In disaster response, speed is of the essence,” said Tommy Puckett, Alabama Baptists’ disaster relief director. “You need someone who has a panoramic view of the disaster who already knows how to work with government officials and what needs to be in place when volunteers come in to help.”
Southern Baptist missionaries are a valuable asset when a crisis explodes overseas because they are on the scene almost everywhere disasters occur and can quickly respond but the mechanism can be cumbersome, Puckett said.
Relief efforts sometimes depend on missionaries who have little experience in disaster relief, and responses can be stymied at times by the complexity of relationships between local, state, national and international organizations.
The creation of a new organization called Baptist Global Response (BGR) should go a long way toward improving Southern Baptists’ ability to respond quickly in times of disaster, said Executive Director Jeff Palmer.
“This may be the first time Southern Baptists have had an organization that can provide a highly focused and coordinated response to relief and development needs overseas,” said Palmer, who directed both the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center in the Philippines and the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation in Thailand. “Baptist Global Response seeks to mobilize Southern Baptists’ influence, prayer and human and financial resources to meet acute needs like earthquake or hurricane relief.”
Responding over the long-term
The organization’s focus, however, is far more than just disaster relief, he added. “Baptist Global Response also focuses on chronic needs like generational poverty and hunger or endemic disease,” Palmer said. “We respond to people with critical long-term needs to give them the opportunity to experience lives filled with hope and peace, lives in which they can raise their families in confidence, build their communities with dignity and share with others how to have full and meaningful lives.”
BGR was incorporated in late 2006 by seven individuals, all of whom are Southern Baptists with a heart for development and relief work, Palmer said. The work began right away, but the first official meeting with board members was July of this year.
One impetus for creating the organization was the growing awareness among Southern Baptists about critical human needs — and an increasing desire to help.
“In the recent past, there has been a significant refocusing on human needs around the world due to acute problems such as tsunamis, earthquakes and fires … and more awareness of chronic problems such as poverty, AIDS and hunger,” Palmer said. “There is a greater overall sense that Southern Baptists are truly people who care, and they want to make more and more of a difference in a needy world.”
While BGR isn’t an official entity of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), its board of directors is composed of all Southern Baptists from different walks of life.
And the SBC’s International Mission Board (IMB) has contracted BGR as its “21st century partner” for international relief and development, Palmer said.
“Baptist Global Response will administer general relief and Southern Baptist World Hunger Funds on projects conducted in partnership between Baptist Global Response and International Mission Board field personnel and stateside leaders like the disaster relief directors in Baptist state conventions,” he explained.
BGR has its headquarters in Singapore, where a good communications infrastructure, excellent banking services and superior travel connections make quick response to disaster much easier, Palmer said.
Since Asia is home to two-thirds of the world’s population — and much of the globe’s acute and chronic human needs — Singapore made sense as a home base. A stateside liaison office is located in Nashville.
Operating funds have been provided by a grant from a donor and initial staffing is being kept to a minimum, Palmer said. The organization has area directors for five regions — Asia Rim, Central and South Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. Palmer was appointed as executive director by the board, and the stateside office is led by Jim Brown, the former director of the IMB’s world hunger and relief ministries office.
“We intend to connect people in need with people who care,” Brown said. “The people in need are those (outside the United States and Canada) suffering from acute problems such as disasters, wars, epidemics and the like, as well as chronic problems like extreme poverty, hunger and poor health. The people who care are Southern Baptists.”
BGR will work internationally alongside overseas Baptist partners such as national Baptists, IMB representatives and other Baptist ministries; in the United States, it will principally work with Baptist state conventions, associations, churches and individuals to train and equip Southern Baptists for relief and development work, Brown said.
One of the key tools for mobilizing Southern Baptist resources is BGR AlertNet, a communications network intended to deliver information about disaster relief needs as soon as possible after a crisis emerges.
The network uses e-mail to communicate with key leaders and media, but a blog will soon be added to the organization’s Web site, www.gobgr.org.
While a more rapid dissemination of information is part of BGR’s mission to respond quickly and effectively to needs, another part is a better coordinated effort of Southern Baptists.
“We have on our team some of the best folks I know of in Southern Baptist life to address relief and development needs,” Palmer said. “This organization has a quality team with many years of experience in both international relief and development.
“Our main strength, however, will be seen as 16 million Southern Baptists are able to demonstrate more effectively than ever that they are people who care about people in need.”
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