pda

Ministry by the vulnerable with the vulnerable

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partners from the Assembly of Evangelical (Presbyterian) Churches in Iraq are sharing, in their own words, about the Matthew 25 ministries to which they have been called.

Climate for welcoming refugees drastically threatened

According to the U.S. Department of State, the Trump administration plans to set the fiscal year 2020 refugee admissions goal at 18,000, a record low that effectively dismantles the U.S. resettlement program established nearly 40 years ago. Today’s presidential executive order also permits state and local officials to block refugee resettlement in their communities.

‘Flint’ documentary gets conversation started at Michigan cinema

People died and many more became extremely ill in the city’s 5-year-old water crisis that was still making headlines last week as the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance-produced documentary “Flint: The Poisoning of an American City” had its world premiere and opened in a chain of Michigan movie theaters.

Thirty-two seconds in Dayton

In 32 seconds, a lone gunman in downtown Dayton, Ohio, injured 27 people and killed nine, including his sister. This mass shooting happened back to back with another shooting 13 hours earlier on Aug. 3 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. In that rampage, 22 people died and 26 were injured. 

Presbyterians’ presence felt in famine-stricken countries

It’s considered the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet today. In 2018, the United Nations estimated that 14 million people in Yemen were on the brink of starvation. UNICEF estimates that 1.8 million Yemeni children suffer from acute malnutrition. Thirty thousand die each year.

So, you want to volunteer in a disaster area? Here’s how

When Mother Nature rages, Eden Roberts knows her phone is going to start ringing. “They want to go to the place they saw on the news,” says the mission specialist for hosting and volunteer management for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). “After (Hurricane) Sandy, they all wanted to go to New Jersey where the boardwalk got torn down. Now, Mexico Beach (the Florida town where Hurricane Michael made landfall in October) — everybody wants to go to Mexico Beach.”

PDA responds to needs following both natural, human-caused disasters

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance uses terms like “unprecedented” and “all-encompassing” when referring to the destructive fires still burning both in Northern and Southern California – especially the Camp Fire that destroyed much of Paradise, Calif., a fire that had claimed at least 79 lives as of Tuesday and destroyed more than 10,000 homes.