Scroll Top

Category: CEDAR Blog

“Do Gospel” with 16 HK’s Churches, Food Assistance Ministry Benefited over 3,500 People

“We are ‘doing gospel’, not only ‘spreading gospel’. Through our witness indeed, more people can receive the bread of life from the Lord through food assistance,” said by the representative of the Church on The Rock Yan Shing Church “Our church has only around 100 people and many of them are grassroots people, therefore we do not receive many donations. CEDAR’s ‘Journey through Pandemic Crisis – Short-term Food Assistance’ Funding Scheme has encouraged our church. After the completion of the food assistance project, we have allocated the same amount of fund (HK$60,000) previously funded by CEDAR to carry out the second phase of the project. In doing so, we have reached out to some disadvantaged groups that we have

Continue reading

From Sewing Sanitary Napkins to Three-Layer Face Masks

Banner image: Theit Theit Shwee sewing face masks made by cloth (Source: CEDAR’s partner) “Kacha…Kacha…” Theit Theit Shwee, a woman from the slum area of Myanmar, sat in front of a sewing machine and sewed the fabric. She carefully wrapped the two white bands and sewed them with the fabric and finished making a three-layer cloth mask. This has been her daily job, making cloth masks with other women in the community center of CEDAR’s partner. Due to the local outbreak of COVID-19, Theit Theit Shwee, who was already over 40, immediately lost her job. She had been working so hard to raise her child for many years, but the pandemic has made her lose all her income.

Continue reading

Anti-Pandemic Relief Report in Mainland China

Banner image: Distributing spectacles to pandemic prevention personnel in the communities In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is raging around the world, bringing a major public health crisis to all regions. At the beginning of February this year, CEDAR saw the lack of anti-pandemic supplies in Mainland China, where the initial outbreak of the coronavirus occurred, and the people there were in worries. Hence, CEDAR urgently allocated about HK$513,000 to support two partners in China to provide anti-pandemic support in Hubei, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. Part of the anti-pandemic relief work is the distribution of anti-pandemic supplies. A Chinese social worker who participated in the project expressed his gratitude and impression for receiving CEDAR’s anti-pandemic items. It filled her

Continue reading

The First Sign of Disaster has Appeared: Cries of the Poor in Developing Countries during the Pandemic

Banner image: medical workers treated the sick after putting on their personal protective equipment (Source: CEDAR’s partner) “For poor places, [the spread of COVID-19] implies calamity.” ‘The Next Calamity’, The Economist, 28th March Globalisation has made it impossible for any one country to avoid the risk of being affected by contagious diseases. When there is a pandemic, developed countries can still make use of their resources to procure pandemic prevention materials. They can also utilise their financial reserves to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on their medical systems and economies. For many poor and densely populated developing countries, their medical systems were already vulnerable even before the pandemic and there had always been a lack of social welfare.

Continue reading

“Journey through Pandemic Crisis – Short-Term Food Assistance” Funding Scheme Open for Application by Hong Kong Christian Churches

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting every industry, and the underprivileged such as the low-income families are bearing the biggest brunt. Since the outbreak, some businesses have closed down while others are facing insolvency. Many manual labourers have lost their jobs and income streams and the poor are under a lot of financial pressure. In view of the situation in Hong Kong, CEDAR Fund allocated a total of HK$500,000 to set up the “Journey through Pandemic Crisis – Short-term Food Assistance” Fund (hereinafter referred to as “the fund”), for the purpose of encouraging local Christian churches to offer help to the needy who have difficulties in coping with their daily food expenditure in the short term. All eligible churches

Continue reading

An Urgent Expectation & Appeal from Frontline Service Organisations to the Government

Below are the fronline service organisations’ demands to the HKSAR Government, as stated in press release on 18th February: Delivering masks to every student Cracking down on price-gouging vendors Creating short-term and part-time job opportunities Issued by: 1. The Industrial Evangelical Fellowship (工業福音圑契)2. The Society for Truth and Light (明光社)3. The Urban Peacemaker Evangelistic Fellowship (城市睦福團契)4. CEDAR Fund (施達基金會)5. China Alliance Press (宣道出版社)6. Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement (香港教會更新運動)7. Mission to New Arrivals (新福事工協會)8. Family Value Foundation of Hong Kong (維護家庭基金)   Full text of press release in Chinese: 【新聞稿】前線服務機構對政府的逼切期望及呼籲

Continue reading

CEDAR Aided 14,640 Families Affected by the Flood in Maharashtra, India

Banner image: Jagganath, flood survivor in Maharashtra, received our emergency aid Since this July, India has been impacted by monsoon. This disaster was the most severe flood in recent 25 years. By the end of October, over 2,100 people died, 2.6 million people were inflicted and more than 400,000 houses were destroyed. [1] And Maharashtra, the major cane production area in India, was most severely impacted, where 22 districts were devastated, 430 people died, and over 700,000 residents were forced to seek shelter. [2] After donating HK$195,000 to EFICOR, our Indian partner, to help 1,500 flood survivors in July, CEDAR Fund received a grant of HK$4.81 million from the Disaster Relief Fund of the Government of the Hong

Continue reading

How did CEDAR Select and Manage Overseas Projects?

CEDAR has been collaborating with 53 Christian organizations and churches worldwide from 2018 to 2019, to support 80 relief and development projects all over Asia, Middle East and Africa. With an enormous amount of projects and great needs in poor regions, how did CEDAR select and manage the projects? Let’s hear what our Programme Officer Hollace say. Hollace noted that CEDAR’s support to a poverty alleviation project took into account of the project’s community involvement and mobilization, which included the following aspects: 1. How to enhance project’s endeavor to mobilise targeted community’s own resources? 2. How to assure better transparency and fairness in beneficiary selection? 3. Any feedback and response mechanisms? 4. Is local volunteers mobilized? 5. How

Continue reading

Faith, Hope, Love, and the Creation

Source: Unsplash/Bonnie Kittle Written by: Raymond Kwong (Chief Executive of CEDAR Fund) Christianity is about the pursuit of faith, hope and love. As we ponder upon the teaching of these virtues, we often limit it to only between God and man (ourselves), yet the teaching of Colossians 1:15-20 reiterates that the salvation of God through Jesus Christ is for all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together…and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by

Continue reading

The Poor Amidst the Drought in Zimbabwe

This July, the world experienced perhaps the hottest month in over a century. It is true that the climate crisis can produce very divergent impacts on the rich and the poor. As UN expert pointed out recently, the rich have money to find ways to mitigate the threats of global warming, but the poor are powerless to protect themselves. They are left to bear the resulting heat, famine and diseases. CEDAR has had an insight into the great affliction that the poor in Zimbabwe in southern Africa have to endure. Recently, El Nino caused a drought in Zimbabwe. The World Food Programme warned that over 2.3 million farmers in the country are on the verge of starvation. Yield of maize, the

Continue reading