How We Help

“Halia” in South-East Asia – described by our project partners as “one of the poorest believers we have ever seen” – cannot earn enough even to buy sufficient food for herself. Now she receives a regular supply of free rice from a Barnabas-funded rice milling machine, along with thousands of other impoverished Christians. “Thank God for this rice every month to help me live,” she said.

Many Christians around the world suffer desperate poverty, often as a result of discrimination and marginalisation simply because of their love of Christ.

In Albania, 30 children from impoverished and marginalised Christian families were given clothes and shoes by Barnabas to enable them go to school. “This project was proof that God hears our prayers,” said a pastor, adding that it encouraged believers “because they saw God’s care and love for people in need”.

In Lebanon we have provided food and hygiene supplies, as well as medicines and funding towards essential bills for vulnerable Christian families struggling because of the country’s dire economic crisis.

1,575 Christian brick-kiln families in Pakistan have been freed from bonded slavery thanks to your support. During crises, these underpaid workers were forced to borrow from their employers, trapping them at survival level. Your contribution has cleared their debts and given them hope for the future.

“After 68 years of praying, God has answered my prayers today. I received a free Bible. This is the happiest and most joyous day in my life,” said 83-year-old Myanmar Christian “Meng”, who walked 97 miles to receive a Bible funded by Barnabas Aid.

Barnabas funds the transport and distribution of Bibles in local languages to Christians in Myanmar, often to inaccessible areas threatened constantly by the Myanmar military.

God’s Word is being translated into an indigenous West African language, with Barnabas support. Among the more than 500,000 speakers of the language are a minority of Christian converts from Islam. They were overjoyed when our partners published the New Testament in their language. With further Barnabas support they are now translating the Old Testament.

These are just two of many projects providing the Scriptures to suffering Christians.

“I am thankful to the Lord that He listens to my prayers and grants me the opportunity to get a good education,” says Ushaw, one of more than 11,000 poor Pakistani Christian children receiving a schooling in a loving Christian environment, with the help of Barnabas Aid.

Many Christian children in Pakistan cannot attend school, often because their parents cannot afford to send them. Generations of Christians remain trapped in illiteracy and poverty. Barnabas supports 121 Christian schools in Pakistan, attended by the poorest Christian children.

Christian children in non-Christian contexts may also endure persecution and discrimination from classmates or even teachers. In some cases they are pressured to convert to the majority religion.

Barnabas contributes to the running costs of 140 Christian schools that offer a strong, Bible-based education to children from the neediest and most vulnerable Christian families. Young believers are strengthened in their faith and empowered to escape poverty and destitution. In the future their children will also benefit as the positive impact of Barnabas-funded schools is felt down the generations. The Christian community as a whole is strengthened. Providing such an education for poor Christian children is also the priority for St Aphrem’s School, Bethlehem, a city where believers are a despised minority. The school has 650 pupils, aged from 3 to 18. Generous Barnabas supporters’ donations, enabling the poorest Christian children to attend, are “the main reason for our existence, persistence and steadfastness” over 20 years, explains the school director. Barnabas also supports Divya Shanthi Christian school in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India, attended by 450 pupils.

How you can help

Pastors in Algeria, church-planters in Indonesia, local missionaries amongst unreached people-groups in Kenya, evangelists in a North African country… Barnabas Aid is thankful for the opportunity to help with the living costs of many brothers and sisters serving God full-time in their own countries. Whether their ministry is to build up believers in the faith or to extend the Kingdom by making new disciples, they minister faithfully in hard and hostile contexts. Your giving helps provide this spiritual support. Local congregations also have practical needs. Discrimination, poverty and persecution can prevent Christians from having a place to gather safely. Worship places may be forcibly closed or destroyed, and landlords may refuse to rent properties for Christians to meet. In some countries it is illegal to gather for prayer in a private home. Elsewhere Christians may be so poor that no one has a home large enough to be used. Even if there is a church building it may be in a terrible state of repair and the congregation unable to afford the necessary renovation. That is why Barnabas helps to build, repair and equip church buildings for poor and persecuted believers around the world.

When those from other religions decide to follow Jesus Christ, persecution often comes to them. Typically, they are rejected by family and community and lose their job. Sometimes they face threats, violence, imprisonment, torture or even death. We can help these brave brothers and sisters – who may be homeless, without any income and in grave danger – to grow in their knowledge of the Lord and to persevere as they suffer for His Name.

In countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan it is hard for converts to survive the long cold winters, as their non-Christian families will not help them. Barnabas steps in with food parcels, coal and even fodder for their livestock.

Where possible we help converts to become self-sufficient economically by providing vocational skills training or the necessary items to start their own small businesses.

We also fund projects that disciple new converts, helping them learn to live as Christians – so radically different from the religions they have left.

“I am thankful to the people of God who have been sharing the love of God,” says “Karam”.

His family lost their home in the devastating August 2022 Pakistan floods. Barnabas provided Christians with essential aid and financed the repair and building of homes, including one for Karam and his family.

Barnabas supporters have enabled us to respond rapidly to help our global Christian family when disaster strikes.

More than 7,000 believers affected by the 2023 Syria and Turkey earthquake received aid from Barnabas, including food and water, clothes and blankets, toiletries, temporary shelters, or woodburning stoves. “The instant aid you sent us was a lifeline,” said a Syrian church leader.

In Chad and Cameroon we helped more than 6,000 Christian families after flooding in July and August 2022. Within days of Cyclone Freddy flooding southern Africa in February and March 2023 we delivered 15 tonnes (350,000 servings) of nourishing ePap to sustain believers.

As well as this, over 700 Ukrainian Christians affected by flooding caused by the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023 received food, drinking water and other urgent necessities.

“This has helped me in my ministry in a tremendous way. […] I am able to teach and guide people in the church more effectively than before.”

This was the testimony of Pastor Oliver Chaplain, a minister in South Sudan, after completing a course of training through Barnabas Aid’s The Shepherd’s Academy (TSA).

TSA exists to equip the under-shepherds of the Lord’s flock in their God-given calling. To achieve this, TSA runs undergraduate degree programmes as well as short courses. These programmes are now accredited and designed in a way making it accessible and affordable for those who are already involved. Recent statistics indicate that there are more than five million church planters and pastors across the Global South, and that more than 95% of them have not had the opportunity for formal theological training. This can limit the effectiveness of even the most faithful church leader. TSA courses are being made available in English, Chinese, Russian, Tamil and Arabic, with, God willing, Hindi to follow. As of August 2023 there were more than 600 grassroots church leaders studying with TSA. These students are from over 30 countries, and each student is linked to one of the 20 TSA study centres in 12 different countries. TSA is part of Barnabas Aid’s Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life (OCRPL), which provides opportunities for church leaders from the emerging churches in the Global South to undertake Ph.D. or master’s-level theological research. This serves to strengthen many churches in places of poverty and persecution.

Two new Barnabas-funded health centres are due to open at the end of 2023 in Nigeria’s Kaduna State. God willing, more health centres will be funded in 2024. These centres will provide much-needed emergency treatment and general medical care for Christian communities numbering more than 34,000 people. “We see it as Divine providence for us to get this project,” declared a village head.

This is just one of the ways in which Barnabas is improving the lives of persecuted and marginalised Christians around the world, many of whom struggle to access basic healthcare.

In Pakistan, we are funding four static clinics and two mobile clinics that give free treatment, medicines and advice to impoverished Christians, including many brick-kiln workers.

In India, we are addressing a nationwide shortage of allied health professionals, who provide crucial ancillary support to medics, by helping to fund a new training centre linked to a Christian hospital.

Launched in October 2022, our medical.gives project ships medical equipment donated by Christians around the world to their brothers and sisters in need.

“I bless God for this, I am the most blessed of the girls of my generation,” said a Cameroonian Christian woman. She was among 100 Christian women given 50 Barnabas-funded sewing machines to start businesses in pairs after they fled attacks by Boko Haram Islamists.

Sewing machines provided by Barnabas are changing the lives of marginalised Christian women across the world. Many struggle to find employment because of their faith and gender. A sewing machine enables women to make a living from tailoring to support themselves and their families.

This is just one of the ways in which Barnabas is enabling believers to set up small income-generating enterprises, which in turn helps to strengthen the prosperity of their Christian communities. In Egypt we are helping widows and young people struggling to find employment to start small shops, goat rearing ventures, carpentry workshops, car wash businesses and many more.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, we are supporting beleaguered Armenian Christians by providing them with sheep so that they can make an income. At the time of writing, the Christian enclave is cut off from Armenia because of a months-long blockade of the Lachin Corridor by Azerbaijan.

“There are no words to express our gratitude to those who donated us this food,” said a young Christian woman in Burkina Faso. Barnabasfunded food aid given to 3,290 Burkinabé Christians was a vital lifeline to victims of Islamist violence.

Violent anti-Christian persecution is on the rise, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa. Barnabas is responding by reaching displaced believers and providing them with much-needed aid.

Tens of thousands of African Christians have been helped. In Nigeria, Barnabas has funded food aid and building materials for displaced Christians whose homes were destroyed. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) we have provided trauma counselling for those who have experienced horrific violent attacks.

Myanmar is another country where believers suffer extreme, targeted violence and Barnabas provides food and other necessities. We have also sent aid to Armenian Christians enduring the blockade of their NagornoKarabakh homeland by Azerbaijan.

Can you help us to continue supporting the victims of anti-Christian violence?

Four hundred Cameroonian Christians – mostly women and children – who fled Islamist violence to a refugee camp in Chad fell ill with stomach upsets because its water supply was dirty. Barnabas funded the drilling of two boreholes on church land close to the camp that gave clean water, so the families no longer became ill. The Christians thanked God for “this testimony of love”.

Water is essential for life and health, yet many of our brothers and sisters have limited or no access to a supply of clean water for drinking, cooking and washing. This can lead to dehydration and disease.

Women and girls often have to walk long distances to fetch supplies, making them vulnerable to harassment or attack. Natural disasters can also contaminate supplies. Christians are sometimes denied access to water because of their faith.

Barnabas provides clean water to Christian communities by funding hand pumps, wells and filters. We also send bottled water or water purifying tablets to believers in areas afflicted by natural disasters.