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Author: UnitingWorld

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Disaster Preparation and Climate Change (Pacific Region), News, Project Updates
August 6, 2026

The recent signing of the partnership agreement between the Uniting Church in Australia and EKT represents an important step in formalising a relationship that has already been growing through trust, friendship and shared faith, and expresses our commitment to walk together in Christ.

Rev Apwee Ting, International Partnerships Manager at UnitingWorld recenly visited Tuvalu and shared his insights:

Although my recent visit was my first time setting foot in Tuvalu, it felt like visiting friends because of my years of online conversations with the leaders of the Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu (EKT).
UnitingWorld has been heavily engaged with EKT over the past few years, discussing issues that are important for the people of Tuvalu.

I have appreciated the opportunity to listen to EKT’s perspectives regarding the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union Treaty and the experiences of Tuvaluan PALM workers who are living and working in Australia. These conversations have reminded me that partnership begins with listening.

During my visit, I was deeply moved by the resilience and faith of the people in Tuvalu. Living with the realities of climate change, they continue their witness through hope, prayer and community. Their challenges are not only environmental or political. They also are spiritual, touching questions of identity, land and the future.

As a church, we are called not simply to stand in solidarity from a distance but to accompany our Tuvaluan friends with humility and compassion.

I returned from Tuvalu with gratitude, renewed hope and a deeper conviction that God calls us to walk together in faith, especially with communities facing the difficult challenges.

UnitingWorld is working with various UCA Synods to support Tuvalu settlers in Australia to gather and establish their faith communities.

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Blogs, Campaigns, Project Updates
August 6, 2026

We who follow Christ are called to roll up our sleeves and step into a suffering world with good news for the poor, healing for the sick, and freedom for the oppressed.

We are called for such a time as this.
Are we ready?

I’ve just spent two days with the Christian Conference of Asia, sitting with church leaders who between them carry the hopes of fifty million Christians across this region. I asked them what keeps them awake at night. The answer I heard most was forced migration and statelessness.

Desperate people crossing borders in search of safety and a livelihood because of climate change, poverty and conflict.

Young people leaving because there is no work. Families abandoning traditional land as harvests fail. The same forces, again and again, falling hardest on those least able to absorb them.

And yet what I heard, again and again, were stories of people of faith stepping into the breach to love their neighbours, no matter where they came from. 

In Indonesia, our church partners in Nusa Timur Tenggara have built a “House of Hope” for survivors of trafficking.

In the Philippines, churches of every denomination shelter and defend migrant workers far from home. Rev Charissa Suli, President of the Uniting Church in Australia, spoke of communities losing their ancestral land to rising seas, reminding us that we cannot separate people’s suffering from the forces driving it: climate change, inequality and conflict.

In Tuvalu, our own Rev Apwee Ting saw it again recently, where rising seas aren’t a future risk but a present reality. The new partnership agreement between the Uniting Church in Australia and the Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu is our answer to exactly this: standing with church partners so people can live, work and sustain their families in the place they call home.

It’s the same work our partners in places like Sumba are doing right now, helping families hold their ground before hardship forces them to leave.

Thank you to the many people who donated to support that vital work in Sumba and beyond.

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News
July 21, 2026

You’re invited!

Pacific Voices of Hope | Parramatta, 17 August

Join us for an inspiring conversation with esteemed leaders, theologians and project officers from our partner churches across the Pacific.

We will explore how Pacific churches are:

  • Responding to climate change
  • Advancing gender equality and women’s leadership
  • Living out faith through community action
  • Strengthening hope and resilience in their communities

Plus, we will sing and celebrate!

At a time when there is so much global gloom why not enjoy a dose of hope that sees possibilities.

EVENT DETAILS

PACIFIC VOICES OF HOPE
Faith in Action for Climate Justice and Gender Equity

WHEN: Monday 17 August, 4pm

WHERE: Centre for Ministry, The Uniting Church in Australia, 16 Masons Dr, North Parramatta

AGENDA: Presentations 4:15 pm – 5:15 pm; Conversations from 5:15 pm onwards

DINNER: (optional at 5.15 pm- $10 contribution towards dinner): Please advise number of people attending and any dietary requirements

RSVP Essential (by Mon 10 Aug)
RSVP to Barry Higgins at BarryH@unitingworld.org.au

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News, Women's Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation (Bali, Indonesia)
May 7, 2026

UnitingWorld has launched our 2026 End of Financial Year Appeal to support the world’s poorest in the Pacific, Asia and Africa

Every morning, before anything else, Semis pounds rice by hand so her family has enough to eat.

“If I don’t do this today, we don’t eat tomorrow,” she explains, as a matter of fact.

Semis lives in rural Sumba, eastern Indonesia, one of 219 million people in our region living on less than $3 a day. Already living with erratic rainfall and an increasingly arid climate, subsistence farming families like hers are among the most exposed in the world to global economic shocks. When costs rise, hunger follows. When the crop fails, there is no fallback. When the rain doesn’t come, Semis and her husband go into the forest to forage wild roots and plants just to get through.

And yet her hopes are as humble as her life.

“My hope,” she told us, “is for my child to go to school, and for there to be enough to eat.”

That’s it. Not wealth. Just enough, and a future for her daughter she never had herself.

This is what UnitingWorld’s End of Financial Year Appeal is about, working alongside local church partners in Sumba to break the cycle of poverty and hunger for families like Semis’s. Not a handout, but a hand alongside: food gardens, water access, agricultural mentoring, health support for mothers and children.

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” — John 10:10

Your tax-deductible gift before 30 June has up to six times the impact through our partnership with the Australian Government. It’s the most powerful time of year to give.

Find out more and give now here.

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Blogs, Campaigns, Community Health & Infant Nutrition (Timor Leste)
April 20, 2026

In the midst of world events that feel out of our control, we take hold of the Easter resurrection story to guide our steps together.

When we turn our attention toward Christ, when we fast, when we pray, when we slow down enough to follow his footsteps, we don’t get pulled away from the world. We get pulled deeper into it.

I addressed churches during Easter with a message of hope and encouragement. I hope you’ll take a moment to be encouraged by watching, and share with others who need to hear again the Easter narrative of solidarity and transformation.

Find out more about UnitingWorld’s Lent Event.

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News
April 15, 2026

Conflict has forced a million people from their homes in Lebanon. Shelters are overwhelmed. Families are going without food, medicine, and water. Will you help today?

UnitingWorld is supporting the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) ‘Light of Hope’ appeal through the Act Alliance to reach 46,000 displaced families in Beirut and South Lebanon with urgent food, clean water, medicine and basic shelter.

Donate now! 

Make an online donation here or call 1800 998 122 (9am – 5pm) 

Here’s what your donation makes possible:

$25 provides a blanket or baby milk for a displaced infant and family
$60 provides a full food parcel, enough to feed a family through the immediate emergency
$150 provides two emergency food parcels and hygiene supplies for two families
$210 delivers direct cash assistance to a displaced family, giving them the dignity of choosing their most urgent need
$500 provides emergency support to multiple families: food, hygiene, water, and medicines

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Community Livelihood Support, News, Project Updates, Social Empowerment for Excluded Castes (India)
March 26, 2026

UnitingWorld is partnering with the Church of North India – Diocese of Eastern Himalaya to support a tea plantation community in India’s Darjeeling region. A community of 190 people are still recovering from a plantation closure that stripped them of income, housing and food security overnight.

With few transferable skills and increasingly severe climate impacts, including heavy rains, landslides and soil erosion, families have struggled to rebuild their livelihoods.

Senior Project Officer Rose Donovan recently facilitated a four-day consultation and planning workshop with Diocese staff and community members to design a project to help people adapt to the changing climate and find alternative incomes.

“The community took us on a very intimate walk, showing us how they grow their food, their water sources and the landslides scattered throughout the area, and welcoming us into their homes,” said Rose. “They shared their goals and dreams fortheir community, each family longing to shape their own future.”

The Diocese has already employed a local woman as field officer. She had been planning to migrate more than three hours away in search of work, but can now stay and serve her own community.

Over the next three years, our partners will be helping families through climate resilient farming, improved livestock management and access to markets, as well as vocational training and career guidance for young people. They will also be working with the entire community on a disaster preparedness plan, including building awareness on drainage issues, good land management and how to reduce landslide risks.

Diocese Program Manager Sanjay Khaling said, “the community is enthusiastic about working together, and while it is a huge learning process,they are ready to get started.”

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Community Livelihood Support, News, Project Updates, Women's Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation (Bali, Indonesia)
March 26, 2026

When migrants suddenly started turning up in Bali from the nearby island of Sumba, many people assumed the worst. Would they be a strain on housing, jobs and social harmony? One more group of outsiders to be tolerated or pushed aside?

But for Rev Betha and her team at MBM (the development agency of the Protestant Christian Church in Bali), the arrivals weren’t a problem to be solved but an opportunity to love their neighbours in need.

“In our outreach to new migrants, they shared that the primary driving factor for leaving Sumba to seek work in Bali was extreme poverty,” Rev Betha explained.

“Their condition is largely caused by drought, infertile land and limited access to water, which make it difficult for villagers to make a living.”

Climate change sits at the centre of this shared challenge. “These changes have led to reduced rainfall and prolonged dry seasons, resulting in drought and crop failure,” Rev Betha says, with ripple effects across health, livelihoods and family safety.

For many years, MBM has worked alongside vulnerable communities in Bali. But when Rev Betha stepped into leadership in 2023, she felt called to respond more deeply to the plight of new
migrants.

“Climate change and poverty have driven many people from Sumba to migrate to Bali in search of work, often without adequate skills or an understanding of cultural differences.

As a result, many Sumbanese migrants in Bali face a type of ‘double’ poverty. First in their places of origin, and again in their destination areas. These realities strengthened our conviction at MBM that we must expand our ministry to Sumba.”

As well as supporting families who have already migrated, MBM devised a plan to help people still at home in Sumba, before they become stuck in Bali facing hostility and fewer opportunities.

MBM has partnered with UnitingWorld and the Sumba Christian Church to make this work possible, building trust through shared faith.

“We hold the conviction that it is God who sends us to accompany the vulnerable and the poor with compassion,” Rev Betha reflects. “We believe that God goes before this good plan and faithfully sustains our work.”

We will be sharing more about this growing partnership, and ways to support the project, later in the year. Pease uphold Rev Betha and her team in prayer.

 

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News
March 26, 2026

Right now, humanitarians the world over are operating with far less support. A global retreat from foreign aid is happening at precisely the wrong moment.

Early last year, the United States closed USAID and slashed its foreign aid budget by more than 80 percent. Modelling from Boston University suggests this has already caused 600,000 deaths, two-thirds of them children. Other major funders followed: Germany cut aid by 50%, the UK by 40% and France by 37%, all diverted to record defence spending.

We are thankful that Australia’s aid budget was saved from cuts, in no small part by a movement of faithful Christians and church institutions refusing to see aid as discretionary spending, but as an extension of our shared values.

If you added your voice through the Safer World For All campaign, contacted your Member of Parliament, or prayed for and supported us and our partners as they advocated in Canberra – thank you!

There’s still a long way to go. Australia’s foreign aid remains at a historic low of just 0.5 per cent of the federal budget, well below what’s needed to meet humanitarian and development needs around the world.

We will continue to urge the government to restore Australian aid to the modest level of 1% of the Federal Budget, a small step that would have a huge impact.

You can help by joining the campaign at www.saferworld.org.au

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Blogs, News
March 26, 2026

“A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.”

It was acclaimed as the most important foreign policy speech in years. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney chose to speak with unusual candour in his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false” he said, “that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.”

He called out what the global south has always known – that the fairness of that order was a collective illusion, and that it has always been weaponised against the powerless. We now live in a world where superpowers exert military might and economic coercion with flagrant indifference. Whatever illusion we shared, it is now shattered. Carney called on ‘middle power’ nations to build something better, an order grounded in human rights, solidarity, and the dignity of every nation. I look forward to how Australia might step up to this invitation.

But as Christ-followers we do not put our faith in empires. Even well-meaning ones. The value of each human life, the duty of the strong to care for the weak, to love without condition – these are Jesus’ teachings. Are we ready to hold to them, even when the world seems to be forgetting?

Whenever I meet with our church partners and supporters, I find my answer. Whether among old friends or new partners, in the wealthiest cities here at home or the poorest communities of India, Timor-Leste or the Pacific, sitting on mats under trees, or in cafes, the word that rings true is family. Even when I visit for the first time, it always feels like coming home. The spirit of God is always there, always weaving us together, gently urging our hearts to act with love and justice.

We don’t build fortresses, we build tables to gather around. Not an alliance for power, but a living community of people, across cultures, languages and oceans. People who choose each other, who keep showing up, who believe, as Jesus told us, that how we treat the most vulnerable among us is the truest measure of who we are in Christ.

You and I are part of this family, a taste of the kin-dom that Jesus proclaimed was at hand. So the question we face is this: can we hold onto hope and each other, and keep loving with courage and generosity?

Thanks for being with us.