Building Resilient Communities

These long months of pandemic have provided us the time to pause, reflect, and make changes in many ways. While the ELCA Future Church design was planned pre-COVID, the new structure is just now becoming a reality.

One of the changes is that ELCA World Hunger is now under the umbrella and a part of "Building Resilient Communities” (BRC), where it is grouped with Lutheran Disaster Response. Both World Hunger and Disaster Response continue to remain separate entities but are now part of a single team within the Service and Justice home area of the ELCA churchwide organization.

Learning new acronyms is difficult and they seem to proliferate without end. But perhaps combining hunger and disasters will make us more aware of some of the root causes of hunger. We think of Lutheran Disaster Response as being among the first agencies of hope to arrive after natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods. And, yes, one of those first needs is food and water.

But we also need to think about the connections with disasters such as wars and their aftermath. There is ongoing worry about famine and hunger in the Tigray portion of Ethiopia, in Yemen, and in Afghanistan following the pullout of U.S. troops there. ELCA Disaster Response is there quickly and ELCA World Hunger joins them. World Hunger, in particular, remains to help with building sustainability when the immediate “disaster” has ended.

Disasters happen and hunger follows. Joint efforts and coordination in the new “Building Resilient Communities” make good sense as we move forward beyond immediate needs and on to a resilient and sustainable future. Learn more.

Practice learning to speak “BRC” and spread the word!

-Vernita Kennen

Incarnation, Shoreview

Read more of Vernita's posts at https://spas-elca.org/category/blog/addressing-hunger.