So What is Presbyterian Disaster Assistance

                Growing up in a Presbyterian Church I had heard Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) mentioned many times but didn’t know more than that our church gave money to it and PDA helped people after a disaster. I had also never been to a place where I got to see PDA in action. So I wasn’t aware of what all they did and had no idea about the number of people who were involved in PDA.

About a year ago I decided to be a Young Adult Volunteer and through mutual discernment ended up being placed at Ferncliff Camp working with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Part of my YAV experience has been learning more about PDA by meeting PDA’s staff and volunteer members of the National Response Team throughout the year.

PDA hosts a National Response Team meeting every year so the members can be retrained and can become informed about different things going on with PDA. Thanks to an invite from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) I was able to attend the 2015 National Response Team meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Here I was able to meet almost every member of the National Response Team and was able to get a more in depth look into PDA. During the first meal I was introduced to the group. Several of them came up to me afterwards and made sure I was feeling welcomed or wanted to know more about the Young Adult Volunteer Program.

                The National Response Team is roughly 100 members from all across the United States. Each person goes through a discernment event and PDA decides if this person is right for their team. Each person must be willing to give at least four weeks a year in case they are needed. The National Response Team is then broken down into several teams with everyone being on at least one of these teams.

Sitting around a table discussing topics with members of PDA

The first full day we had a large group discussion. Most of the conversations revolved around deployment. I got to learn more about what it means to be deployed by PDA and the National Response Team was given a refresher. A deployment is when the office of PDA gets a call that their services might be needed somewhere. PDA then decides who would be the best people to send based on the nature of the call and who is currently available. There is a wide range of situations a National Response Team can be sent to from providing emotional and spiritual care to leaders of the community affected by disasters to evaluating and finding churches that could be host sites for groups to stay in and do recovery work.    

We talked about what makes a good deployment which usually means having a team that gets along, finishing the task that needs to be done and connecting to the local people. We also talked about what makes a bad deployment which included a wrong mix of people or not everyone on the same page, or getting sent in at an inappropriate time. An example brought up was getting sent in when there is already an urgent need for short term housing.  The results would be that the team uses space that could be used for a survivor of the disaster and the team doesn’t accomplish the goals of the deployment.

                 In the afternoon, PDA honored the people who had helped with Katrina and everyone was allowed to share their stories about Katrina. It was interesting to see how many people became part of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance because of the impact PDA had on that area after the storm. PDA is one of the last groups to leave New Orleans and is still there after 10 years.

                The next couple of days were spent mostly on breakout sessions. These were small sessions where people were asked to learn about topics they weren’t familiar with. I knew some topics better than others so I tried to find sessions I knew nothing about.

We had one afternoon off so a group of us went to the famous Gateway Arch. 

                One session I went to was Story-telling A &B led by David Barnhart. David is employed by PDA to do Story Ministry. In this we talked about the importance of stories, what they are all about and why we tell them. Most survivors feel the need to share their stories to help in their recovery. By recording these stories people can feel more connected to the survivors when they come to volunteer and it also gets their story out to people who might like to donate to the recovery effort.

Another session I attended was Human-Caused Disasters A &B. In this session we talked about what is a human-caused disaster which could include gun violence, a terrorist attack, an industrial accident, or any disaster that was directly caused by humans. One thing I learned was that it doesn’t have to be a big story that gets national attention to get PDA called in. An example they gave was a time when someone had broken in to a church during a shootout with police or a congregation where a leader of the church was killed by gun violence.

                There was one small group session that got turned into a big group discussion because of the interest level. This was PDA response to Refugee Ministries focusing on the ones in the United States. The speaker was Susan Krehbiel , who is a part time employee of PDA and the expert on this topic. She told a story of a young adult who had married young. Her husband became abusive and was also part of a drug cartel. She feared for her life so she made an attempt to escape this life and start over in the United States. Due to the lengthy time it takes to get a visa she came to this country illegally. She was detained however and if the US deported her back she would almost certainly be killed. Susan then talked about what churches near the border have been doing to help with the overflow of immigrants and what’s being done by PDA. PDA is trying to figure out the best way to go with this current problem.

                Another breakout meeting I went to was Care for Caregivers. This was a ministry PDA puts on to help those people who are the leaders after a disaster to de-stress and learn more about self-care. We only got to go through a small portion of it because it’s an all-day program but I felt very relaxed afterwards. * After the conference a group of PDA National Response team members were deployed to the Little Rock area to do a Care for Caregivers for the leaders of Mayflower long term recovery group and I was invited to go through the whole program and it was awesome. If you are ever are in a situation where Care for Caregivers shows up do it is very relaxing.

              Some other meetings I didn’t get to included Congregational Preparedness. See previous blog if interested in the subject. Long-term Recovery A&B which is also something I talked about in previous blog. Hosting which is a big part of PDA. This means that National Response Team members will go to churches after a disaster and do assessments to see if they could house volunteers. Two staff members run the call center and set up groups up to stay at approved host sites.

                This is just a summary of the things PDA does. If you want more information go to the PDA website or see if you can contact a National Response Team member. I would like to thank PDA for inviting me. It was a lot of fun; I learned a lot and felt very welcomed. PDA does a lot of fantastic work and is something members of Presbyterian Church (USA) should take pride in and feel great about.