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Anglican Relief & Development Fund Gives $1.5 Million in Aid
The Anglican Relief & Development Fund (ARDF), an outreach initiative of the Anglican Communion Network, has disbursed over $1.5 million in grants in its first year of operation for aid projects for Anglican brothers and sisters in many countries of the Global South.
ARDF provides effective and efficient relief and development assistance for high-impact projects with measurable results. ARDF exists to change lives in some of the most challenging parts of the world in partnership with the spiritually-vibrant, but resource-poor Anglican churches in the Global South. ARDF-funded projects in 2004–05 have resulted in:
• 34,500 people receiving medical care • 13,000 people receiving clean water and sanitation improvements • 39,400 people counseled concerning disaster trauma • 13,000 people educated on improved sustainable farming techniques • 32,600 people hearing the Gospel • 8,500 people tested for HIV/AIDS and counseled
ARDF works through Geneva Global Inc., a professional services firm providing independent research and insight on more than 90 of the world’s poorest countries. Geneva has developed a multinational staff of more than 100 professionals from 30 different countries and a trained network of more than 500 local field experts. This enables Geneva to identify and qualify little known, but highly effective, local projects in the world’s hardest places.
“Our partnership with Geneva Global enables us to have confidence that the contributions we receive are providing life changing measurable results in some of the most challenging places in the Anglican Communion,” said Canon Nancy Norton, Executive Director of ARDF.
Recently, ARDF provided over $40,000 in relief to the survivors of the recent earthquake in Pakistan, providing shelter to 800 individuals and three months’ food supply to 1,600 people. Local relief workers receiving these funds are serving those most susceptible to illness and death in the wake of the Pakistani disaster. The local project implementer, Kevin Higgins of GLOBAL TEAMS, said, “We could not have done this without ARDF. God has given us great favor in the North of Pakistan, and we want to walk through this doorway of opportunity in a well planned and focused way.”
ARDF has already approved 11 grants totaling more than $360,000 for funding in 2006. Grants will fund AIDS orphans in Zambia and Uganda, preventive health training in Ethiopia, Brazil, Burma and Ghana, and farming and small business training in Malawi and Malaysia.
Contributions may be sent to Anglican Communion Network, with ARDF in the memo line, 535 Smithfield Street, Suite 910, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. For more information, contact Nancy Norton at nnorton@nauticom.net or 412–216–0277.