Emergency Response Team

I would like to initiate a discussion about creating a team and funds to respond to emergency situations around the world. Please give your ideas about how we could see this happen.


 * Please use the talk pages for debate and place ideas here --Kev-The-Hasty 09:41, 4 September 2007 (CEST)

Have you noticed how slowly the world tends to react to emergencies? By the time teams arrive, a window of opportunity to save the trapped and injured has already passed by. YWAM is pretty good at the long-term response. But I think we can do something special if we create a team focused on this. And even in our long-term efforts, we are often scrambling for funds.

When I think of YWAM and all of the resources we have, I think we fail to tap-in to that power. I would like to see a 1% fund created. It would work like this: From all money that came through a YWAM base, 1% would be taken out. That is 1 dollar for every 100 dollars. This money would be sent to a central location, globally or regionally. A team would oversee this and make decisions on when and how to use it.

As for the response team itself, we would need to compile a list of those interested and those having skills needed for the team. This team would need to be ready to respond instantly when a disaster occurs.

I know there are others who have similar ideas. Please let's get the ball rolling and see this happen!

Could we easily get all of our YWAM bases around the world to buy into this? I think so.

Why I Have Been Challenged

 * link to image on www.news.bbc.co.uk

Excerpts from an appeal letter Mar. 07 from Shephen Mbewe, Director: YWAM Marromeu ''So my dear friends, would you help us help people in need? We need funds to buy food and timber for the construction of huts, funds to run the boat as this will be one way in which we will travel up and down the river. Your support will go directly to the people who need this money -- there are no overheads here.''

''I write with the conviction that as children of God, we have an opportunity to show justice and mercy -- attributes of God that are desperately needed in this country. Please continue to pray for this work. As I write, we have not started as we do not have the funds and are still researching and assessing the needs. The idea is not that all 7000 plus people get food; we have to start with one mouth at a time.''


 * My question was:

Shephen Mbewe (and group),

Thanks for the wonderful letter and appeal. This brings up something I have been thinking about lately.. and I don't know much about YWAM so maybe I am addressing something that already exists (but isn't well known). It seems to me that YWAM is weak in financial resources for large needs like this. Why do we need to feed these hungry people 1 mouth at a time? Why can't we feed 7,000? I, personally don't have the resources but as a mission this should not be much of a challenge for us. How many YWAMers are there? The YWAM website lists a staff of 16,000. How do we harness that financial power? I'd like to throw out a couple of ideas and ask you for yours. Couldn't we start some YWAM worldwide fund that is for needs like this. The fund might also be used for ministry projects. Would we all embrace that? It might work like this: Each base would collect money from staff each month and send it to the national office. From there it would go to an international office somewhere. There would need to be a committee to decide which projects funded for the month. How much would each person donate? If the average would be 1 US dollar a month for each staff, that is $16,000 per month. There are other resources or pools we could tap into. Our school students, YWAM connect members, our home churches, if we could somehow just initiate an organized program for this, we could do it, I think it would be so wonderful! Anyone else have some ideas? Any comments?


 * 1Jn3:17 KJV: But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?