You've seen the reports of the amazing rescues that have taken place in flood-ravaged Mozambique and Zimbabwe.  The world has watched as helicopters pull thousands of people from trees and housetops--the only place to escape rising
waters.  And for some, not even the high
places were safe, as they were the only place for snakes and other animals that were also hungry and needed to escape the water.

But now that these thousands upon thousands have been saved from the flood waters, we are faced with the awesome task of keeping them alive.  Crops have been destroyed, animals have drowned, disease is eminent.  For AIDS-stricken orphans with already weakened immune systems, this is a desperate situation.

Ohlerking is mobilizing Children's Cup emergency relief teams to assist in caring for the thousands of refugees forced to flee the flood.

Ohlerking states, "The cyclone has come at the worst time.  Zimbabwe has been called by some the 'epi-center' of the African AIDS crisis. The January 17, 2000 issue of Newsweek told of the 10,000,000 children in Africa who have been orphaned by AIDS.  No government has the dollar-power to cope with that.

"We've been caring for 1000 to 1200 of these children.  Now the camps they lived in have been swept over by the floods caused by the cyclone.

"America would ignore these youth at its own risk.  As the recent news out of Sierra Leone shows, insurrectionists and militia seek out these children to force them to kill and mutilate.

"Either we help rebuild and guide their lives now or later we will send our sons and tax dollars into 'peace-keeping' bloodbaths."