11.08.2013

DECATUR, Ga. — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is partnering with Conscience International to help distribute drinking water to victims in the Philippines of what is being called one of the strongest typhoons in history.

Typhoon Haiyan hit the central Philippines on Friday, knocking out power and disrupting communication.

CBF has made a $2,500 grant to Conscience International to support local teams in Cebu City and North Cebu in delivering truckloads of bottled water in the affected areas, potentially reaching an estimated 78,000 people with a 30-day supply of purified drinking water over the next few weeks.

Deliveries will begin as soon as the worst of the storm is over.

CBF’s International Disaster Relief Manager David Harding said potable water is a critical need right now.

“Funds are also needed to help move supplies that are already in the country to the people that have received the direct hit,” he said. CBF will not be receiving gifts in kind or deploying volunteers to respond but will work through local and regional partners, Harding said.

Donations to assist in Disaster Response, including this effort to respond to those affected by Typhoon Haiyan, can be made online here or by mailing a check payable to “CBF” with Acct. 17000 in the memo line to:

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
P.O. Box 101699
Atlanta, GA 30392-1699

While CBF does not currently have field personnel in the Philippines, it collaborates with partners in the region, including Conscience International and the Asia Pacific Baptist Fellowship of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). CBF has a long-standing relationship with Asia Pacific Baptist Aid, which is the relief arm of the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation, since the groups’ joint response to the Southeast Asia tsunamis in 2004. CBF also responded after the December 2011 Tropical Storm Sendong (Washi) in the Philippines with psychological first-aid and training with teachers returning to the classroom after devastating flooding that killed more than 1,200 people in Mindanao.

CBF also has connections to the region, including a partnership with the Asia Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary campus in Baguio, which is the largest city located on the Luzon island of the Philippines. CBF Global Missions staff member Ryan Clark and his wife, Cindy, taught at the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary, located in Baguio City, from the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2013. CBF Missions Council Chair Mimi Walker and her husband, Graham, previously taught there as well. Former CBF Global Missions Coordinator Rob Nash lived 13 years in the Philippines as a child where his parents served as Baptist missionaries.

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