Member Stories

FAIR–Alleviating Human Suffering and Social Injustice

FAIR (Fellowship Aid and International Relief) enables Fellowship churches and individual donors to alleviate human suffering and social injustice in the name of Christ. We’ve been a member of the CCRDA since 2017 and we have been grateful for the relationships that have been strengthened through this partnership ever since.

As we reflect on this past year, Jesus has given us many opportunities to strengthen existing initiatives and also help launch new ones. Since 2005, the Love Trust ministry in Sri Lanka has been serving vulnerable families, especially single mothers who work on the tea plantations and their children by providing pre-school programs and vocational training. In the winter of 2021, we launched the Heart of the Village campaign to help expand the vocational training program that we could provide to mothers. We are grateful for how God has provided for everything this program needed.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, 2021 was the year to launch a new ministry initiative in Madagascar. Our missionaries, Dr. Jesh and Julie Thiessen joined the team at the Good News Hospital to help launch a new Christian surgical training program in partnership with PAACS (Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons). There are only 100 surgeons in the entire country serving a population of 26 million people and so each new surgeon that can work in Madagascar has a dramatic impact on the medical needs of communities. The vision for this program is to train skilled and compassionate surgeons who love Jesus and can make him known to their patients. In the fall, we launched our Out of the Waiting Room fundraising campaign with the goal to raise all the funds necessary to support two residences through their 5 year training program. This program launched this January of 2022 with all the funds needed to get it started.

Our team at FAIR values partnerships, which is one of the reasons we love being part of the CCRDA. In 2021, we were part of a working group drafting communication to encourage the Canadian government to make vaccines available to all people in the world. It was at that meeting that we got to know Leanne Ferris of MMI (Medical Ministry International). After this first project, we decided that we also wanted to more regularly support their medical work in the Amazon amongst First Nations communities through a more formal partnership. We pray that our organizations will continue in a beautiful partnership that is helpful to everyone for many years to come.

May 2022 be a year of seeing the Lord’s beauty in all things. Let’s stay in touch!