On Tuesday, November 7, the International Studies Department had the privilege of having Covenant alumnus Luke Ragan come talk about disaster relief efforts on the other side of the world. Ragan, a 2021 graduate from Covenant, currently works as the Middle East and Disaster Relief Director for SERV International. He has spent the last two years living and working in the Middle East, captaining a Jordanian Ultimate Frisbee club team, and responding to disaster events in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe. Ragan came to give an overview of the work he has been doing overseas, answer questions about his work, as well as share some first-hand experiences in disaster-stricken countries.
SERV International is a Marietta, Georgia-based non-profit organization that seeks to provide necessary aid to people living in crisis. SERV seeks to help not only their local community in the Atlanta area but also across the world. The primary aid they offer is food, but they seek to accommodate the most immediate need in any crisis.
Ragan has been living in Amman, Jordan, the base of operations for SERV in the Middle East, for the last two years. From there he has initiated several disaster relief missions in the Middle East and the surrounding area as crises have arisen. Ragan went into detail about several of his experiences as well as specific relief missions he has undertaken.
The majority of the work Ragan has done with SERV has been distributing food to refugees in Jordan. Jordan took in a large number of Syrian refugees during the Syrian Civil War, which broke out in 2011 and is still ongoing, albeit more reserved than in years past. A key issue Ragan faces in his exploits is that his team consists of himself and one other worker; as such, they do not have the manpower between the two of them to distribute the food to all the needy. As a result, Ragan emphasized throughout his talk the importance of working with local non-government organizations to distribute.
After the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, Ragan initiated a relief mission to Ukraine that sought to bring food and power generators to Ukrainian villages around Kyiv and several other cities as well so that they might have heating during the harsh Ukrainian winter. Ragan talked extensively about his excursion into Ukraine and the process of crossing the Ukrainian-Hungarian border during wartime, along with many of the other difficulties that arose with his international travel.
He initiated other relief missions in the Middle East including relief efforts in both Turkey and Syria after the deadly earthquakes that wrecked each country in February 2023, as well as a recent relief effort in Morocco in September 2023.
When asked what country Ragan most wants to visit personally in the future, he answered Syria, which he had been unable to visit during the relief effort because of international travel restrictions for Americans. Ragan returned to the Middle East the following day and played at the Middle Eastern and North African Club National Championship for Ultimate Frisbee in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where his team, Citadel Ultimate, won the Spirit of the Game Award for their second straight year.