Posted: 8/20/04
Texas hunger offering helps provide
food, water for refugees from Sudan
By Mary Crouch
BGCT Summer Intern
Texas Baptists are responding to a humanitarian crisis in Sudan and the surrounding region by providing refugees with food, water and medical attention.
So far this year, the Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger has provided about $31,500 to the Sudan Interior Church and its refugee support program.
The allocation is part of a larger program sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance, in association with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and its Christian Life Commission.
Texas Baptists' gifts will aid refugees at the Kakuma camp in Kenya, the Gulu and Koboko camps in Uganda and the Pindyu, Bongo, Sherikola and Deme camps in Ethiopia.
Sudan is in the midst of “the biggest humanitarian drama of our time,” said Jan Egeland, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, in a statement on the U.N. website.
She notes more than 1 million Sudanese now are homeless and 50,000 are dead after attempts to fight off Arab militias in the Darfur province.
According to Ramadan Chan Liol, the general secretary in Nairobi, Kenya, many Sudanese have even fled to neighboring countries, like Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. But when they arrive at a refugee camp, they are not given basic necessities like food and water, and as a result are dying of starvation and malnutrition.
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