For months, the Syrian refugee crisis has been in the news. Unfortunately, while attention to this disaster seems to be waning a bit from main-stream culture, the monstrous disaster continues, with little sign of abating soon. If progress is to be made, it is critical to understand the source or and nature of this catastrophe […]

Over the past several months, one of the largest refugee crises in history has emerged among the Rohingya peoples from the country of Myanmar. More than 600,000 have fled their homeland to find refuge in Bangladesh. It is a very complicated situation and with no simple answers. Here’s a brief look at the origin of […]

Photo credit: IMB I heard a story in one of my training events recently, that I found both encouraging and alarming. One of our SBC churches enjoyed a recently developed field relationship with a national partner in India. The church regularly sent funds to this partner, enjoyed the reports they received, and had even visited […]

When a large scale disaster happens, we commonly we see the following… Loss of means of livelihood Communities becoming separated from services previously provided Loss of normal sources of food Lack of shelter and household necessities Lack of fuel for cooking Lack of potable water Communicable diseases and overcrowding Additional burdens for women, especially as […]

When a disaster happens, you might be left stunned and struggling to understand. How could this happen? Was it an act of God or nature? Why is an earthquake in a developing country more devastating than one in a developed country? You also might feel helpless. After all, disasters can often be massive in scale […]

As stated in a previous blog post, when most people think of responding to disasters, they typically think of relief work (e.g. handing out food, distributing water, providing shelter, etc.). While relief work is the most recognizable strategy after disasters occur, there are several strategies worth mentioning. Disaster Relief Strategies: Disaster Relief – responding after […]

To recap last week’s post: When responding to acute needs, we want to apply disaster response and relief strategies. Conversely, responding to chronic needs, we want to think more of community development strategies. Some would say there are multiple stages between relief and development: relief – recovery – rehabilitation – restoration – development For the […]

Baptist Global Response is both a relief (disaster relief) and development (community development) organization. About 1/3 of the work we do is responding to disasters around the world. These are our disaster relief projects. The other 2/3 is related to responding to long-term, chronic needs. These are our community development projects. We distinguish disaster relief […]