ChristianWeek

Ordinary people do what they can to help in Indonesia

ChristianWeek Staff

JAVA, INDONESIA—While international aid was quick to come to the Indonesian island of Java following a horrific earthquake at the end of May, those not usually associated with relief and development were swift to getinvolved as well.

Students attending the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Indonesia (ETSI), a partner ministry of Partners International Canada, were among the first on the scene. The seminary’s main campus is located in Yogyakarta, where the earthquake was centred.

While there were no deaths or injuries reported at the seminary, Bob Savage, operations manager at Partners’ U.S. office, says students immediately set out to help.

“If you check the news, big relief efforts are forming—the world food program, UNICEF, governments—they are moving in tons of supplies, as they should,” Savage wrote in an e-mail to Canadian offices shortly after the 6.2 magnitude quake. “ETSI of course does not have the capacity for that kind of work. But they are going to mobilize to do what they can.

“At first the things they will do will be small—food for those who the big agencies haven’t gotten to yet, blankets for those sleeping outside. And they can do something the big agencies don’t do well—coming alongside people with the compassion of Christ, with caring counsel, with prayer for those who are hurting.

“The students especially are eager to go out and serve, and actually it’s relatively easy to mobilize them now with so many living right there on the campus.”

ETSI suspended academic activities for two months to focus on rebuilding and bringing humanitarian assistance to surrounding communities. More than 200 staff and students received specialized disaster relief training, including 80 students from the island of Nias that was devastated by the tsunami in 2004.

Back in Canada

Back in Canada, millions of dollars in donations have been pouring in to relief agencies including World Vision, Canadian Food for the Hungry International, The Salvation Army, Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and others.

Individual Canadians have also been quick to get involved in some unique ways.

In Winnipeg, Ray Dirks, curator of the Mennonite Heritage Centre Art Gallery, set up an artistic sort of relief effort—selling Indonesian artwork, part of a special display at the gallery.

The gallery doesn’t make a profit from the sales—half of the proceeds will go to MCC for Indonesian disaster relief while the other half will go to the Indonesian artists. All of the partner institutions involved in helping the MHC Gallery obtain the art are located in Yogyakarta.

The May 27 quake in Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces killed more than 5,700 people, according to Indonesian authorities, down from an earlier tally of more than 6,000 deaths. The number of injured is estimated at 33,000.

More than 200,000 of the estimated 647,000 people who lost their homes remain in tents made of plastic sheeting and bamboo poles. Shelter and sanitation remain major concerns.

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