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STORIES

Photo: Paul Jeffrey/ACT Alliance

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Global Interconnectedness

2/13/2025

+ Special Offering 2025 : Mission Moment (Middle East)

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Dear Friends, In 2023, I traveled to Juba, South Sudan – the world’s newest country, formed in 2011 after the decades long North-South conflict ended. South Sudan remains one of the world’s poorest nations, where access to clean water, food, and healthcare is scarce. As a young country, its infrastructure is fragile, and its people continue to bear the weight of poverty and instability.

I visited South Sudan to witness the work we support at a hospital providing life-changing surgeries for women suffering from obstetric fistula – a painful childbirth injury that often leads to isolation and rejection from their families and communities. These surgeries, performed in a clinic built by our ecumenical partners, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, restore dignity and hope. Each year, women travel hundreds of miles seeking this care, and because of the dedication of our partners, thousands receive the medical attention they desperately need.

None of this would be possible without a network of collaboration.


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an update from Middle East partners

2/12/2025

Picturephoto via MECC/DSPR
Week of Compassion is grateful for long-standing relationships with ecumenical partners responding to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.

Dr. Peter Makari (
Global Relations Minister, Middle East and Europe, with Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ), visited the region last week and offered updates from partners there.

​Week of Compassion, through Global Ministries, supports these partners as they respond to the vast needs in Palestine and Gaza, and in surrounding nations, like Jordan, supporting the mass influx of Palestinian refugees. ​


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The Middle East - Marking One Year

10/7/2024

Picturephotos: MECC-DSPR, ACT Alliance
This week (Monday, October 7) marks one year since the escalation in violence in the Middle East, in which 1200 Israeli citizens were killed by Hamas and more than 200 Israelis were taken  hostage, and one year since Israel’s ensuing response: bombardment in Gaza and the West Bank, and the spread of the war in the Middle East. As of this writing, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced – many of them multiple times – from their homes to other parts of Gaza, and made refugees in neighboring countries. Amid this humanitarian crisis of still untold proportions, in recent days, the violence and threats have expanded into Lebanon, even as the war persists in Gaza and the West Bank. ​


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reports from the Middle East

6/3/2024

PictureDeir al Balah, central Gaza - photo: Saher Alghorra/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa; provided by MECC-DSPR
As part of last week's meeting, the Week of Compassion Board of Stewards was joined by Dr. Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe with Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, and by Rev. Prof. Mitri Raheb, Founder and President, Dar al-Kalima University (Jerusalem and Gaza), for an update on the situation and response in Gaza. 

Stories were unsurprisingly heartbreaking and the situation is very dire – yet efforts by ecumenical partners to provide aid and assistance continue amid countless obstacles.


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That We Might Have Life

5/7/2024

supporting students displaced in the Middle East Crisis

“A few weeks ago, the building for the Dar al-Kalima University campus in Gaza was destroyed. But they seek to respond to the emergency by providing continuing education in the midst of the crisis.”
So begins a recent email from Peter Makari, the Global Ministries Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe, writing to Week of Compassion and to our counterparts on the Global H.O.P.E. team of the United Church of Christ. Together, we are responding to support young people displaced in shelters, tents, and schools in Gaza, and in Egypt as refugees.

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aid in the Middle East

3/7/2024

assisting Palestinian refugees in Jordan

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Week of Compassion remains alert to the ongoing needs in the midst of the Middle East crisis. In conversation with our colleagues at Global Ministries, especially Peter Makari, GM’s Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe, Week of Compassion continues to respond. 

Most recently, Week of Compassion through Global Ministries is responding with the Middle East Council of Churches’ Department of Service for Palestinian Refugees in Jordan. Given the already significant economic crisis in the region, which has affected Jordan as well, and the desperate situation of Palestinian refugees amid the ongoing crisis and the defunding of the UN Relief and Works Agency, partners are stepping in to fund initiatives that would ordinarily find support from other sources. As other partners’ funds are being delayed or diverted to care for the extreme needs of refugees during this conflict, emergency funds like the Week of Compassion and Global Ministries response through DSPR are crucial, both as an expression of interfaith solidarity, and to address these critical needs.


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ongoing response in the Middle East

1/30/2024

reports from Global Ministries and Middle East partners

Picturephoto : DSPR
Recently, Dr. Peter Makari, Week of Compassion's long-time colleague who serves as Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe with Global Ministries, met with partners responding in many parts of the world, including “one of our Palestinian partners which works in Gaza, and of course the situation remains desperate there,” Peter said. “He [this partner] has insisted on the importance of advocacy.”

As ground operations continue in Gaza, and voices worldwide clamor for the needs of the most vulnerable, Week of Compassion remains in contact with partners like Global Ministries, and the Middle East Council of Churches, in their efforts to provide humanitarian response to profoundly traumatized communities.


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Week of Compassion 
P.O. Box 1986 
Indianapolis, IN 46206
Week of Compassion is the relief, refugee and development mission fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada.
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  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Staff
    • History
    • Board of Stewards
    • From The Executive Director
  • Action
    • Domestic Disaster Response & Preparedness >
      • How To Prepare For A Disaster
    • International Disaster Response
    • Immigrant and Refugee Response
    • Sustainable Development
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      • Special Offering 2025
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