has faced many challenges including decades of hosting a U.S. Navy base for live-fire bombing practices.
“Trouble the Water,” a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) docuseries that encourages constructive conversations about race and racism, has been selected for wider distribution and is being knitted together into a full-length feature film that will be available for home viewing early this year.
Several Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-workers and other employees are moderating workshops and leading discussion groups at the People on the Move partner conference which convened Sunday in Rome, Italy.
A solidarity visit to Hawaii by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and other representatives of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) generated goodwill and helpful information for future humanitarian assistance. But most of all, it cultivated empathy and compassion for the people impacted by wildfires on Maui, where a historic blaze killed nearly 100 people and destroyed about 2,000 buildings in August.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is helping the church to understand healthy volunteerism through training that it also calls “decolonizing volunteerism.”
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, in collaboration with World Mission and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, has awarded nearly $100,000 in grant funding to support relief efforts in Israel-Palestine. The now month-long conflict continues to escalate and exact a heavy toll on civilian casualties along with crippling home and property loss in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Leland Presbyterian Church in Mississippi welcomed four members of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) National Response Team on Sunday, Oct. 29, as part of a commissioning ceremony for the church’s recently established disaster recovery volunteer host site as well as for the site’s coordinator.
