Cyclone Idai, one of the worst tropical cyclones to hit Africa, affects the people of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe today.

Ed Epp, Executive Director of Hope and Healing International, says, "The effect of cyclone Idai was dramatic for both people in southern Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. It destroyed home and crops."

Epp's organization describes themselves as "passionate about giving hope and healing to children and families trapped by poverty and disability."

Epps says, "People with disabilities are even more affected because they can't go to safety. They can't walk, some of them. Imagine a blind person going through a cyclone and not knowing where the trees have fallen, even if you know a little bit of the landscape around your place."

As a missionary kid in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ed Epp witnessed poverty throughout his life. Epp says, "People with disabilities, on average, are twice as poor and have half the resources as the people in their community. ... If someone is living on $1 a day, a family with a disability is living on 50 cents."

In the event of a natural disaster, those people with disabilities are left with an even greater challenge than the rest.

Epp says of the effects of Cyclone Idai, "A lot of times, people with disabilities cannot move. In cyclone Idai, we saw many families with disabilities where the wheelchair or assisted devices were completely destroyed, wiped out or washed away, so they could not move. So families have to make terrible decisions.

"I talked with a mother who had to decide if someone stayed with someone with a disability in the home while the rest went to the refugee camp because they could not all starve. So you leave the people, especially older people, alone."

Epp says, even when a person with disabilities is brought to a refugee camp their struggles have not ended: "And, of course, when you get to the refugee camps where there is a little bit of help, people with disabilities then have to compete for the scarce resources with the others. Imagine standing in line for water if you can't stand, if you're in a wheelchair, or if you're blind and no one is there to help you. It's an added burden."

"Our motto at Hope and Healing International is: 'We value everybody as Jesus values them.' It's a very simple thing but its very profound. Our whole mission, our whole ministry, is about ensuring that people with disabilities feel that love of Jesus and know that they are loved by God and are not forgotten by others around them."

In these times of distress Hope and Healing International comes alongside organizations bringing aid to those affected.

Epp says, "I don't think the other organizations providing resources mean to miss people with disabilities - they just don't think about it. They're so worried about getting supplies in they don't do it in a way that is acceptable for all. That is one thing that we have had some success in, is working with other organizations and saying, 'You're doing a great job, can you make it accessible to all?'

"We have worked with the refugee camp at identifying people with disabilities and then seeing  how we can get assistance to those people especially because they cannot compete for the normal rations."

Hope and Healing International is approaching the situation with a three-step plan.

The first step, which already took place when the storm made landfall, is Saving lives. This involved getting people with disabilities out of the dangerous situation and into refugee camps.

Secondly, Hope and Healing will work toward Rebuilding Homes of those affected. Epp says they want to return people to their home community and give them new wheelchairs, walkers, and assistive devices.

Finally, they will help Rebuild Lives which is obviously a longer-term plan. This phase involves helping those who have lost everything rebuild their livelihoods.

Epp says, "They not only need a shelter to live in, but they need a livelihood."

Cyclone Idai is not the first natural disaster to affect people with disabilities or where they have been forgotten in emergency aid.

Epp says he has seen it happen at most disasters: "People with disabilities are often hidden in their community."

In Haiti, Epp remembers that there were tent cities and, at first, you did not see people with disabilities, but then he says, "I saw more people with amputations than I have ever seen before."

Even though the storm has passed, the reality of its effects still lives on in the day of these people.

Epp says, "The one thing that has always struck me from when I was a child, my parents were missionaries in the Congo, and they told me is that - they not only told me, they lived it and embedded it in me - is that a child who has a disability on the street is a child of God and is loved by God equally to how I am loved by God."