Local Relief Effort to Aid Rwandans

An international nonprofit organization is launching an Orange County-based relief effort through local churches to provide food, medicine, shelter and other assistance to Rwandan refugees forced to flee the tiny Central African country into neighboring Tanzania.

Phoebus Foundation President Michael van Hoye met Thursday with representatives from Methodist churches to discuss the logistics of the effort. He said he is also in the process of sending out letters to Orange County churches seeking funding, food and volunteers.

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this,” Van Hoye said, referring to the nearly 250,000 refugees who have fled ethnic warfare in Rwanda that may have claimed as many as 200,000 lives since April 6.

“But we’d like to show what can be done when it is done in a positive and well-thought-out way,” he said.

The Rev. Stewart Kriess, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Orange and one of six church leaders who attended Thursday’s meeting, said he hopes other local churches will participate.

“It’s still in the preliminary stages but we’re hoping to get things fleshed out over the next couple of weeks,” Kriess said.

The Phoebus Foundation is an international organization headquartered in Geneva. Its U.S. offices are located in Anaheim Hills.

Van Hoye, an engineer who spent more than 30 years in Africa, said the foundation plans to create “life tubes”--capsules containing enough supplies to sustain eight people for a day. Each unit would include dried beans or rice, medicine, water and purification tablets.

He said the foundation plans to airlift the supplies to a refugee camp in Tanzania.

Phoebus officials are looking for volunteers with medical, engineering and other vital skills who would be willing to accompany them to the refugee camp in June.

Donations may be sent to the Rwandan Refugee Relief fund, c/o Phoebus Foundation, Bank of America, 5640 E. Santa Ana Canyon Road, Anaheim, Calif. 92807.