Mali 11

This morning I had a quick look at our South Australian divisional newsletter and saw that this blog rated a mention... so I thought it was about time I made another entry.

One of the key parts of our project in Mali is to provide some material items to displaced people that have fled the northern regions with nothing. Some of the stories are tragic - people without their children, people without their parents, wives without their husbands, all running away from a conflict which is still simmering away.

The process is complicated, unfortunately. In this day of highly coorindated humanitarian responses, we work alongside a range of other agencies to avoid duplication of services. In this case it means that one NGO (IOM) have become responsible, alongside UNHCR, for registering all of the people that are displaced - all 500,000 of them.

When an organisation like The Salvation Army wishes to help these people, we indicate how we can help and give an anticipated number of beneficiaries we can assist to IOM who then give us the names of those 'next on the list'. This also ensures that assistance is provided according to need rather than via any form of discrimination on the part of an assisting organisation.

This can be confronting for some of our Salvationist helpers. Almost 100% of those that we are assisting are muslim. They are from the north where Islamic separatists have operated. They are from other tribal groups, some of whom have been accused of sympathising with the conflicting parties. None the less, they need our help and we will help them.

To add to the difficulties, the lists we have been given by IOM only have phone numbers. So... at the moment we have a few faithful helpers (who speak the right languages) making hundreds of phone calls to offer assistance to these people. We are hoping that this all comes together by the 10th of June when we have our first big distribution day.

Please pray for this process. Pray that we reach the people we need to find, that they can come to the distribution centre (we are providing a cash reimbursement of their travel costs) and that this can be a bridge for the fledgling Mali Salvation Army into their country.