Posts Tagged ‘Jesuit Refugee Service’

Jesuit Fr. Ken Gavin, Executive Director of JRS/USA and Fr. Perard Monestime, Director of the JRS project in Haiti, discuss options for water project.

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA’s National Director Jesuit Fr. Ken Gavin was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday to discuss how outsiders can help communities, like those in Haiti after January’s devastating earthquake, in crisis. Some volunteers rushed to Port-au-Prince to help with no idea how to provide food, water and shelter for themselves. When is it appropriate for outsiders to help and when is that better left to locals? What’s the goal? How long do you stay?

Having recently returned from Haiti, Fr. Gavin discussed these issues and explained JRS’s mission of accompaniment:

Father Gavin on NPR: “When we talk about our work in Jesuit Refugee Service, we say that what we do is accompany, serve and advocate or defend the rights of refugees or forcibly displaced people. And that term, accompaniment, as you say, Neal, is incredibly important, because I see it as the envelope out of which all our service and all our advocacy – however important they are – flow from that sense of accompaniment.

And what we mean by that, I think simply, is to be close to the people, to be in solidarity with them, to step into their shoes, to experience their hopes and losses. Our sense of accompaniment comes from that spark of the divine that we recognize in every human person. It comes from our believing that even in the greatest tragedies like Haiti, that our God stands present with people in their suffering.”

To hear Fr. Gavin on the Talk of the Nation program, you can listen from NPR’s website or download the podcast. Fr. Gavin was interviewed by National Jesuit News before his trip to Haiti, you can view his video interview here.

National Jesuit News is urging people to give to the Jesuit organization Jesuit Refugee Service to help those in Haiti.

To support JRS/USA’s humanitarian response to the emergency needs of the Haitian people, please click here to be directed to their secure website and choose “Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund.”

Or you may send a check to:

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA
1016 16th Street NW Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036

Checks should be made payable to “Jesuit Refugee Service/USA.”
Please clearly note “Haiti Earthquake Relief” in the memo field on the check.

Jesuit Fr. Sean Carroll, the Executive Director of the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) discusses how the KBI responds to the needs of deported migrants, who are often deported far from family and friends and who may have suffered physical or emotional trauma, in this video clip from the Jesuit Refugee Service/USA. Fr. Carroll spoke during a one-day conference, Crisis at our Borders: The Human Reality Behind the Immigration Debate.

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, the Jesuit Conference of the United States, Georgetown University’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, the Institute for the Study of International Migration, and the Woodstock Theological Center hosted the conference in October, 2009 on the Georgetown campus in Washington, D.C.

A series of panel discussions at the conference aimed to put a human face on the migrant experience by sharing personal narratives of individuals crossing the border; explored political/legal, economic, ethical and law enforcement perspectives on the current immigration system; made the case for policy changes, discussed ways in which the current system is failing immigrants and our communities. It also explored the prospects for immigration reform, discussed the key players in the process and talked about what such reform may look like.

Mario Serrano is director of the Jesuit Refugee and Migrant Service (JRMS) in Dominican Republic. With four other colleagues, he has crossed the border to travel to Puerto Príncipe in Haiti to see for himself the magnitude of the catastrophe and to detect the population´s most urgent needs. He was interviewed by a partner organization Entreculturas on the current situation in Haiti.

Jesuit Refugee Service has provided emergency relief in the form of food, medicine, tents and debris-removal tools to about 16,000 citizens in Port-au-Prince to aid their recovery from last week’s devastating earthquake. Additionally, in coordinated efforts with partner organizations in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, JRS has set up several locations throughout the countries to deliver aid to more people suffering from the effects of the earthquake in an efficient and organized manner. One of the JRS staging centers for earthquake relief in Haiti is the Jesuit novitiate in Port-au-Prince. Tents have been set up in the courtyard for medical volunteers to sleep in, and trucks unload their goods at the novitiate as well.

In this short video clip below, Jesuit Father Ken Gavin, national director of JRS/USA, speaks to the efforts of JRS as they move much needed supplies across the Dominican Republic/Haitian border into Port-au-Prince to their staging centers.

While the current needs are for the emergency resources for the earthquake victims, JRS will continue to be a presence in Haiti, long the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with help in their long-term needs for stabilization, education and relief from widespread poverty.

National Jesuit News is urging people to give to the Jesuit organization Jesuit Refugee Service to help those in Haiti.

To support JRS/USA’s humanitarian response to the emergency needs of the Haitian people, please click here to be directed to their secure website and choose “Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund.”

Or you may send a check to:

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA
1016 16th Street NW Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036

Checks should be made payable to “Jesuit Refugee Service/USA.”
Please clearly note “Haiti Earthquake Relief” in the memo field on the check.

Jesuit Refugee Service in the Dominican Republic – working in coordination with JRS Haiti and other Jesuit relief efforts there – has established three centers in the Dominican Republic to coordinate the transfer of food, medicine and other emergency supplies to the people of Haiti.

The three operations centers are located in Santo Domingo, at the JRS Bono Center; Jimani, on the southern border between the DR and Haiti, the main port of entry because of its proximity to Port-au-Prince; and Puerto Tabar Principe, at the premises of the Jesuit novitiate there.

Jesuit Father Mario Serrano is helping to organize and process the supplies from the Dominican Republic into Haiti; he has made several trips into Haiti to assess needs there.

“We’re still in the process of responding to the emergency, offering a supportive presence, food and medicine. Little by little we are building the most effective methods for supplying timely and beneficial aid to the people,” said Fr. Serrano.

The supportive presence mentioned by Fr. Serrano embodies the concept of accompaniment, one of the core missions of JRS. “Our close and direct contact with people, our presence with them … allows us to understand their real needs,” says Jesuit Fr. Bernard Arputhasamy, Regional Director of Jesuit Refugee Service – Asia Pacific.

JRS has established several sites throughout the hardest hit areas of Haiti. Some of these, and the partners JRS is working with, are indicated on this map. http://bit.ly/86cUp7

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