.png?sfvrsn=6d0e27cd_1 "Partnership for Change - v7 (1)")
This month, I’m proud to spotlight the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), one of the 700+ members of the PMNCH NGO constituency, working on the ground in 118 countries to empower communities and change lives by providing sustainable community development and disaster relief.
Women, children and adolescents, and the health and aid workers who provide their care and support, are facing growing challenges and life-threatening risks in these times of escalating conflict and humanitarian crises worldwide. By partnering with communities, organizations and governments, ADRA improves the quality of life for millions of refugees and others affected by conflicts and crises. In Ukraine, where ADRA has served communities and the surrounding region for more than 30 years, they deployed emergency response teams to evacuate displaced families and escalated resources to assist refugees who crossed into neighboring regions with educational programs, children’s services, job placement, health care, and psychological counseling.
ADRA is also supporting others living in the following crisis areas with life-changing support and services for health, nutrition, livelihoods, and social protection:
- Yemen – After seven years of conflict, more than 23 million people need humanitarian aid;
- Afghanistan – over 24 million people need relief after repeated humanitarian crises;
- Venezuela - Political and human rights issues, as well as lack of food, medicine, and services, have forced more than 6 million refugees and migrants to flee;
- Haiti - Political and economic conditions have caused years of unrest, and 2021’s earthquake was devastating;
- Ethiopia - Escalating violence in the Tigray region caused by civil war led to a full-scale humanitarian crisis. In addition, hunger is on the rise in Ethiopia as four years of inadequate rainfall has left the country facing one of the worst droughts in forty years;
- Syria - Nearly eleven years of conflict has led to destroyed cities and infrastructure, displacement for about half of the country’s population, and 90% of the population living under the poverty line.
- Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - Unrest and cycles of violence have caused a complex, years-long humanitarian crisis.
PMNCH stands in solidarity with ADRA, the people of Ukraine and other vulnerable populations around the world. The impact of conflict and humanitarian crises on women, children and adolescents, and the health care workers who risk their own lives protecting others will be further explored in a forthcoming virtual summit, Lives in the Balance: Delivering Commitments in Humanitarian and Fragile Settings on 19 May.