What can you or your congregation do to help those in drought?

Although the drought has just hit the media, it has been impacting on the north of NSW for over two years now and really beginning to bite hard for those trying to farm or run businesses in the area.

When we are thinking about drought it is important to realise that unlike fire or flood, it is an insidious creeping disaster that doesn’t have a start point, but like other disasters, recovery takes a long time, even after the rains come.

Very often when we see the pictures on TV and read the stories about those struggling to survive we want to do something immediately to help, and this is what God has called us to do, care for those who are hurting.
However some responses are helpful and some are not.

The ones that are not are where people send goods or have unreal expectations about what the money will do. In the last drought some of the “donations” that took a lot of my time and weren’t all that helpful were a semi load of bottled water (ranging from 600 ml to 10 Lt bottles), a semi load of potatoes, a boot load of children’s boots and a trailer load of children’s clothes.

You can see why this is not helpful.

 All of these things are extremely difficult to give away when we are talking about individual families or tiny communities of less than 300 people.

The other thing that makes it extremely difficult is when every donation comes with strings attached. Imagine the complexity of trying to manage a gift of $300 to be spent on children’s activities, with one of $180 to be spent on a family, with another of $1000 to be spent on a concert – and then multiply that by ten!

The extra time spent trying to manage and plan all this is time that I don’t get to spent with individuals, families and communities. Those in the middle of the drought and those working with them are the best ones to decide on how the money can be best used. It's good if we have the flexibility to do what what is needed.

The nature of drought also means that the money may not get spent immediately. At the moment the situation is critical but regardless of if it rains or not, it will be even more critical in 6 months time. It is important that some funds are still available then.

Rain fills the dam but the land surrounding it is dry.

So what is helpful?

The Moderator has been very proactive in making money available from his Disaster Appeal to help individuals and communities and the Rural Chaplains are one of the on-ground agencies helping to distribute this. The sorts of things we are doing is organising community events to bring people together, have a good time, encourage one-another and forget about the dry for a while. We are also providing pastoral care and welfare help for families.

The other great need is for money to keep the Rural Chaplains going.
We need money to put fuel in the cars, pay the telephone bills and pay for accommodation when we travel to distant areas.

If you would like to help contribute to these costs then details are below.

So if you are thinking of helping those in drought or the Rural Chaplains I am most grateful, as are those living in the middle of it all.

 The response from our churches is beginning to build and each time I am contacted, or the Moderator receives a donation I know that the family of God is looking after those in need. The worse thing is for people to feel like no-one cares.


If you would like to donate to the Moderator’s appeal then please contact Sue Willgoss, suew@nsw.uca.org.au or 8267-4382.

If you would like to contribute to the work of the Rural Chaplains then please contact Sally-Anne Davis, sallyannd@nsw.uca.org.au or 8838-8933

 Julie Greig, Rural Chaplain