Global Health News & Stories

Sheltering in Love grant campaign receives nearly $2 million in donations; expedited grant awards given to nonprofits in 43 countries and 43 states.

As a federal moratorium that protected an estimated 12 million people from eviction expires, two United Methodist agencies, Restore Hope Ministries in Oklahoma and Good Neighbor Settlement House in Texas, have used UMCOR COVID-19 grants to keep people from being evicted and assist them when they have nowhere else to go but the streets.

Like many places in the world, Vietnam is facing economic impacts from the novel coronavirus. The Vietnam Mission Initiative partnered with Global Ministries Asia Pacific Regional Office, Scranton Women’s Leadership Center, and the Wesley Foundation to offer concrete love and compassion to its neighbors.

Liberia is combating COVID-19 through both health and food security: the health board received an early solidarity grant from UMCOR for prevention training and the conference received a more recent UMCOR Sheltering in Love grant to provide food packages to the elderly, the physically challenged and at-risk children and youth undergoing rehabilitation at a facility in Monrovia. UMNS shares the story.

Advocates for the early release of some prisoners say COVID-19 has exposed the broken and unjust prison systems where 2.2 million people — disproportionally people of color — live in overcrowded cells without proper protection and testing for the disease.

Missionary Jennifer Moore reflects on life lessons she has learned from the Macedonian people, especially as they face a pandemic.

Missionaries Umba and Ngoy Kalangwa send a mission update from Morogoro, Tanzania – a reconstructed dispensary that reopens just as COVID-19 starts to spread, members of a sewing workshop who learn to craft hundreds of masks and the first woman to pastor a UMC church in the Morogoro District.

For communities devastated by May flooding, the road to resilience is paved with support coming from federal, state and local sources – and from United Methodists.

For five years, the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta has been working to win the release of Black men and women serving decades-long prison sentences for minor offences. This year, an UMCOR grant provided the means for SCHR to establish a reentry program to help released clients navigate the barriers they need to cross in order to thrive.

UMCOR has awarded $1.56 million to help vulnerable communities cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. These grants enable churches to respond to issues of food insecurity, sanitation and hygiene, and other financial needs.

With guidance from UMCOR’s Disaster Management Coordinator (DMC) program, communities in the Davao, Manila and Baguio Episcopal Areas are better prepared and equipped to weather prolonged disasters.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief and other global United Methodists are intervening in the church’s COVID-19 fight in Liberia.