Disaster Relief

2020 was the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record, with 30 named storms. In the span of about two months, the Gulf Coast was hit by 4 major hurricanes: Laura, Sally, Delta, and Zeta. These storms caused widespread destruction throughout multiple states. In response to these storms, Matthew 25: Ministries shipped 38 truckloads of aid throughout the impacted region, containing more than 850,000 pounds of disaster relief supplies. In November, Hurricanes Eta and Iota made back-to-back landfall in Central America, hitting only two weeks apart. These storms swept through multiple countries, causing widespread flooding and devastating mudslides. Matthew 25: Ministries shipped aid throughout the region, including over 375,000 pounds of personal care items, household and cleaning products, disaster blankets, and more. Additionally, Matthew 25: Ministries responded to catastrophic flooding in Michigan–described as a 500-year flood event–and Mississippi, tornadoes in Tennessee and other areas across the South and eastern United…

On 16 September 2020, a student stands in an empty classroom in Panama City, Panama. A generation of children in Latin America and the Caribbean are missing out on schooling because of COVID-19. Due to the pandemic, 97 per cent of the region’s students have been deprived of their normal schooling. More than seven months into the pandemic, COVID-19 is putting education on hold for more than 137 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is according to a new UNICEF report about the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on education. Since the start of the pandemic, children in Latin American and the Caribbean have already lost on average four times more days of schooling (174) compared to the rest of the world. In a region with over 11 million cases of COVID-19 to date, most students are now at risk of missing out on an entire school year. While schools are gradually reopening in several parts of the world, the vast majority of classrooms are still closed across the region. Almost half of all countries in Latin…

When a massive earthquake rocked Haiti on August 14, more than 650,000 people were left in need of emergency humanitarian assistance, while more than half of healthcare facilities were damaged or destroyed. At the request of the Haitian government, International Medical Corps staff and volunteers deployed our Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Fixed Type 1 facility—a multi-tent field hospital, accompanied by a team of clinical and emergency response experts—to Aquin, on Haiti’s southwest coast, in early September. This is the story of how a team of medical volunteers worked with two local nurses, our security and logistics teams, and one local hospital to save a 16-day-old baby. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that 22,000 women in Haiti will give birth in the next three months. Thanks to the earthquake and the damage it caused to healthcare infrastructure in the country, thousands of women have already gone without prenatal and…

Michel became a mom in June 2021, when baby Nathan was born; she’s part of the Wayuu community. She lives with her dad, brother and another child that a friend asked her to care for two years ago. She’s a medical laboratory technician and holds a B.A. in Administration. Although she currently works as a Procurement Analyst, she doesn’t make enough to pay for basic needs. Michel has participated in different IRC-supported programs in the community center that is located a couple blocks away from her house. She first visited to get attention after experiencing pain while breast feeding, that’s how she joined the breast-feeding orientation program, in which she has now started to participate to share with other moms-to-be her experience. Additionally, she has joined the Wapushii program after Nathan was born, where she learns how to promote his development during the Early Childhood stage; she also has accessed…

A fight against the spread of hunger is underway across East Africa, where 32.9 million people are experiencing a complex hunger crisis driven by conflict, the economic impacts of the global pandemic, swarms of desert locusts, and extreme weather conditions. According to the United Nations, at least 5.3 million people in Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan are living under “emergency” conditions, with the threat of acute malnutrition and death. In South Sudan, 105,000 are living under “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity. By air, land, and sea, World Vision teams are delivering emergency food supplies across the region—an area so vast it equates to more than half the size of the United States—in a race to feed hungry families living in some of the most dangerous and isolated places on earth. “We are marshaling resources to support vulnerable communities across East Africa to avert the catastrophic effects of hunger and loss…

Collapsed classrooms. Crumbled rooves. Terrified children. The earthquake that strucksouthern Haiti in August 2021 caused widespread damage and left behind a lot of questions. With more than 70% of schools in the region affected, the new school year, set to start in October,was seriously compromised. Most schools were severely damaged or destroyed—and even those not so badly affected were in no position to open their classroom doors.Parents were afraid their children might not be able to return to school or meetin Compassion’scenters.In Haiti, many schools meet at local churchesand use the same facilities as the child development center. “Helping kids going back to school after the earthquake was an emergency,” said Marc-Henry, a Compassion projectfacilitator. In the mayhem and uncertainty, urgent,concrete responses were necessary. Local workers’immediate priority was to ensure the well-being of families through healthcare, psychological support, economic assistance and food supplies.But education is also a key to allow…