Haiti relief donations to CLWR almost at $400,000 mark; deadline ahead

from CLWR News

WINNIPEG– As the Canadian Lutheran World Relief Appeal for Haiti enters its third week, donations continue to flood into its Winnipeg head office. As of 9:30 a.m. Thursday, February 4, the total amount of donations receipted topped $370,000. Stacks of unopened letters will certainly push the total past $400,000 in the coming days. To donate online go to www.clwr.org/donate

Deadline looms

To have your donation matched by the Canadian government, it must be received and deposited by CLWR by Friday, February 12. Initially, the government announced that it would match donations made by individual Canadians to a maximum of $50 million. While this cap has since been removed, the deadline for donations qualifying for this match has not been extended.

Accessing matching funds

CLWR continues to work with Canadian Churches in Action (CCA) to prepare a proposal for submission to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to access a portion of the matching funds pool being created by the government. The delay in submitting this proposal can be largely placed on the difficulties faced by our partners on the ground in Haiti, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Action by Churches Together (ACT) Alliance, in gathering information and developing a longer-term plan for assisting the people affected by the earthquake.

ACT’s preliminary appeal, released last week, calls for financial support of US$20 million. CCA continues to work with ACT and the LWF to designate a portion of this $20 million program to the funds being collected by CCA members. CCA remains confident that once the proposal is in place, it will be viewed favourably by CIDA. Prayerfully, the end result will be a doubling of the value of donations.

Details about the matching fund application will be announced once the proposal has been submitted to CIDA.

Nicaraguan Lutherans support the CLWR appeal for Haiti

Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua, meeting in convention last week, resolved to designate the offering from its closing service to the work CLWR is doing in Haiti. The US$120 donation was delivered to CLWR by Lutheran Church–Canada President Robert Bugbee who attended the convention. Bugbee noted that although the gift may be small by our standards, “It comes from the second-poorest land in our hemisphere trying to help the poorest. It was a substantial gift of love when one considers the poverty of the donors.”

 The Situation in Haiti

(as reported by ACTCOM, the communications arm of the ACT Alliance.)

According to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Situation Report, the latest figures indicate 112,392 deaths, 196,501 injured, with one million homeless. Food aid and shelter are still in high demand, despite the many distributions already taking place. Airports and water ports’ capacities are overloaded with supplies, in particular because of transport and security issues, which complicate the distribution process. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is reporting that nearly 300,000 people have left earthquake-affected areas, migrating north and west in search of shelter and material resources.

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