The board of directors of the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief awarded $1,037,729 in relief and development grants during its semi-annual meeting in New York, in June. The board also approved the release of $340,500 in emergency and special grants made during the time between board meetings.

"This grand total of $1,378,299 in grants for half a year represents a significant response by the Episcopal Church to people in need throughout the world," said Ann Vest, President of the Fund's board. "I give thanks that the fund is stronger now than it has been in quite some time."

In civil war-devastated Liberia, the fund made an emergency grant of $40,000 for food supplies sent to Liberian families who had been evacuated to places outside of the country and who were living as refugees. Archbishop Robert Okine of West Africa received a grant of $15,000 to assist Liberian refugees who were displaced in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

In Myanmar, the fund granted $25,000 for a water supply project that would deliver clean drinking water to people in six dioceses.

The largest single grant was $62,000 made to the Diocese of Jerusalem to aid in a number of ongoing diocesan relief and rehabilitation efforts, including a crisis and peace building fund, a Beirut extension for the Palestinian Refugee Community Center, and St. Luke's Center for the mentally handicapped in Beirut.

In the first five months of 1996, the fund made nearly $300,000 in emergency grants of amounts up to $25,000 to address needs in West Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and the United States.