More than one year on from when the Boxing Day tsunami struck its deadly waves onto the coasts of the south eastern region of the world, Christians continue to support survivors in the reconstructions of their lives. The Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention has been helping one of the tsunami’s forgotten lands: Somalia.

|TOP|A leading African-American global missions and relief agency, the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention will work in a 30 month engagement partly funded through collaboration with the National Baptist Convention, USA.

The funding to sustain the two and a half years of work is the result of the considerable progress that has been made by the Lott Carey programmes currently running in Africa’s tsunami-devastated districts.

Several programmes are currently helping to rebuild East Africa’s seafood economy, which is still struggling to return to its pre-tsunami position as one of the world leaders in this market.

“Before the tsunami hit, East Africa had one of the best seafood economies in the world. Lott Carey wanted to make a difference and the only way we could do that was to help rebuild that economy,” said Rev. J. Michael Sanders, president of Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention.

In total, 321 families and a further 264 individuals in Bandar Bayla have benefited from the assistance provided by the African Tsunami Relief programme. Not only did the tsunami victims in this region receive food and basic necessities, they were also provided with fishing equipment bought by Lott Carey.

The devastated regions received between them 11 boats, 200 lobster traps, 15 glass fibre shark fishing launches/outboard motors, 30 shark nets, 50 plastic nets, 27 lobster gears, 15 boat anchors and 60 net marker buoys for fishermen.

|AD|Funds are already being gathered for a new boat and motor shop where young men in the region will be trained in order to bring them back into employment and that the fishing industry becomes self-sustaining.

So far, US$30,000 have been spent to rebuild the fishing industry from scratch in the Bandar Bayla district of Somalia.

And the Lott Carey programmes have already shown remarkable results. “Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention has made an immense impact on our economy in the last year,” testified Abshir Abdi Tangi, mayor of Hafun, Somalia.

“They are making remarkable strides in helping us rebuild after this horrible disaster,” he said.

Building on the results to date, Lott Carey is also finalising plans to expand its psycho-social intervention programme for children and families in the Puntland region, enabling it to provide specialised support for those impacted by multiple experiences of trauma in recent years. A further US$38,000 will be spent by Lott Carey to adapt and maintain the presence of the psycho-social intervention programme in the region.

Lott Carey is also investing another US$48,000 to complete the purchase and installation of a generator that will enable an electric distribution system to flourish in the Hafun region of Somalia.

So far, the mission convention and its partners have invested US$116,000 with plans to invest a further US$600,000, as well as the promise of an additional US$200,000 from the National Baptist Convention.

The work currently being undertaken by Lott Carey is in partnership with several churches and non-profit groups, as well as the All African Conference of Churches (AACC), Fellowship of Christian Churches in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa(FECCLAHA), the National Baptist Convention, USA, and UNA, a consortium of Italian non-governmental organisations.