Our team in the field is providing us with daily updates on the current situation. After consultation with the local Church leaders, we have begun a two-tiered response to the tragedy:

First, humanitarian. We will be providing more than 2,500 people with basic necessities including: food, water, milk, baby formula, baby and adult diapers, blankets, and hygiene supplies.

Our program partners estimate that it will cost $17 per person per month to provide certain basic necessities. This amount may seem low to us here in the West but reflects the impoverished state of the country and the lower standard of living there.

Second, we are putting in place a team of engineers to help the local Christian community to assess the damage done to structures. First, they will assess homes, and then businesses, to help stabilize families and family finances, and then they will assess Church and Church community structures.

You can be a voice, an advocate, a spiritual companion, a donor to those who are enduring tremendous suffering in Syria and Turkey.

We are focusing on Syria currently for several reasons:

Unlike some other aid agencies that have difϐiculty operating in Syria, we have an existing, efficient network already in place there, through the channels of the local Church. We don’t have the same infrastructure setup in Turkey.

We have been operating in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War and subsequent occupation of large parts of the country by Islamist groups, including ISIS. In Syria, through existing local Church institutions and religious on the ground, we have built a trusted network of partners and can quickly send urgently needed aid.

We do not have such a network in Turkey, where opportunities for faith-based organizations like Aid to the Church in Need to help are very limited. The Christian presence and network in southern Turkey is also substantially weaker.

Other organizations can better operate within Turkey, while we can move quickly and effectively in Syria. Aid to the Church in Need is in a unique position to offer immediate and long-term help.

Prior to the earthquake, families and children in Syria have already been suffering catastrophe after catastrophe, forced into extreme poverty and despair. Due to the long-term effects of war, occupation of parts of the country by Islamist groups (which continues today), and more than 10 years of economic crises, localized hostilities, mass displacement of people, and devastated infrastructure. Pre-quake conditions were already terrible, making Syrians the neediest of the needy.

Today, an estimated 90% of Syrians live in poverty.

Sadly, Christians lost their lives in Aleppo and Lattakia; many hundreds more were affected by damage to their homes, property, or businesses, including also families in Hama, Homs, Jableh, and Islamist-controlled Idlib.

With our trusted partners in Syria, and our existing networks and logistics capacity, we can deliver aid most effectively there. Above all, we are accountable to our generous donors and take our fiduciary responsibility very seriously to use their gifts appropriately. We are coordinating with other agencies in Syria to ensure aid is delivered efϐiciently without duplication.

Hours after the quake, Aid to the Church in Need team and its local project partners have been present on the ground in Syria helping to keep people alive, warm and well-fed, sheltered in churches, parish halls, and Church schools.