Articles on Orthodox Christian Charity

November 3th, 2009– Kansas City, MO

FOCUS North America is excited to announce the launch of a new website and video for its youth-based domestic outreach program “Youth Equipped to Serve” (YES). The website can be found at www.YESNorthAmerica.org. The video can be found at www.yesnorthamerica.org/yesvideo.

"We are so excited for you to get to know the YES Program through our new website and YES video! Read testimonies from students, view videos that they made and hear firsthand how God is working in the lives of the youth that become His hands and feet in service to the poor," said Katrina Bitar, FOCUS North America YES Program Director.

Feedback from student participants has been enthusiastic:

Baltimore, Md. (IOCC) – International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) is responding to a string of disasters that are affecting millions of people in the Asia Pacific region and have already taken hundreds of lives.

Damaging floods and mudslides caused by Typhoon Ketsana struck the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, causing hundreds of deaths and displacing thousands of families on September 26. Meanwhile, whole villages in Samoa have been devastated by a tsunami that was triggered by a massive 8.0 earthquake on September 29. A second earthquake measuring a magnitude 7.6 on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has killed hundreds and injured thousands, and caused significant damage.

Two other typhoons appear to be moving towards the Philippines later this week and significant aftershocks are being experienced in Indonesia.

IOCC has mobilized its disaster response team and is coordinating with our Orthodox and Ecumenical partners to monitor and respond to the emerging needs.

“We pray for those who have perished, their families and those who have been affected by these disasters,” says IOCC Executive Director Constantine Triantafilou. “We are working with our partners to provide emergency relief and the long-term care that will be necessary to restore the many countries and communities that have been affected.”

You can help the victims of disasters around the world, like the Asia Pacific Disasters, by making a financial gift to the IOCC International Emergency Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief as well as long-term support through the provision of emergency aid, recovery assistance and other support to help those in need. To make a gift please visit www.iocc.org, call toll free at 1-877-803-IOCC (4622), or mail a check or money order payable to IOCC, P.O. Box 630225, Baltimore, Md. 21263-0225.

Recovering from Civil War, Uganda’s Orphans Receive Help from IOCC
September 8, 2009

By Zachary O’Dell/IOCC Ethiopia

Patricia lost both parents to northern Uganda's long running civil war. Her uncle took her and eight brothers and sisters in but there is not enough money for school fees. IOCC is building a school in the northern Gulu area that will allow teenagers like Patricia to get an education. The project is a partnership between IOCC and the Ugandan Orthodox Church. (photo credit: Zachary O'Dell/IOCC Ethiopia)Lapainat, Uganda – In the small village in northern Uganda, children play among hundreds of scattered huts with thatched roofs, many of which are now abandoned and deteriorating. Lapainat is the site of a large camp for displaced persons who fled fighting in the region of Gulu between the Ugandan military and a guerilla group. Until recently the area surrounding Gulu was inaccessible and extremely dangerous due to the violence, with most roads, hospitals and schools either damaged or completely destroyed and millions of people displaced from their villages.

“Both my parents were killed during the violence,” explains 16-year-old Patricia, who is the fourth of nine children. “My brothers and sisters and I were taken in by our uncle, but without much salary he cannot afford school fees.” Without the money to purchase basic supplies such as books, uniforms, and food, Patricia’s dream of studying to become an accountant seemed like it would never come true. Of the estimated 1.6 million left displaced or homeless by the fighting, nearly 80% are women and children, and 80% of the population aged 7-18 has never attended school – a majority of them girls like Patricia.

International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) is creating opportunities for children throughout Uganda just like Patricia. In partnership with the Ugandan Orthodox Church and with the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan JONAH and financial support from the St. Nektarios Fund, IOCC is building a secondary school in Lapainat for about 300 students. The Orthodox Church, which will run the school, has been active in northern Uganda since the late 1990s, and has established a Deanery overseeing multiple parishes in areas that were hit hard by the conflict.

August 6, 2009– Kansas City, MO

FOCUS North America is excited to announce the extension of its domestic outreach to the poor by receiving the highly acclaimed “Orthodox Youth Outreach” (OYO) program from the Antiochian Archdiocese Department of Youth Ministry and Teen SOYO. Added to FOCUS North America’s diverse ongoing operations and partner ministries, the addition of the OYO program strengthens its domestic ministry to the homeless and hopeless by involving youth in urban service learning opportunities and social action leadership training.

“FOCUS North America, its Board of Directors and Staff are honored to receive OYO as part of its ongoing operations, extending and maximizing our programs to minister to the poor and raise up the next generation of Orthodox Christian servant-leaders in North America,” said Fr. Justin Mathews, Executive Director and CEO of FOCUS North America.

by Maral Joulouyan/IOCC Lebanon

IOCC Science Labs: Lebanese public school students are getting a better education in science thanks to IOCC science labs. The labs, completely outfitted with science equipment, are part of IOCC’s US government-funded program to improve public schools throughout Lebanon. Brummana, Lebanon — Located twelve miles east of Beirut, this sleepy mountain town swells in population from 15,000 to 60,000 when tourists from Gulf Arab nations visit during the summer months. Tourism has picked up again in Lebanon since the 2006 war, but families are still struggling to recover.

Wala, 13, used to attend a private school in Brummana, but her father’s restaurant wages were cut and she and her two sisters had to attend the town’s public school. “When we’re short for cash, I try not to be too demanding so that I can help my Dad get the basics for our family,” said Wala. Most poor and lower middle class families in Lebanon are forced to send their children to the nation’s public schools, which are woefully underfunded by the central government and lack basic supplies and proper facilities.

St. Athanasius Orthodox Church in Isla Vista, CA runs St. Brigid Fellowship, an outreach ministry to the homeless men and women who live in our town, about 80 at any one time. Some sleep on the streets or in bushes while others live in cars, vans, garages or other sub-standard housing situations.

St. Brigid Fellowship’s three part-time staff and many volunteers work together to solve homelessness one person at a time. We meet people on the streets as Jesus did, addressing immediate needs and starting relationships that can lead out of homelessness. The friendships we make help us to understand their goals, and help them attain them. Each visitor to St. Brigid's is known by name, has a place to belong, friends, acceptance, food, clothing and help getting out of any situations they wish to leave. This is not a one-way ministry, us to them. We all work together to solve our own problems and the problems of others and the community.

Our office is open five mornings a week. We provide breakfast, use of our mailing address, telephone and message service, Internet, hygiene supplies, first aid supplies, warm clothing, blankets, sleeping bags, rain gear and other survival supplies. We have a weekly outreach meal on Monday nights, which our parishioners help cook and serve.

For more information, please contact Jill Wallerstedt, Coordinator, at (805)968-8028 or at: office@saintb.sbcoxmail.com.

St. Brigid Fellowship is a partner agent of FOCUS North America.

The Apostles’ Feet is a ministry of St. Stephen Antiochian Orthodox Church in Campbell, California.

The South San Francisco Bay area of California, where our parish is located, is an affluent region. We began to be concerned about how easy it is to overlook the thousands of homeless and poor among us. Many of the impoverished in our area are working persons or families who live just one unexpected bill away from homelessness. Others are disabled persons whose limited Social Security benefits also leave them at risk. In the current economic climate, this is more true than it’s ever been.

In response, we came up with the Apostles’ Feet concept. We have designed a system to help needy people in our community by providing them with an ongoing income subsidy which can be tied to work. For every hour a subsidy recipient works, he or she will receive an additional dollar amount in the form of a check made out to his or her landlord. Then, as the recipient receives raises from his or her employer, the amount of the subsidy is decreased until unnecessary. A recipient who is disabled and unable to work will receive a fixed monthly subsidy ($250) in the form of a check made out to his or her landlord. Candidates are considered according to the nature of their needs and the funds available. The length of enrollment in the subsidy is determined by the recipient’s specific needs.

We have developed friendships with the people that we’ve been blessed to help, and some of them have chosen us as their parish home. Regardless of whether these recipients end up worshipping with us or not, we believe this answers the call of St. John, when he said: “But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”

For further information, contact Todd Madigan: toddm@sacredheartcs.org

From IOCC:

New Orleans, Louisiana - Kirk Stevens uses everything he has - even the homemade tattoos on his arms - to gain credibility with his kindergarten to 12th grade students. Stevens is the academic director of the afterschool program at Desire Street Ministries, a school and community outreach program founded in 1995 to help boys who typically fall through the cracks of the public school system in New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward. "They're so streetwise, they have this attitude of 'if you haven't been there, then I don't want to hear about it,'" says Stevens.

Stevens has been there. The 59-year-old former oil company accounting assistant who left his career to answer the call of "black men helping black men," was raised by a single mother in the notorious Desire housing project during the 1950s and 60s. At its height, the project housed 14,000 individuals and was so infested with drugs, gangs, and crime that "you thought twice about venturing across the street to the supermarket," recalls Stevens.

This verse has been chosen as the theme for the 2009 Convention hosted July 19 to 26, 2009, in Palm Desert, CA, by St. Michael Church of Van Nuys:

"Be mindful, O Lord, of those who bear fruit and do good works in thy Holy Churches, and who remember the poor." + The Anaphoras of Sts. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom

In support of this theme, International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) will be exhibiting at the Convention, with multiple special presentations planned.

Also present will be FOCUS North America. Working primarily in the areas of Food, Occupation, Clothing, Understanding and Shelter, FOCUS North America (the Fellowship of Orthodox Christians United to Serve) exists to share the love of Christ with our neighbors who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, strangers and in prison here in North America (Matt. 25:34-6).  FOCUS North America is a domestic social action agency of the Orthodox Church "warmly endorsed" by the hierarchs of SCOBA.  It was formed to serve the poor and needy on behalf of the Church in North America, to support existing Orthodox ministries doing so effectively, and to help welcoming parishes initiate new social action ministries in their own communities.

Here at www.Antiochian.org, we will be bringing together notable news about charitable work done across our Archdiocese and the ministries like IOCC which we help support. Visit our collection of articles on charitable work here.

An Iraqi refugee assists her community in Syria to overcome the rising rates of diabetes and high blood pressure with information and testing. IOCC’s community outreach program trains and equips Iraqis to help fellow refugees with a range of social services. (photo credit: A. Rondos/IOCC Lebanon)

Aleppo, Syria - On a rainy evening in this ancient city famed for its pistachios and historic mosques and churches, 120 Iraqi refugees gather in a church’s basement to learn about the “silent killers” of their community – diabetes and high blood pressure. The prevalence of both diseases is rising among the estimated one million Iraqis who have fled to Syria from Iraq since 2003.

Dr. Rana, an Iraqi refugee who came to Syria in 2008 after completing her medical degree at Baghdad University, has organized the gathering. She pulls out test kits and begins to teach each patient how to measure their blood pressure and their glucose level. Dr. Rana explains that diabetes and high blood pressure are prevalent in refugee communities where unemployment is high and people lack access to regular health care. “Many Iraqis do not go to the doctor because they spend time worrying about their families and so do not have the very important regular tests for these illnesses,” she says.