August 10, 2012

ELGIN, IL – Children's Disaster Services (CDS) on Tuesday, Aug. 7, opened a child care center in Glencoe, Okla., to aid families affected by fires. The center is located at one of the American Red Cross Multi Agency Resource Centers (MARC). CDS volunteers will care for children while their parents apply for aid to help them put their lives back together.

CDS is a ministry of the Church of the Brethren and a program of Brethren Disaster Ministries. It places trained and certified volunteer teams in disaster areas to help care for children and families, in partnership with FEMA and the American Red Cross.

Wildfires in Oklahoma have destroyed at least 121 homes, said an e-mail report from CDS associate director Judy Bezon, received earlier this week. Myrna Jones, the CDS representative to Oklahoma VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) has been participating in daily conference calls that review the disaster, the response, and the needs of survivors.

Agencies that offer aid to disaster survivors will have space at the MARC facilities to offer their services, Bezon said. "In past responses, the MARC have been our busiest sites," she noted. "Both parents and agency volunteers were grateful for our presence, as having children safely in the CDS center freed them to concentrate on the application process without needing to tend to children's needs."

A CDS workshop held last November has resulted in enough certified volunteers in northeastern Oklahoma to support this response. The volunteers live locally and will drive in on a daily basis and return home at night, giving more volunteers a chance to serve and saving on transportation and housing costs.

The CDS response in Oklahoma is funded by a $5,000 grant from the Church of the Brethren's Emergency Disaster Fund.

In more news from Children's Disaster Services, the program has scheduled a series of workshops this fall at which prospective volunteers may receive the required training. CDS training events are planned for

Sept. 7-8 at Johnson City (Texas) United Methodist Church;

Oct. 5-6 at Modesto (Calif.) Church of the Brethren;

Oct. 5-6 at New Hope Christian Church in Oklahoma City, Okla.;

Oct. 12-13 at Camp Brethren Heights in Rodney, Mich.;

Oct. 27-28 at Camp Ithiel in Gotha, Fla.; and

Nov. 2-3 at Highland Christian Church in Denver, Colo.

For more information about the training events and requirements for becoming a CDS volunteer, visit http://www.brethren.org/cds/training. Find out more about CDS at http://www.brethren.org/cds and see photos from recent CDS work at http://www.brethren.org (click for CDS and BDM albums). Give to the disaster work of the Church of the Brethren through donations to the Emergency Disaster Fund at http://www.brethren.org/bdm/edf.html .

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 celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2008. It counts some 123,000 members across the United States and Puerto Rico, and has missions and sister churches in Nigeria, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and India.

Newsline: Church of the Brethren New Service