wfn.org | Newsline: Children's Disaster Services ramps up response in flooded midwest

["COBNews Newsline" <cobnews@brethren.org>]

Newsline: Church of the Brethren News Service -- June 20, 2008
Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford, News Director
800-323-8039 ext. 260 -- cobnews@brethren.org

CHILDREN'S DISASTER SERVICES RAMPS UP RESPONSE IN
FLOODED MIDWEST

(June 20, 2008) Elgin, IL -- Children's Disaster Services is fielding
teams of child care volunteers in Indiana and Iowa to support families
affected by flooding. Children's Disaster Services is a ministry of the
Church of the Brethren. Each child care team includes four or five
trained and certified volunteers, and the response in each state is
overseen by a trained project manager.

One Children's Disaster Services team has been working in Martinsville,
Ind., in a Red Cross Assistance Center that has seen 25-30 children each
day. The Red Cross will no longer be working out of that center, which
will now be carried on by FEMA and others, and the child care team will
continue to provide services to children there. The team also will be
expanded from four to five people. Ken Kline has been the project
manager in Indiana, but has completed his two weeks commitment and
Barbara Lungelow will be the new project manager.

Another Children's Disaster Services team relieved exhausted volunteers
for CJ's Bus, which has stopped services in Indiana as of Wednesday,
June 18. The team that had worked with CJ's Bus has moved to Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, and is now serving children and families there. In Cedar
Rapids, Children's Disaster Services may soon also be providing training
for other responders from the Iowa state response as well.

A child care team in Cedar Falls, Iowa, has been working to care for
children at a Lutheran school while families cleaned up homes from mud
that carried oil and fertilizer. That child care team has now moved
location and currently is working at a Red Cross Service Center. A
second team of child care givers will begin working in Cedar Falls
starting Monday, June 23.

Another team will begin providing child care in Iowa City on Monday.
Lorna Grow is the project manager for the teams working in Iowa.

Children's Disaster Services is putting two more teams of child care
workers on alert, to go into additional areas affected by flooding on
Sunday or Monday. By the end of next week, the program will be
sending new teams of volunteers to replace those who by that time will
have been working for two weeks.

Brethren Disaster Ministries is requesting a grant of $5,000 to support
the work of Children's Disaster Services in Indiana and Iowa, from the
Church of the Brethren's Emergency Disaster Fund.

Go to www.brethren.org/genbd/BDM/CDSindex.html for more
information about Children's Disaster Services and for information
about how to become a trained disaster child care volunteer.

The Church of the Brethren is a Christian denomination committed to
continuing the work of Jesus peacefully and simply, and to living out its
faith in community. The denomination is based in the Anabaptist and
Pietist faith traditions and is one of the three Historic Peace Churches.  It
celebrates its 300th anniversary in 2008. It counts more than 125,000
members across the United States and Puerto Rico, and has missions and
sister churches in Nigeria, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and
India.

># # #

>For more information contact:

>Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford
>Director of News Services
>Church of the Brethren General Board
>1451 Dundee Ave., Elgin, IL 60120
>800-323-8039 ext. 260
>cobnews@brethren.org

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