Living Justice, Loving Mercy, Serving Christ
Compelled by God’s deep passion for justice & mercy, we join communities around the world to renew hope, reconcile lives, and restore creation.
World Renew: Engages God's people in redeeming resources and developing gifts in collaborative activities of love, mercy, justice, and compassion. Serving worldwide as the development, disaster response and justice arm of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the aspects of World Renew's work are three-fold: community development, disaster response and rehabilitation, advocacy.
Disaster Relief: World Renew's Disaster Response Services volunteers (a.k.a the Green Shirts) give of their time and talents to help clear debris, assess needs, and rebuild homes after disasters strike.
Services include:
- Early assessment - before teams can be sent into disaster areas, information must be collected in order to know how we can best help.
- Rapid response - This phase of DRS' response addresses the clean-up needs by mucking out, removing downed trees and completing minor repairs after a disaster, especially covering roofs to protect homes from the elements. Rapid Response is a great opportunity for a group that is able to organize quickly.
- Needs assessment - Needs Assessment is the process of going door to door in disaster-affected communities to inventory unmet needs and provide a database of these needs to a community organization.
- Organizational Capacity Building - This phase of DRS' response assists local recovery organizations and helps them expand their ability to help disaster survivors.
- Reconstruction - When the "Green Shirts" (DRS volunteers) go into an area, a contract is signed and DRS stays the course - repairing/rebuilding damaged homes - until what we promised is delivered.
- Groups - From 1 volunteer to many, a group partners with a local organization in a disaster affected area doing work from cleanup to reconstruction.
- Community Development Consultation - Helping local recovery organizations move from disaster response to addressing the long-term needs of their community is the last phase of DRS's work.
- Emotional & Spiritual Care - In collaboration with Christian Reformed Chaplaincy, trained volunteers are available to be deployed in the various phases of the response.
- Construction Estimating - Trained volunteers determine appropriate materials, skills, and time required for home repair and construction.