Samaritan's Purse Australia || Emergency Relief || Victoria Bushfires || samaritanspurse.org.au

Thank You! Your Support Helped the Victims of the Victoria Bushfires

Samaritan's Purse partners with local churches and supporters to distribute Emergency Recovery Kits to families and farmers in Victoria.

Samaritan’s Purse has a strong network of churches, schools, and community groups in the relief catchment areas through Operation Christmas Child. Since the initial fires we have been working with these churches and organizations to provide trauma and grief counseling and training.

As we were in the relief centres and providing trauma and grief counselling training to the churches, a need for tools became very apparent for families who were regaining access to their homes.

There were plenty of other resources available to the victims of the fires, such as clothes and food—but there was a real gap in the aid when it came to tangibly helping the families start recovering. We were asked by the Relief Centers of Whittlesea and Diamond Valley to help supply necessary recovery equipment to families who have lost their homes and belongings.

Based on our previous experience, we knew that once they were allowed back on to their properties, they would be determined to start recovering the pieces of their lives that survived the fire—yet they had no shovels, sieves, gloves and other basics needed to begin going through the ashes.
Samaritan’s Purse has worked previous disasters around the world, and using that experience, and the expressed needs of the local community, we began the Recover Kit project.

We were able to use volunteers from our Operation Christmas Child network to help prepare the kits, but ultimately it was the local church which distributed these supplies in their communities. This is a model we strongly believe in as it is cost effective and it supports local churches to be caring for their neighbours.

Working with the local churches in places like Diamond Creek and Warragul, the initial distribution goal was Recovery Kits to 200 families – in the end we had enough funds to buy a total of 250 kits. The first 200 kits had the following:

The supplier of the kits made a very generous contribution towards the initial kits thus enabling us to buy 50 more kits with the following additional items:

Sledge hammers
Chainsaw
Generators
Nail bag

The key to the project was the local church so that they could be helping their neighbours.

Pastor Steve Messer (Community Church, Warragul)

One of our key partners, Pastor Steve Messer (Community Church, Warragul) said:
“As a church seeking to reach out with Christ-motivated practical assistance we have greatly valued our partnership with Samaritan’s Purse whose involvement has extended to the provision of Emergency Recovery Kits, comprising a range of essential tools, for donation to those who have lost everything.

To the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God’ (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Our mission as a church, and our capacity to be sources of God’s comfort for the afflicted, has been enriched through the generous and timely involvement of Samaritans Purse, and we are grateful.“

Please pray

For the victims who have lost everything, for those who have been hospitalized and those who have lost family and friends.

For families and friends who are still waiting to hear from their loved ones in Victoria.

For our staff, churches, organizations and volunteers as well as all the firefighters, doctors and nurses and other relief workers and government officials and who are still working tirelessly to bring aid and assistance to those in need.

For the mid to long term response in helping many families and farmers who are still in urgent need of resources to reestablish their lives.

The response to our email appeal following the fires has been amazing and we have been able to meet the cost of all of the Emergency Recovery Kits. We are currently assessing further ways to help the victims in Victoria and will keep the Victoria Bushfire Appeal open until further notice.
Donations are accepted via telephone and website (1 300 884 468 / 0800 726 274 (NZ) / www.samaritanspurse.org.au)