Newsline - Church of the Brethren news update

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From COBNews@aol.com
Date Fri, 21 Mar 2003 11:17:50 EST

Date: March 21, 2003
Contact: Walt Wiltschek
V: 847/742-5100 F: 847/742-6103
E-MAIL: CoBNews@AOL.Com

The Church of the Brethren General Board's Disaster Child Care
program regularly reaches out to those in need. Now it's reaching
across national borders, too.

Disaster Child Care (DCC) has entered the first stages of
partnership with the Canadian Disaster Child Care Society,
according to Church of the Brethren Emergency Response director Roy
Winter.

The two volunteer administrators of the Canadian program, Marlene
Mulder and Donna Grobell, attended this year's training for
Disaster Child Care trainers held in New Windsor, Md., in February.
At the same time, the General Board's Emergency Disaster Fund made
a $10,000 grant to the all-volunteer Canadian group.

A DCC volunteer from the Christian Reform Church, Bev Abma, started
the Canadian program in the early 1990s, drawing on many of the DCC
materials and policies. The DCC coordinator at the time, Lydia
Walker, assisted with initial training for the group.

Contacts dwindled over the next decade, but renewed after the
Canadian Disaster Child Care Society became independent of the
Christian Reform Church in 2002. Another DCC volunteer and trainer,
Gloria Cooper of Pasadena, Calif., became a member of the new
Canadian board of directors and kept Winter informed of the group's
work. That, in turn, led to the invitation to the February event.

Winter hopes the new cooperative effort will help in responding to
major events, or to disasters along the US-Canadian border where
DCC volunteers are often not nearby.

"We can respond to a lot of disasters, but if there would be a
really huge event, any extra people like that would be vital,"
Winter says.

The $10,000 grant will help the Canadian program while it searches
for support from sources in Canada. Future partnership initiatives,
including a possible joint project manager training event in 2004,
are being discussed.