A carpenter in Malawi has given up making cupboards. With a famine hitting his country, he now only builds coffins.
A carpenter in Malawi has given up making cupboards. With a famine hitting his country, he now only builds coffins.
“That pretty much sums up the situation in [southern Africa],” says Frank Teeuwen, Adventist Development and Relief Agency’s bureau chief for disaster preparedness and response. Drought has ruined crops and torrential rains are causing landslides, ruining more. Less people are able to work the fields because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
With mass starvation threatening 34 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, including some 200,000 Adventists, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is mobilizing its resources to respond and avert thousands of deaths.
“The famine in Africa is compromising the future of millions of people,” says Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Adventist world church. “We are reminded as Seventh-day Adventists and a people of hope to share the love of Jesus through immediate service to those in need.”
Through its humanitarian agency, the church has already responded by distributing food to 27,000 people in Malawi. In Zambia more than 13,000 metric tons of maize have already been distributed. In Ethiopia, whose plight captivated the world two decades ago, 10,000 people will be fed in the next two months. In Zimbabwe, ADRA has fed 18,000 people for four months.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is compounding the problems throughout Africa. AIDS has orphaned 14 million children in Africa, Teeuwen says. “Some children aren’t learning how to farm because they are taking care of their parents. We have people in our church who are affected.
“We can empower them with knowledge and skills,” says Teeuwen. “We can’t change the whole country right now but we can make a difference in many people’s lives.”
Seeds, fertilizer and agricultural assistance are already being provided to farmers in Malawi and Zambia for the upcoming planting season to help alleviate hunger in the spring of 2003.
“We must increase our response efforts immediately if we are to effectively help people already weakened by hunger and reaching the stage of severe malnutrition,” says Charles Sandefur, president of ADRA International. “This is an opportunity for church members to join ADRA in a life-changing ministry.
“Collectively we are already assisting thousands of people,” Sandefur says. “It’s too late once we see pictures on the news that show starving children with vacant eyes and distended bellies. We can help in this crisis that’s looming across Africa.”
