2013 Update on the Don and Birdie Reeder Global Emergency Fund

Mom, Abigail and Caitlyn

 "The Reeder Fund is used to help children and youth around the world with emergency needs resulting from war, threat of trafficking, hunger, clothing, medical needs, or housing."


Many of you know that after my mother's passing, we initiated a project through the Children's Emergency Relief International organization, in her and my father's name, that helps children throughout the world cope with emergency and other exigent situations. I wrote more extensively about the Fund in a prior post you can read here. And I believe I've posted updates at the end of every year, describing the Fund's successes. Last year, sadly, it was around the time of the Sandy Hook shootings. Still hard to believe something that monstrous could happen.

Along with my brothers and sister-in-law,  and many of her friends and family, I helped initiate this fund to honor my mother, Birdie Reeder, who passed away in 2007. She spent the balance of her life caring for, and in many, many respects, ministering to children. A devout woman her entire life, her very favorite Bible verse was “let the children come to Me.” She and my father made several mission trips throughout the world, all to help children. She spent many years working as a teacher’s assistant in the Humble ISD. And also spent many years teaching Sunday School and running the nursery, and running the Kingwood FBC Mother’s Day Out program. Thousands of people were taught by or sent their kids to Miss Birdie, who cared for them and hugged and loved them as she taught them about Jesus and about life.

Anyway, another year has come and just about gone, so I thought I'd relay some highlights that the Fund achieved this year.

Moldovan teens provided housing

The fund helped provide temporary assistance to orphans leaving orphanages (due to age) in Moldova, thereby helping to keep them away from human traffickers preying on their vulnerability. Through the Fund, I've learned much about this problem. Russians (often) will lure teens to Russia or other countries through the promise of a job. They'll arrange transportation, but then confiscate their passports and other travel documents, making it impossible for them to leave and quite literally making them sex slaves. Through the Fund's assistance, it becomes possible for teens emerging from orphanages, lacking many connections, to become established in their home and resist such victimization.

The Fund provided medical treatment resources to over 500 patients in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, including over 1,500 prescriptions provided to families residing in that impoverished seaside town near the Yucatan Peninsula.



Hope Orphan Ministry, Central African Republic

The Fund, along with other CERI resources, helped provide for children and war widows in the Central African Republic, which experienced a coup against the government during March. The Hope Orphan Ministry orphanage, a CERI beneficiary, was unable to continue sustaining itself through its on-site farm. The Fund helped provide interim resources to prevent the children and staff from experiencing starvation and malnutrition as the extreme circumstances continued.

The Fund helped Sri Lankan flood victims who lost homes and gardens needed for food.  In addition to other projects along with a Baptist Christian Life Commission grant, the Fund helped sponsorship programs in nine villages with over 100 children participating. The Fund help complete a home for an orphan who lost her father in the war and mother to cancer, gaining considerable positive publicity throughout the area.

Assistance during Sri Lankan floods

The Fund helped provide South Africans with resources to plant and maintain sustainable gardens. It furnished not only initial seeds and tools, but also taught the recipients efficient farming techniques and how to teach other local residents as well.

We've expanded the Fund's mission and scope over the years. Initially, it focused on individual and transitory needs. Like helping children emerge from orphanages or paying for utilities or rent, or tuition for an apprenticeship program. The Fund now can be used to pay for other needs, such as shelter, medicine, or food and farming. Its startling and awe-inspiring to think there are "Reeder Houses" in various parts of this world, providing shelter to children as a legacy of my mom's care for children.

So we have great ambitions for the Fund as it heads into its sixth year.  We know that through our involvement, and CERI's management, everything the Fund does, and every project to which it contributes, represents something that Mom would have approved and tried to assist. That's the only direction we've ever provided CERI, and its yielded astonishing results.

Certainly we encourage donations from anyone who would like to help further this type of mission. Many of our friends and extended family have graciously helped support the Reeder Fund's work over the years, and we are extremely grateful for that. If you would like more information about the Fund, or CERI, the website can be accessed here. And you can donate at this page. It has a drop down menu where you can designate your donation to go to the Fund. Or you can send a check, designating your donation for the Reeder Fund, to:

CERI USA Headquarters
1406 Stonehollow Suite 400
Kingwood, TX 77339

Thanks for following along and learning a little bit about the Reeder Fund and its important successes throughout 2013. I'm sure Miss Birdie watches over this and helps steer it along.