Hello! My name is Lincoln Lau and I'm the Research Director of International Care Ministries as well as an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. I wanna thank you for inviting me to share on Hope Amidst COVID and it really is a real pleasure to get to share a little bit of what I'm learning and thinking about.

So I am an infectious disease epidemiologist and I've been working here in the Philippines for almost 10 years now. ICM or International Care Ministries, we focus on conducting research to improve programs that target poverty and we've covered a wide range of topics from economics to medical sciences, anthropology, education and also church growth.

But as the current pandemic unfolded, I felt that it really isn't a random occurrence that I currently live here in the Philippines. I've been trained in Epidemiology and at the same time, I serve for this Christian ministry that focuses on helping and improving the lives of the poor. So, as an organization, immediately after COVID started emerging, as a major program, we have been affected. Most of the country right now is under strict community quarantine or lockdowns and this is increasingly difficult for the poor.

A few ways that we've become involved recently, is we're doing food security mapping so we're trying to understand where are the people that we've been serving and when was the last time they’ve eaten. In some cases, we're hearing that their communities that haven't seen food for 6, 7 days. The last time they had a full meal was around a week ago so there's some desperate situations that are starting to unfold.

We're designing web-based chatbots to screen for symptoms. One other major problem here is that a lot of the tertiary healthcare or hospitals and primary health care settings are getting overwhelmed and overloaded so we're trying to do our best to use web-based approaches to decrease the burden on emergency rooms and hospitals.

And as I mentioned, there's places that are really struggling with food here in the country, so part of what we've been doing is to deliver food and to assist the local government in places where they don't have the resources and to try to work through our local church networks and partners that we have on the ground to deliver as much food as possible. And so far we've delivered about half a million – 500,000 – meals and we aim to deliver around 1.5 million meals in the next few weeks.

We are also doing a lot on giving advice through our pastor network. We work with about 10,000 pastors here in the Philippines and we've written guidance on how, maybe they can conduct church, how they can continue their ministry while maintaining sanitation and preventing the risk of the disease. And I think if you ask me a month and a half ago, if we would be in this position to be doing all of this, I would be surprised that as an organization and me, myself, would be having a role in this. But I think I'm very aware that as a Christian, God has really given us times like this where the training that He’s provided us, and opportunity really comes together to serve the poor the best.

The last thing that I want to share is I really sense that even though this is a time that can be frustrating, this is a time where, at least in the situation that we're seeing unfold here, it can be demotivating as we try to support systems that maybe weren't functioning very well to begin with, or underfunded and understaffed. That it is really during these times of crisis that Christians are called to live out their faith. And I just pray and hope that is, during these times we can step out and shine as lights in the places that God has placed us. The lockdown here in this country is causing a lot of harm to the marginalized, the poor, the people that have less and I think in developing countries like the Philippines, it’s gonna continue to be a challenge. So our hope and my hope and prayer is that, as a global church we continue to remember countries that have less than us and when it is difficult enough for high income countries to respond to COVID-19, it is even harder for low income countries and sometimes the people who pay the highest price are the ones who have the least and I just pray that us, as Christians, will continue to remember and to serve them (as) the best we can.

I'm thankful for your time and I hope all the best for all of you that are listening and the ministries that you serve.