• 1979 — Texas Baptist men went to Wichita Falls, Texas, in response to a tornado. Four teams of volunteers went to help care for children.
• 1994 — Alabama Baptist child care volunteers were among the responders to help victims of a flood in Albany, Ga. This was the Alabama child care unit’s first call-out.
• 1997 — Child care teams from eight states responded after floods in Minnesota and North Dakota. From that effort, a national child care response manual was developed.
• 2010 — Child care team members helped in American Samoa following a tsunami. It is believed to be the first time that Southern Baptist disaster relief child care volunteers traveled beyond the 50 U.S. states to assist after a disaster.
• 2010 — Donna Swarts was asked by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) to represent Southern Baptist disaster relief child care interests at a national meeting in Washington.
From this meeting of various groups, guidelines for crisis response child care were drawn up to be presented to the president and Congress.
The guidelines were completed in October 2010.
Sources: Donna Swarts, of Magee, Miss., national child care coordinator for Southern Baptist disaster relief, as well as a member of the disaster relief task forces of the Mississippi Baptist Convention and NAMB, and Becky Luther, of Gadsden, president of Alabama Woman’s Missionary Union and state child care coordinator for disaster relief
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