Earlier this year, the Australian bushfires destroyed over 20-million-acres mark causing major destruction in the beautiful states of New South Wales and Victoria. Yet, the impact of this disaster have not remained confined to just those two states, as smoke and poor air quality spread throughout Australia and affected residents as far as 1,200 miles away. Due to the bushfires, 25 lives were lost, including those of the NSW RFS volunteers and three US aerial firefighters. Thousands of homes completely perished, many towns destroyed and tens of thousands of families stranded. Sadly, millions of natural habitat, including Australia’s iconic Kangaroos, Koalas, Emus and so many different species, as well as natural Australian plantations scraped from the landscape.

The Armenian Missionary Association of Australia (AMA-Australia) with all the churches in Australia and the world prayed for the prevailing sad situation, and along with other charities and local and federal governments pledged to raise funds to support the suffering people.

We are glad to announce that our sister organization, the Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA) joined us in our fundraising efforts and together on behalf of AMA-America and AMA-Australia we donated an amount of $10,000 AUS to support the NSW Rural Fire Service in their efforts and especially the volunteers. We thank the AMA-America and all our AMA-Australia donors, who helped us to raise sufficient funds to bring our share to this worthy cause.

Our thoughts will forever be with the families and loved ones of all who lost their lives. We specially pay tribute to the families of the firefighters, along with the US aerial firefighters. We feel the loss deeply and we honour the sacrifice they made to selflessly to protect communities across NSW.

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