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Project Updates

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

A small team from UnitingWorld visited Solomon Islands in the aftermath of Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila and saw first-hand the impact of your support.

Our partner, the United Church in the Solomon Islands (UCSI), continues to build climate resilience, prepare communities for disasters and promote healthy, safe relationships. Rev Siera Bird, UnitingWorld’s International Program Manager for the Pacific and a Solomon Islander, shares what she saw:

How is disaster preparedness making a difference?

UCSI has been training Community-Based Disaster Risk Management Committees village by village. The communities I visited were full of gratitude, because the training meant they knew exactly what to do when the cyclone Maila hit. The UCSI team are really excited to see the community disaster committees activating early, just as they were trained, and showing people what to do and getting them to safety. It was remarkable to hear that no lives were lost in such a severe cyclone.

What changes have you seen on gender equality?

In Vanua village, one of the first communities to take part in the UnitingWorld-supported Gender Equality Theology training back in 2019, I saw real change. One woman, Lovelyn, told me her husband, who once argued about women’s roles and work, now cooks and helps at home. Rev Wilson Agiri, who hosted us in his church, spent much of his time cooking for us and caring for the sick in his community, work that was traditionally left to women. It felt to me like a whole community shift is slowly happening through God’s grace.

What’s next: clean energy for Solomon Islands

We’re thrilled to be starting a new project to bring solar power to ten remote communities in Choiseul and Malaita Provinces, replacing costly diesel generators with reliable sustainable electricity for schools, health centres and churches that are used as evacuation centres. More than 8,600 people will benefit from safer nights, better healthcare, refrigeration for fishing families and stronger disaster response. To deliver this project, we will need your donations to co-invest with funding from the Australian Government’s REnew Pacific initiative. We are working in collaboration with Caritas Australia and Baptist World Aid Australia, in partnership with several Solomon Islands churches including UCSI.

What do you hope for the future of this partnership?

I pray my people can enjoy the abundance and fullness of life God intends. Gender-based violence is still at crisis levels and that weighs heavily on my heart. People are very vulnerable to disasters, but there are many things we can do to help. I hope and pray we will have a closer partnership built on shared wisdom between people in the Solomon Islands and Australia.

There’s so much we can learn from each other.

Thank you for making this transformative partnership in Solomon Islands possible through your support.

 

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News, Project Updates, Remote Area Education (India), Social Empowerment for Excluded Castes (India)
August 6, 2026

In 2008, just 38 per cent of children in targeted Dalit* communities along the India-Pakistan border were enrolled in school. Today, that number is 100 per cent, across a project that has grown from 10 villages to 20, now reaching 9,678 people. Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or joined more recently, this is what your support has built.

*Dalit is a term derived from Sanskrit meaning “broken,” “oppressed,” or “downtrodden”.
It is a self-designation used by social groups across South Asia who were historically marginalized in Hindu caste society.

This year, we commissioned an independent evaluation of the project, confirming what these numbers already show: real, sustained change.

Your support helped deaf children like Dalen to continue his education and support his learning. He is progressing very well, now studying in Grade 10 and playing the sport of Kabaddi at a high level.

Back then, literacy across these communities sat at just 40 per cent. Today, the project runs 23 study centres across those 20 villages, reaching families in 2,700 households, and more than 90 students have gone on to graduate university or pursue postgraduate study, the first in their communities’ history to do so.

“Together, UnitingWorld and the Diocese of Amritsar have transformed entire Dalit communities — empowering children to pursue education, and creating lasting change,” says Om Prakash, former Project Coordinator.

 

Power is shifting hands too. Since leadership training began, 1,665 people have taken part, and Dalit communities who were once completely excluded from decision-making now hold leadership positions on village councils.
Self-help groups are turning small loans into real businesses: Jaspal Singh, from Dyal Bhatti village, bought a jute bagmaking machine with hers.

“Starting my own business has been the biggest change in my life,” she says.

But of course, so much remains unfinished. Families raising children with disabilities still struggle to access entitlements they’re owed. Financial pressures bear down on families, forcing teenagers to take up daily wage work, and adolescent girls remain at high risk for dropping out of school. Border tensions bring school closures and movement restrictions that interrupt everything.

The former Bishop of Amritsar, Rev Bishop P.K. Samantaroy told us, “Getting to all of them and doing all the good we can is what the next chapter requires.”

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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, 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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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, Social Empowerment for Excluded Castes (India)
March 4, 2026

This International Women’s Day, the global theme is ‘Balance the Scales.’ It is a call to address the structural barriers that continue to deny women and girls equal access to justice, opportunity and political power. For UnitingWorld and our partners, it is a theme we see reflected every day in the communities we work alongside.

Anya grew up in the Mirabai settlement, a low-income community in Durgapur, in northern India. Her father works as a driver and her mother as a housekeeper, together earning around AUD$100 a month to cover all household costs for a family of five. From an early age the odds were stacked against her. The life script for girls like Anya is a familiar one: leave school early, contribute to the household, and marry young. Her parents were hoping she would marry quickly, as often happens very young in their community. Poverty and social pressure made that script feel inevitable.

But it was not.

Since 2011, UnitingWorld has supported the Church of North India – Diocese of Durgapur to run an Education and Social Empowerment project in Anya’s community. Through study centres, life skills workshops, career counselling and vocational training, the project has transformed lives for many community members, giving young people the tools to write a different story for themselves.

For Anya, that meant access to a study centre and a teacher, Sophia Lakra, who invested in her potential. With that support, Anya completed primary school, went on to further study, joined computer classes and pursued her passion for basketball. She is now enrolled in a college degree and the National Cadet Corps, and is preparing for competitive exams she hopes will lead to stable employment.

Today, she also volunteers at the same study centre where her own journey began, helping to teach the next generation. “I would have drowned in darkness,” she reflects, “if the project and Ms Lakra had not guided me to the light of education.”

Anya’s story illustrates what balancing the scales can look like in practice: not sweeping policy change alone, but consistent, community-level investment in young women’s education, confidence and agency.

There are many more children in her settlement still without access to quality education. The work continues.

If you can support UnitingWorld’s partners as they expand this work, we would love to have you alongside us!

 

This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP). Thanks to ANCP, we’re making a huge difference together; lifting families out of poverty and helping people improve their lives.

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Campaigns, Community Health & Infant Nutrition (Timor Leste), Community Health Clinics
January 10, 2026

Our world needs a movement of committed, courageous discipleship.

Across the Pacific, Asia and Africa, communities who have contributed least to climate change are living with its harshest impacts. Crops are failing, water is harder to find, and extreme weather is pushing families deeper into poverty. For many, the chance to recover after climate disasters feels increasingly fragile.

This Lent, you’re invited to stand alongside our neighbours and share in what God is already doing through communities responding with resilience, courage and hope.

40 days of faithful action for God’s creation.

Lent is a season shaped by prayer, generosity and everyday choices that reflect our call to love our neighbours and care for the earth.

Together with congregations across Australia, we walk in solidarity with international church partners who are supporting communities to grow food, protect water sources and build resilience in the face of a changing climate.

This is not charity from a distance. It is shared discipleship, grounded in relationship, faith and hope for the future.

Stories of hope from Timor-Leste

In Timor-Leste, Australia’s nearest neighbour and the poorest country in our region, climate change is being felt deeply. Unseasonal drought and catastrophic flooding are destroying crops that families rely on for food and income. One in four people is hungry, and half of all children are stunted due to failed harvests and lack of clean water.

Yet there is hope to share.

Through UnitingWorld’s partner FUSONA, families are restoring livelihoods, improving food security and strengthening their communities. Meet people like Martha and hear how her family’s life has been transformed through this work.

These are stories of dignity, local leadership and faith in action.

How you can take part:

  • Sign up now! Join a movement of people putting their faith in action to fight poverty and protect creation.
  • Give generously
    Your gift will support community-led responses to climate change, helping families grow food, access clean water and prepare for future shocks.
  • Share the stories
    Use the Lent Event videos, reflections and prayer resources in worship, small groups or personal devotion. They are designed to deepen connection and inspire faithful action throughout the season.
  • Take on 40 for the Future
    40 for the Future is a simple fundraising challenge you can take on as an individual or a team. Choose one change for 40 days, like the way you eat, travel, consume or use energy, and invite others to donate in solidarity with communities living with less as the climate changes.

Lent Event 2026 is designed to fit alongside whatever your church or community already has planned for Lent.

Find resources, videos, stories and ways to get involved at
www.lentevent.com.au

Together, over 40 days, we can grow hope, stand with our neighbours and live out our calling to care for God’s creation.

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