During the Year of Mercy, Aid to the Church in Need is appealing to everyone to help our Christian refugee brethren to celebrate Christmas and live a life with dignity together with their families.
At the moment, the work of the Aid to the Church in Need is largely focused in helping Christians and people of other faiths in the Middle East.
In Iraq we provide food and shelter for 13,500 displaced families who fled Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq when Isis invaded the traditional Christian areas of Nineveh and Mosul.
Aid to the Church in Need aims to give displaced children, in this war-torn country, as normal a childhood as is humanly possible. This year we have opened eight schools and a kindergarten, which provide education for 8,000 refugee children of all denominations.
In Syria, the remaining Christians in Aleppo and Damascus, who have been under constant bombardment and who are totally exhausted and without work, are totally dependent on the generosity of others for their very existence. Aid to the Church in Need supports the work of religious sisters who need financial help to purchase warm clothing and footwear for the children, together with food, fuel and other basic necessities.
In Jordan, Aid to the Church in Need is providing financial assistance to Fr Khalil Jaar (who was in Malta last October). We help him provide food, accommodation and medical care to 400 displaced families, a total in excess of 1,600 individuals – mainly Christians from Iraq and Syria, who sought shelter in his parish in Amman.
In Lebanon, Aid to the Church in Need is helping to fund St Anthony’s clinic, a health centre which caters for Iraqi and Syrian refugees, as well as to Lebanon’s poor. Last year, the clinic provided care to 17,000 people – with an average of 200 refugees being treated on a daily basis – and vaccinated over 2,000 children.
We rely solely on the generosity of our benefactors to raise the funds necessary to carry out our humanitarian projects.
It is important to note that in 2014 Aid to the Church in Need provided assistance worth €1.17 million.
Those interested in helping may contact us on info@acnmalta.org or call 2148 7818.