Disaster Relief & Environmental Stewardship

Immediate Response Environmental Stewardship

Immediate Response

The Challenge

Natural Disasters affect thousands of communities around the world, leaving people in urgent need of help to survive and recover. While some emergencies, such as the earthquake in Haiti gain widespread media coverage, many others are poorly publicized and receive little public attention. The circumstances can range from catastrophic rapid-onset natural disasters and disease outbreaks to slow-onset crises such as food shortages, drought,  gender-based violence and displacement of populations due to war and civil unrest.

The Strategy

Readiness and rapid response assistance are key catalysts to saving lives during an emergency. With immediate financial support, relief agencies and local organizations that are first responders can deliver help within days—when needs are most significant and immediate response is critical. Slow-onset emergencies, such as food crises due to drought, also require targeted support to help people recover and build resilience to cope with future shocks.

BMA adopts a “first-in, last-out” approach and will seek to support, partner, and funds relief agencies, local organizations, NGO, and both multi-bilateral organization that specialize in first response/life-saving emergency aid, and that also provide stabilization/restoration programs that help families and communities recover and rebuild.

Environmental Stewardship

The Challenge

The global environmental crisis is a stark reality that compels us to act.  We are threatened with climate change, depletion of land and marine resources, dwindling fresh water reserves, an energy crunch, biodiversity extinction, and devastated ecosystems.  With increasing population causing overconsumption of natural resources and overuse of fossil fuel, our unsustainable consumption patterns raise the threat to even more alarming levels. Increasing poverty has resulted in glaring inequality in the world, placing humanity at risk that could be beyond repair.

In the face of the challenges of both the environmental crisis and the failure of global leaders to come to any clear agreements, the role of the Christian community becomes even more urgent. We are believers in a “Creator” and a “Redeemer” God and hence have a great responsibility to act on God’s behalf in our world today. Jesus our Redeemer is “the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created by him and for him…and in Him all things hold together” (Col 1.15-17). If therefore God is Creator, and Jesus has such a crucial role to play in Creation, we as his community in the world today are compelled to act urgently on his behalf.

The Strategy

The Foundation’s Environmental Stewardship strategy is to support, fund, and partner with organizations that propose efforts to fight for change in behavior towards creation, that mobilize community awareness, education and action in   communities, advocate alternative energy sources, encourage wise consumption patterns, ensure appropriate public transportation policies, responsible health and tourism industry and take all other steps to make  village, town or city an ideal eco-habitation.

BMA seeks to fund the design and development of renewable energy sources, invest in projects that leverage technologies that accelerate the pace of renewable and clean energy innovations, and that ensure that even the most marginalized lives are improved.