What's Happening Now

The refugee situation in Romania, Poland, and Ukraine is constantly changing and deteriorating. Refugees keep leaving Ukraine, crossing any border to safety) Those fleeing the implacable Russian attacks are mostly women, children, and the aged, who are still streaming into border countries where our refugee aid teams have been working since the war began. Those who thought they could return to their homes in a few weeks are now out of money in a strange country with no place to go. Husbands and fathers are mandated to stay behind to fight the war.

Since the war in Ukraine began, Conscience International teams have been in Romania and Ukraine using feet, hands, and hearts, serving and comforting women and children who have been forced to flee the battles that have left husbands and fathers behind to fight for their homeland.  One of our young volunteers has been in Romania and Ukraine for nearly three months, working compassionately from morning until night, helping to ease the agony of families now separated from homes and loved ones and facing an uncertain future. This is his latest report of how your donations are helping to  feed, shelter, and sustain the lives of hundreds of refugees every day.

As the war in Ukraine intensifies, atrocities against civilians are capturing news headlines. Conscience International teams are traveling Ukraine’s war-torn roads and rocket-filled skies, carrying humanitarian aid. The trips are dangerous, with convoys stopping at distribution centers inside Ukraine where the cargo is unloaded and disseminated to cities most in need around the country.

In Ukraine, as always in war, the worst effects fall on women and children. The New Testament warns of future conflicts in very stark terms: “Woe to women who are with child or nursing in those days. Pray that your flight be not in winter!”

Decades of responding to disasters and helping people in some of the world’s most desperate refugee camps raises a lot of practical and moral questions. People ask, “What will happen to us?” “Why was I born in Haiti or Bangladesh and not the United States?” Even more troubling is the fact that today’s problems seem to be multiplying, with wars, natural disasters, refugee flows, great increases in economic migration, and depletion of the environment looming over all.

Nothing in this world is as important to each of us as our physical safety. Today’s world is enmeshed in terrorism, turmoil, gigantic refugee flows, and skyrocketing disease. Where then, on this increasingly violent earth, can people turn for shelter, for physical safety? Some are trapped in India after fleeing their native country of Myanmar. Others have now fled Afghanistan. Conscience International is helping.

When Conscience International’s emergency team arrived in Haiti following this summer’s 7.2 earthquake, team leader Kenny Phillips headed north to Camp Perrin, a town devastated by the 2016 Hurricane Matthew.

Out of the ashes of the Fuego Volcano eruption in San Miguel de Los Lotes in 2018, where so many families lost homes and loved ones, Conscience International has been steadily replacing displaced families (pictured) to new homes and renewed hope in Taxisco, far from volcanos.