Where Can I Send Disaster Relief Donations?

One of GFA World’s ministries is assisting with disaster relief; donations help us with this important effort. Earthquakes, cyclones and floods are among the most devastating natural disasters; they wipe out homes, crops and entire livelihoods. Impoverished families are left with even less and almost no hope for the future.[1]

GFA works to ease immediate burdens by giving families food, water, clothes and hygiene items. Our missionaries are also focused on long-term solutions such as helping people rebuild their homes, getting their children back in school and providing them income-generating gifts that can change the course of their future. These are the same steps that GFA takes to relieve poverty, so it makes sense that those actions are the same in the case of natural disasters, which exacerbate poverty and make its cycle even harder to escape.

Sahlma was only 9 when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck her village in 2015.[2] The homes were reduced to rubble, and their possessions were all buried. GFA missionaries and government workers passed out tarps for shelter, but those only gave temporary relief. The already poor community still faced the problem of providing for themselves in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Sahlma’s parents had to go find work in a nearby town, leaving the nine-year-old behind to look out for her two younger siblings on her own. Sahlma even had to pick up work as a porter—carrying heavy, loaded baskets over the rocky terrain—to earn extra money for her family in the wake of the disaster.

GFA World’s Child Sponsorship Program had operations in the town where Sahlma’s parents worked, and they enrolled her in the program. This eased some of the financial burdens of the family by providing her tuition, school supplies and nutritious meals. Sahlma and her siblings soon got to move to the town with their parents, and she continued her studies, opening many more opportunities for the future. Sahlma wants to become a social worker one day, so she can help people and children who are going through disasters and poverty as she once did.