The Mercy Corps Blog

Samuel Koroma recently worked in Uganda to facilitate peaceful resolutions between cattle raiders, like these two men, and herders. Photo: Samuel Koroma/Mercy Corps

[Originally published in The Washington Post, May 18, 2012.]

Last month a court in The Hague found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in fueling a 10-year, bloody conflict in Sierra Leone. The verdict capped a trial that itself had dragged on for years and had been punctuated by moments of sensationalism, such as Wikileaks revelations and the testimonies of supermodel Naomi Campbell and actress Mia Farrow.

With all of this spectacle, it can be easy to forget what the trial was really about: thousands of people like me, and the forgiveness that makes life bearable.

I’m from Sierra Leone, the country whose conflict Taylor was convicted of helping to finance. My life has taken me to Europe and to Uganda, but I’ve never forgotten my home: an impoverished, remote village.

My family could afford to send only one of their seven children to school, and as the oldest boy I was the lucky one. I became a teacher. Many of my students were bright and ambitious, but they struggled against the pull of poverty and hopelessness. One little boy, whom I’ll call Vandie, stands out in my mind. About two decades ago, Vandie abruptly stopped going to school. When I visited his home to find out why, he tearfully admitted that other kids had been making fun of his old, beat-up pants and lack of shoes. I bought Vandie some clothes and shoes and he returned to school, still poor but proud.

Life began to unravel in 1991, when the Revolutionary United Front started its campaign to topple the government and Sierra Leone descended into war.

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Students at Dasash Debebe's school in Ethiopia. Her Yeweket Berihan Academy started with a $28 loan from Mercy Corps and local partner WISE. Photo: Melissa Waggener Zorkin for Mercy Corps

Like clockwork, every time I visit the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia-based Women in Self Employment (WISE) organization, my very first impressions are of the wonderful hospitality of the Ethiopian people. Last week, as we drove up to the building, we were met with the delicious smell of freshly ground, roasting coffee beans. And we could hear vibrant music coming from a wedding taking place in one of the halls — we peeked in and immediately were pulled into the crowd of celebrants to share a few dances.

WISE, a local Ethiopian organization dedicated to eliminating urban poverty and realizing sustainable livelihoods among poor urban women, is an ideal partner to support the Mercy Corps efforts here. They focus on economic, social and political empowerment of women and the attainment of gender equality. And one of the great things about my repeated visits to WISE is the progress I’ve been able to see in each woman’s story.

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More then 3,600 students graduated last month from our INVEST vocational training program. If previous classes are any indication, 80% of them will find jobs or start businesses with their new skills. Photo: David Haines/Mercy Corps

Looking at the "parking lot," it seemed like the entire city of Lashkar Gah came out to see these young men and women commemorate their studies. Photo: David Haines/Mercy Corps

INVEST, our vocational training program in Helmand, Southern Afghanistan, has been running now for a little over a year. And last month, we graduated 3,615 students from the fourth semester — over a thousand of them were young women, many of whom had no education before enrolling in these courses.

The program targets out-of-work youth and offers them skills and financial literacy, enabling them to make their own way in the world. Since we opened the program to women, they’ve come to class with little knowledge of the world outside their tightly controlled home lives. They often begin with low self-confidence and little belief that there may be a future for them. They graduate as confident, ambitious young adults who want to contribute to society and make a difference in the world.

Over 80% of the INVEST students, men and women both, will go on to start businesses or get jobs. It’s a percentage that, for me, defies belief when you consider that these are not youngsters who have grown up in comfortable middle class environments in the West; instead, they were born into and lived through two decades of conflict. Almost all have lost close relatives to the fighting, many have seen their homes destroyed and many have fled the places where they grew up, just to survive.

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Mother around the world all want the same thing: happy, healthy children. Mercy Corps' Mothers Support Groups help new moms with skills and support to be the best for their kids. Photo: Jennifer Dillan/Mercy Corps

Portland, Seattle, Taipei, Jakarta, Brebes, Kutamendala. After 44 hours of travel my colleague and I wander into our final destination — a secluded village in the jungles of Java. We have come to make a video about some of the women who participate in Mercy Corps’ Mothers Support Group.

Because infant mortality remains high in Indonesia, education about breastfeeding, sanitation and health plays a crucial role in reducing illness. The women learn about improving the health of their young children by exclusively breastfeeding them for the first six months of their life. Since the program started in this village, breastfeeding rates have risen 23%.

As Creative Director at Mercy Corps, I work hard overseeing our creative output, but in a predictable work-week sort of way. This is not that. This is the surreal experience of walking through the photographs and stories plucked from the pages of our materials, like Alice in Wonderland. But very, very real.

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Every day, people are taking a stand for others in need, and they partner with Mercy Corps to do so. Millions of dollars are raised and millions of lives improved because of fundraising efforts driven by individuals and groups all around the world.

And now it's even easier to start a movement in your own community. Our redesigned online personal fundraising pages help you raise funds and awareness for the issues you care about — and where Mercy Corps is making a difference.

Fady created an online fundraising page to celebrate his birthday. Photo: Courtesy of Fady Masoud

You have the ability to choose where to fundraise for, such as the Horn of Africa or simply to send funds where they are needed most. Pages are easy to set up, designed to share with friends and family, and collect donations in a quick, streamlined interface. It's a place to bring your community together around a single goal, and everyone can watch the progress you're all making together.

In fact, fundraising pages are a great way to commemorate birthdays, weddings and other special occasions. Our friend Fady Masoud created a fundraising page for his birthday, saying it was "one of the simplest pages to set up — clear, concise and asks for relevant information only! It took me about 5 minutes." Check out Fady's page.

To get started and create your own fundraising page, visit the Fundraise for us section and and click "Get started." Your fundraising page can move Mercy Corps forward in our mission to save and improve lives in the world's toughest places.

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The sun sets over the water — both a valuable resource to rural Colombian communities and a danger if not managed well. Photo: Anne Castleton/Mercy Corps

I just returned from a trip to Colombia where, instead of sitting behind a computer, I sat in planes, taxis, boats, vans, dugout canoes and on horseback — in one day. Going to see Mercy Corps’ projects that have responded to last year’s floods required some intrepid travel to the Atlántico and Cordoba departments in the northern Caribbean region of the country. We were also there to monitor ongoing Xylem-funded activities designed to strengthen communities against future water-related disasters.

I was accompanied by Oregon's former State Conservation Engineer, David Dishman, who volunteered to share his technical expertise to help these communities recover in long term ways. In the wake of those recent severe floods — and facing rising sea levels as a consequence of climate change — Mercy Corps staff in Colombia are interested in developing a country-wide strategy to better protect themselves from flooding in the future, and I was there to help facilitate initial planning.

Horses rounded up community members brought Mercy Corps staff to Oriente, where they heard from residents about their water challenges. Photo: Anne Castleton/Mercy Corps

But first, we flew down to Monteria, capital of the department of Córdoba, and drove to Ayapel to visit flooded communities on the lake. Some natural dikes on the River Cauca recently burst during the flooding season, and Mercy Corps has been distributing emergency food aid; we are now moving into a food-for-work phase of the recovery, when people can begin rebuilding their community. Xylem also supports Mercy Corps with a standing emergency fund and donated funding to help two remote communities on the lake in the Ayapel municipality. Because the dike has not been fully repaired (for political rather than technical or financial reasons), these communities, along with many others on the lake, have remained flooded and have not planted crops for nearly three years.

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George Ngethe surveys the tea seedlings in the nursery he started with other young people in his village through Mercy Corps' Yes Youth Can program. Photo: Salma Bahramy/Mercy Corps

I’m crouched inside a tea nursery high up in the Central Rift Valley of Kenya, and George Ngethe is patiently explaining to me how tea is produced.

“What you see here will look like that in less than a year,” he points to the hills all around us. We’re surrounded by thousands of acres of tea bushes owned by small farmers throughout this Kenya’s largest province.

Just a few months ago, George and some other local young people started this nursery with the extra cuttings from the surrounding farms. Today, it holds over 8,000 seedlings that will sell for about 10 Kenyan shillings each, slightly above local market price.

So how did a few local kids enter Kenya’s booming tea market? George is part of Mercy Corps’ Yes Youth Can program in Kenya, which was created with funding from USAID to help empower young people to create businesses and promote positive change in their communities.

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Yousry Mehdi, as part of our Empowering Youth for a Stable Yemen project, leads a community service project rehabilitating part of the local mental health hospital in Aden. Photo: Victoria Stranski/Mercy Corps

Yemen’s youth are demanding change across the country on a large scale, but I’ve also seen them bring it in their communities one improvement at a time. Through our Engaging Youth for a Stable Yemen (EYSY) program, Mercy Corps is working to keep Yemeni youth away from violent activities and extremist groups by channeling their time and energy into civic life.

A few months ago, I visited ten young people in Aden who launched a community service project to bring a ward at the city’s Neuro-Psychiatric Teaching Hospital back to life. Over the course of three days, they provided new bed sheets and cleaned and painted a 208-patient section that was previously unusable.

“I passed by this hospital every day and wanted to do something to help,” said Yousry Mehdi, who is currently studying business management. His brother Yasir and friend Iman Hamood agreed, adding, “We wanted to take action to develop our lives and community.”

All three young men participated in EYSY workshops to prepare for the project. This USAID-funded program helps young people form positive social connections and overcome generational and community divisions with a combination of conflict management, consensus building and leadership training; dialogues between community, government and youth; community service projects; and internships.

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One of the great things about my job is that I get to meet people who contribute to social change from a million different angles. But of all the people I’ve met through my work at Mercy Corps, few have been as inspiring as a group of activists I met in Benghazi during a trip to Libya last week.

Ramadan, an ex-rebel soldier, and other activists tell Mercy Corps staff how they are fighting in a different way now — for a strong democratic government that makes the revolution worth it. Photo: Jeremy Barnicle/Mercy Corps

Benghazi, you will recall, was the birthplace of a revolution that ended the 42-year rule of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi last October, and when you look at what these people accomplished it is stunning.  
 
I am ashamed to admit that until my trip last week I tended to lump Libya’s transition in with the transitions of its neighbors Egypt and Tunisia: After a decades-long dictatorship, people finally got fed up, took to the streets in huge numbers and brought down the regime — and are now struggling to figure out what comes next. 

But this trip reminded me that Libya was different. Libyans fought an eight-month war that involved heavy NATO bombing, caused thousands of deaths, and temporarily displaced hundreds of thousands of people. So, for all the jubilation over Qaddafi’s demise, it’s also clear this is a place and a population in the early stages of a long recovery after a traumatic conflict.
 
That’s why I found these Benghazi activists so humbling. They took huge risks to overthrow Qaddafi, and they all endured hardship of varying degrees. But especially in Benghazi, there was an energy and optimism that made a stable, thriving democracy seem within reach.

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Tomihiro Kashiwagi and his wife, Akiko, have launched a new business converting cooking oil into fuel with a machine bought with a Mercy Corps small business grant. Photo: Randy Martin/Mercy Corps

If you had never visited Japan’s tsunami-ravaged coast until this week, the bleak landscape where homes and businesses once stood would be sobering.

Having watched the relief effort and the recovery, my visits back to the Tohoku region have been increasingly reassuring. In fact, my recent visit with colleagues from PlaNet Finance Japan and NVIDIA was inspiring. We were there to witness the signs of recovery – and we found many.

At a recent event organized by Kesennuma Shinkin, a local cooperative bank we’re partnering with to support small business recovery, 13 entrepreneurs were awarded grants. The recipients from Kesennuma and three neighboring coastal towns have used the funds to start new businesses in the disaster area. Their businesses run the gamut — from a day care center, a fish processor and a baker to a machine repair shop, a mulberry tea producer and an ice-making factory.

In only five months since its inauguration, the grant program has funded the startup of 20 new businesses (like the three featured in this video) and supported the recovery of an additional 50 businesses through a loan subsidy program. Well over 300 jobs have been created in the process. These numbers will continue to grow thanks in part to a significant contribution from NVIDIA.

But the program does more than restore jobs — it recreates livelihoods and self-determination. Each of the entrepreneurs has an incredible story to tell and an important contribution to make.

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