{"id":22967,"date":"2017-05-24T11:49:09","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T11:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=22967"},"modified":"2017-05-24T11:49:09","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T11:49:09","slug":"acn-announces-help-middle-east-crisis-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2017\/05\/24\/acn-announces-help-middle-east-crisis-deepens\/","title":{"rendered":"ACN announces more help for the Middle East as crisis deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><h3><strong>ACN announces more help for the Middle East as crisis deepens<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>A leading Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), has announced a series of extra emergency aid packages for people in Syria and Iraq escaping persecution and grappling with the onset of winter.<\/p>\n<p>ACN is rolling out 19 relief programmes in Syria and a further 11 in Iraq \u2013 providing food, medicine, shelter and pastoral support<\/p>\n<p>The projects include extra support for families who fled ISIS in northern Iraq:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For Christians who took refuge in Erbil, Kurdish northern Iraq, ACN is helping to provide a nursery school for 125 toddlers.<\/li>\n<li>For 175 families in the Father Werenfried Village in Erbil, ACN is funding showers, washbasins and toilets.<\/li>\n<li>For Christians at a displacement camp in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, ACN is providing electricity, food and water.<\/li>\n<li>Also at the Baghdad displacement camp, ACN is constructing a chapel.<\/li>\n<li>For 182 Christian displaced families in the Archdiocese of Kirkuk and Sulaimanya, ACN is providing financial aid to help with the cost of living.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For Syria, ACN\u2019s emergency and project help include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A car for the Sisters who run a hospital in Damascus.<\/li>\n<li>Six-months funding for schools in the Valley of Christians, Marmarita including teachers\u2019 costs and scholarships for school and college students.<\/li>\n<li>Heaters and fuel for families displaced from Alqariatin to safe areas in Horns, Fairozah and Zaidal.<\/li>\n<li>Food and other basic needs for 4,500 families in Homs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>ACN has been asked not to give details of amounts of aid given in case recipients are targeted.<\/p>\n<p>Since the outbreak of conflict in the region, ACN has given more than \u00a311 million for projects in Iraq and more than \u00a37 million for help in Syria. Middle East projects coordinator Fr Andrzej Halemba said: \u201cThe help ACN is providing for Christians in countries such as Iraq is urgently needed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Governmental institutions are not doing what is necessary to help these communities who are struggling so much at this time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to remember how much Christians have contributed to society over generations and indeed centuries and now in their time of need they have been abandoned.<\/p>\n<p>Reports suggest that altogether 12.2 million people are in desperate need of aid in war-torn Syria and an estimated 7.6 million are thought to be internally displaced by the conflict.<\/p>\n<p>Since the civil war in Syria began in 2011, the Christian population has declined by almost two-thirds and fewer than 250,000 Christians remain in Syria today.<\/p>\n<p>In Iraq, 125,000 fled within two days when Daesh (ISIS) seized the northern city of Mosul in August 2014.In the past 18 months, it has become increasingly unlikely that those internally displaced by invasion will be able to return to their homes.<\/p>\n<p>ACN has vowed to provide support for a number of projects in the Middle East including the provision of healthcare, reconstruction of houses and schools, food baskets and pastoral and educational work.<\/p>\n<p>Thanking ACN for the support provided, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil stated: \u201cThrough support from the Catholic aid societies we managed to cope with some of those needs and look forward to accompany these families and provide them with decent living conditions\u2026<\/p>\n<p>ACN is also providing aid for healthcare and medicine through project partners such as Sister Annie Demerjian. Sr Annie requested more than \u00a310,000 in aid of healthcare to combat both physical and mental illness.<\/p>\n<p>ACN\u2019s commitment to projects supporting Christians in Iraq and Syria has also borne fruit in other unlikely ways. In October 2015, Father Jacques Mourad escaped captivity after being held by Daesh for 84 days when he was helped by a friend who had been impressed by the priest\u2019s relief work in Qaratayn, funded by charities including ACN. Speaking to ACN, Fr Mourad said: \u201cUndoubtedly the good I was able to do for the population, thanks also to the help of ACN, was a determining factor in my liberation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am certain that this was one of the reasons that prevented IS from killing me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ends &#8211; <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ACN announces more help for the Middle East as crisis deepens A leading Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), has announced a series of extra emergency aid packages for people in Syria and Iraq escaping persecution and grappling with the onset of winter. ACN is rolling out 19 relief programmes in Syria&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases-2015"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ACN announces more help for the Middle East as crisis deepens - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2017\/05\/24\/acn-announces-help-middle-east-crisis-deepens\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ACN announces more help for the Middle East as crisis deepens - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"ACN announces more help for the Middle East as crisis deepens A leading Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), has announced a series of extra emergency aid packages for people in Syria and Iraq escaping persecution and grappling with the onset of winter. 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