What's Happening Now

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.

Forced to flee to another country due to a crackdown by the military in their native Myanmar, (Burma), many families from indigenous tribes are now arriving as refugees in India. Conscience International’s local partners are assisting them at Moreh, Manipur State, India, with food, medicine, and basic hygiene supplies.

In recognition of his 10 years of service as a team member with the World Food Program, Conscience International’s VP of Community Development, Richard Sarker, has been recognized as a Joint Peace Prize Laureate along with others in the WFP, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020. At Conscience International, Sarker has served as Program Director for SE Asia since 2010.