ADRA — the development and relief agency of the Seventh-day Adventists — was one of the first humanitarian organizations to mobilize aid in the Caribbean after Hurricane Melissa devastated the region in late October 2025. According to the Inter-American Division of the Adventist Church, emergency response teams began working in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where entire communities were left without homes, without power and without access to food and clean water.
Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, 2025 as a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest ever recorded to strike the island. In Jamaica, ADRA planned to distribute 1,000 food kits, serving about 4,000 people; in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, it organized cash assistance to families to purchase hygiene and household cleaning items. Information gathered from the official channels of ADRA and the Inter-American Division.
The strongest hurricane ever recorded to strike Jamaica
Melissa moved through the Caribbean between October 27 and 30, 2025 and reached Jamaica on the 28th as a Category 5 hurricane, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It was the strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall on Jamaican soil, with sustained winds around 295 km/h at the moment it reached the island's southwest coast.
The passage brought down trees and poles, triggered landslides and left vast areas without electricity. After Jamaica, the storm continued through the Caribbean and caused flooding and landslides in Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well, where riverside communities were the hardest hit. Cuba was also on the system's path.
The situation left thousands of families without the basics — shelter, food, clean water and hygiene products — in one of the most vulnerable stretches of the Americas. It is in this setting that the response of humanitarian agencies, ADRA among them, comes in.
ADRA among the first to arrive
According to the Inter-American Division, ADRA was among the first humanitarian agencies able to mobilize and begin easing the suffering shortly after Melissa passed. The agency's emergency response teams concentrated on three affected countries: Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
In Jamaica, the agency sent an emergency response team to work alongside the local ADRA team. The parish of Saint Elizabeth, in the southwest of the island, was identified by Adventist leadership as one of the hardest-hit areas, with the vast majority of buildings damaged by the force of the hurricane.
On the ground, ADRA's emergency response teams coordinated the work together with the local Jamaican team, combining international structure with knowledge of each community's reality. According to the division, ADRA coordinated the response before, during and after the hurricane, with the agency's offices acting in a coordinated manner despite the communication difficulties caused by the lack of internet and power.
Jamaica: a thousand food kits for about 4,000 people
In Jamaica, the country hardest hit by Melissa's force, ADRA planned to distribute 1,000 food kits, aiming to provide emergency food assistance to approximately 4,000 people. The distribution added to the aid already delivered in the first days after the storm.
The delivery of food was the most urgent stage of an operation the agency described as long-term. Beyond the kits, the work on the island included support for communities that were left isolated by blocked roads and cut off from supplies, a difficulty typical of high-intensity hurricanes, in which relief must overcome not only the lack of resources but also the physical obstacles left by the storm.
For the Pathfinder reader, it helps to grasp the scale: an ADRA food kit is usually calculated to sustain a family for a set period. Speaking of 1,000 kits and 4,000 people means speaking of a logistical effort to gather, transport and distribute supplies on an island with severely affected infrastructure.
Read alsoADRA mobilizes humanitarian response after earthquakes in VenezuelaHaiti and the Dominican Republic: cash assistance for hygiene and cleaning
In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the strategy was different. Instead of only distributing items, ADRA organized cash assistance to affected families, so that they themselves could buy hygiene and household cleaning products as they began to recover their homes.
Cash assistance is an approach increasingly used in humanitarian responses because it gives families autonomy, boosts the local commerce that survived the disaster and allows each household to prioritize what it needs most. In the Dominican Republic, support focused on families affected by flooding in the Santo Domingo area; in Haiti, on families that also felt the effects of the floods and landslides.
According to the Inter-American Division, between supplies — hygiene kits, food and household cleaning kits — and financial aid, the operation had already reached hundreds of families in the region in the first days of the response, with the expectation of expanding assistance as resources arrived.
'For as long as it takes'
ADRA signaled that the response would not end with the emergency phase. The director of ADRA Jamaica, Wenford Henry, stated, according to the Inter-American Division, that the agency would remain engaged with those who need support "for as long as it takes", to ensure people a sustainable and more promising future.
This long-term commitment is characteristic of the way ADRA works: immediate relief — food, water, hygiene — paves the way for recovery stages, when repairs, livelihoods and reconstruction come in. In disasters of Melissa's magnitude, the difference between a community that recovers and one that is left behind often lies precisely in the continuity of aid after the cameras leave.
The coordination among the agency's local, regional and international levels was cited by the division as a central factor in getting aid to those who needed it most, across a territory spread over several islands and countries of distinct languages and realities.
What ADRA is and why it speaks to the Pathfinder
ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) is the worldwide humanitarian arm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, present in more than a hundred countries. It is the same organization behind campaigns familiar to clubs, such as fundraising on solidarity dates and actions supporting communities in situations of vulnerability.
The Caribbean is part of the Inter-American Division, one of the Adventist Church's worldwide administrative regions, which brings together Mexico, Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean islands — including Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is a different division from the South American Division (SAD), to which Brazil belongs, but driven by the same network of solidarity.
For the Pathfinder, stories like the response to Melissa are not just distant news: they are the practical expression of values the movement cultivates — serving one's neighbor, acting in the face of need and taking on commitment to the community. Many clubs channel their disaster aid precisely through ADRA, and following the agency's work is a way to understand where the solidarity of each campaign can reach.
For those who want to support responses like this one, the path is always to seek the official channels of ADRA and the regional Adventist leadership, avoiding unverified fundraising that tends to emerge in moments of distress.