For Magha Garcia, farming is how she honors her ancestors.
“Everything I learned about agriculture came through my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents,” she said. “These people worked so hard, and what they were paid for their crops was so little, it makes me really sad.”
A few days before Hurricane Laura made landfall as a category 4 storm in the early hours of Aug. 27, Marie Nelson, associate director of Gilmont Camp and Conference Center in Gilmer, Texas, reached out via email to the administrators of the nonprofit Evergreen Life Services, a community for adults of differing intellectual and developmental abilities in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She wanted to make sure they knew residents and staff from Evergreen would be welcome to shelter at the camp if needed, just as they had done briefly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina dealt a historic blow to New Orleans, Hurricane Rita churned up to Category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico and threatened to deliver a second punch to the Crescent City.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is monitoring the fallout from Hurricane Hanna in Texas and keeping tabs on tropical storm Isaias, which is forecasted to reach Florida by this weekend.
Hardly a day goes by without the Rev. Brad Munroe receiving a call from someone wanting to make a donation to help Native Americans in the southwestern United States, many of whom are struggling to cope with poverty and the weight of COVID-19 and its economic fallout.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) has worked in long-term recovery efforts following disasters for years. This includes scheduling volunteer work teams at recovery host sites who clean, rebuild or repair homes years after a disaster. In the past two years, PDA has scheduled 16,516 volunteers from 468 different churches, universities and organizations to stay at one of our many host sites.
A woman who’s been instrumental in helping Presbyterians to understand systemic issues facing Puerto Rico and the effects of decades of colonialism and exploitation has been selected to receive the 2020 Peaceseeker Award.
In 32 seconds, a lone gunman in downtown Dayton, Ohio, injured 27 people and killed nine, including his sister. This mass shooting happened back to back with another shooting 13 hours earlier on Aug. 3 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. In that rampage, 22 people died and 26 were injured.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is in contact this weekend with presbyteries in states in the lower Midwest, where flooding and tornadoes have impacted communities.
