Informal Ukraine Aid and ICAM

Over the past few weeks, I've had the incredible privilege of helping a mobile medical clinic/aid delivery program based in Suceava, Romania. While this has been very enlightening, this knowledge comes with a responsibility to help in whatever way I can. We enter Ukraine at least once a week with food, medication, medical products, literature, and whatever else has been requested or is needed. While International Christian Aid Ministries (ICAM) directs and funds the medical clinic, an integral part of our ministry is partnering with local churches (usually nonregistered Baptist) and individuals that organize spaces to have the clinics and invite the local people. Many of these contacts are already heavily involved in their own informal humanitarian aid programs run at their own expense. While we can provide the medical aid that most the local contacts cannot, our work is much more effective when we provide resources through bulk food boxes and funds to local contacts to empower their work. Their continued presence in the community leads to opportunities for discipleship not available to the medical clinic.

 

However, these informal organizations, though highly effective because locals run them, tend to fly under the radar of foreign donors. An article by The Guardian explores this problem. Funding limits many of our contacts' humanitarian aid programs. I will give the funds raised to different contacts involved in these informal humanitarian aid programs. Any excess funds I have been unable to give away, I will either donate to ICAM for future Ukrainian aid through medicine and food boxes or give to these local contacts through other channels once I leave. If you wish to have updates on my involvement in the work here, including seeing where I give the money, please join this Whatsapp group.

 

In addition, while the Russo-Ukraine War has high visibility, many other areas are experiencing great need. These include the famine in the Horn of Africa region and the 70-year war in Myanmar. I don't want to capitalize on the visibility at the expense of other areas of need. However, Ukraine legitimately needs many things presently.

 

Мир для України!

 

Ever upward,

Jonathan Mast