Understanding UMCOR: "Where there is no vision, the people perish..."

Article: UMCOR, Return the Donations!
Name: Don
Email: DGSIMP@aol.com
Date: 30-04-2002

Comments

You need to understand about your topic before you start writing on it. Do you have any understanding of how UMCOR truly spends your money or what type of ministry it carries out? Perhaps attending a training seminar on Disaster Response would enlighten you both on its work and its fiscal responsibility. We are not there at the site of a disaster for two months and then gone. We will be there for years. The different stages of our response require different ways of helping and different ways of using the money. Much of the money given as aid comes after the initial clean-up.

From the Editor: I am a former business executive, have a Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA), and I have been a UM disaster coordinator, involved directly in a disaster and gone to the UMCOR training seminars. The slogan, "We may not be the first on the scene, but we are the last to leave," is a rationalization (spin) for a lack of any real organization or vision. The excess financial reserves invested in the stock market is evidence of poor stewardship and a lack of any real vision.

Working as the coordinator of a real disaster demonstrated to me the "token" nature of any assistance to the real workers. Almost all of our help and direction came from the Red Cross and FEMA. All UMCOR did was "shrug shoulders" and direct us to the other government and non-government agencies that were already there. They could not even help us with a "how-to" manual! I had to write our own manual using non-UMCOR sources!

I know what I am talking about because I was there, done it, and have the tee-shirt. Regretfully it came from non-UM organizations that "were there from the beginning to the end." A suggested slogan and vision could easily be, "we are the first to be there AND the last to leave."

(Proverbs 29:18 KJV) Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

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Understanding UMCOR: "Where there is no vision, the people perish..."