The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted October 27, 2009, 12:08 pm by Carol Ward

Cash-for-work begins in Samoan villages

Photo: Carol Ward/Mercy Corps

We started our cash-for-work program yesterday, alongside our partners from South Pacific Business Development (SPBD), in Samoan villages that were devastated by the recent tsunami. Local workers are earning a fair daily wage — which helps their families and puts money back into the economy — while helping to clear debris, restore and rebuild their homes and villages.

In Lepuiai — the village pictured above — they can use the rocks from the old sea walls, together with stone that is nearby, to help rebuild infrastructure. So that is not too bad.

The other village, Faleu, has a bit more work to do — they have to carry the stones down the hill from a quarry where other workers are busy pulling rocks from the hillside and breaking them. They know that their village depends on them to do a good job because this is cyclone season, and a storm could further erode the foundations of the houses that still stand and break the road running between the two villages.

Everyone is working so hard!

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Blog Post Posted October 26, 2009, 9:54 am by Roger Burks

Trying to do better

Yesterday, on the wet streets of grey Portland, I felt like an ass.

I was walking back from lunch, a to-go cup of coffee in my hand, when a disheveled man in his early twenties approached me with a kind look on his face. He walked quickly toward me with a sense of purpose and then stopped to talk.

“Excuse me, sir,” he started slowly and uneasily. “I know you don’t know me and you don’t owe me anything. But I just got released from a drug treatment program on Friday, and my counselor left town for the weekend before helping me get set up. I tried to get into a shelter, but they turned me away because I don’t have a tuberculosis test. I was wondering if you might have a dollar or two so I can find another place to sleep tonight.”

I didn’t hesitate for long, because his story seemed straightforward and sincere. Over the weekend, I’d had others on the streets seek money for beer. Pot. Even a Frappucino from Starbucks. So this was a bit of a relief.

I dug in my right pocket, looking for the dollar bill I knew was there. Sliding my fingers under my wallet, unsure of what expression I should be wearing as the seconds dragged out, I finally found it — wrapped inside what I knew was a ten-dollar bill. I carefully extracted it so that both bills wouldn’t come out at the same time.

With an embarrassed little smile, I folded the dollar bill in half and handed it to the man. And, like I said, I felt like an ass.

I was standing there with a cup of coffee that cost $3, having just finished a lunch that cost four times that. I was on my way to a bookstore, looking to buy some things I didn’t really need.

And I only gave the man a dollar. Honestly, I don’t know if he was really going to put it toward a bed — like many of you, I’ve been poisoned by the cynicism that a handout will just go toward alcohol or drugs — but it didn't matter in that moment. I felt selfish in offering so little. I felt like a fraud.

During my working days at Mercy Corps, I feel capable of writing a story that will not only raise readers’ awareness of a place they’ve never heard of, but actually make them care about it. I know that, with the help of my colleagues, I can put together an email appeal that will raise thousands of dollars for earthquake survivors who have lost their homes, belongings and loved ones.

Dozens of homeless people sleep under Portland's Burnside Bridge on a cold, rainy autumn night. Photo: Roger Burks/Mercy Corps

But, confronted with need on the streets of Portland, I felt inadequate.

Last night, I took a train across the Willamette River to see a movie. When I boarded the train around 8 PM — right in front of the new Mercy Corps headquarters — there were a few homeless people gathering and claiming spots under the Burnside Bridge, sheltering themselves from the inevitable rain.

When I returned there after the movie, around midnight, there were dozens of people there: some were wrapped up in sleeping bags or blankets, while others simply propped themselves against the wall. I didn’t see the young man from earlier in the day, but I did see many in their teens and twenties, including a few couples.

Estimates say that there are up to 8,000 homeless people on the streets of Portland every night. The rain is falling. Winter is coming.

I spent $12 for lunch, $3 for coffee, $6.50 to see a movie and $2 for a soda — and gave just a dollar to help someone today.

I know that, individually, we can’t help everyone. But I feel like we can always try to do better.

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Blog Post Posted October 23, 2009, 3:50 pm by Dan Sadowsky

A mother in search of peace

Isdud Al Najjar manages Mercy Corps' programs in Gaza. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

It's big news around the Portland headquarters this week that one of our most senior field workers, Isdud Al-Najjar, is in town. That's because her home is in the Gaza Strip, where the odds of getting out are about the same as winning Powerball.

For Isdud and her four-month-old son, Mahmoud, to make it this far required both political muscle — the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem intervened with the Israelis on her behalf — and patience. Bureaucratic delays caused her to miss a gathering of Mercy Corps leaders from all over the world held here earlier in the week.

But she got here in time to receive the Ells Culver Leadership Award, named for our late co-founder, for steering the agency's emergency response to the 22-day Israel-Hamas conflict that broke out last December. We transported and distributed more than $1 million of food, non-food items and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip.

This afternoon she spoke to a packed conference room of Mercy Corps employees, laying out Gaza's dire economic circumstances: 80 percent of the population in poverty. About half unemployed. Fishing, farming and industrial output ground nearly to a halt; she estimates 5,000 factories have shuttered since June 2007, when Israel imposed its ongoing blockade of construction materials.

Today, Isdud and her team — now 50 strong — are helping Gazans make ends meet. Putting people to work making snacks for preschoolers and sewing school uniforms. Offering psychosocial counseling to young people and their parents who witnessed the horrors of the conflict. Helping young Gazans leap across their closed border by connecting them online with peer groups in the Middle East and the U.S.

These programs have made Mercy Corps one of the most transparent and accountable humanitarian-aid outfits in the Strip, Isdud told us. But her fellow Gazans, she reminded us, would much rather hold a job than take a handout. "Humanitarian assistance is required. But a political solution is the most important thing to us."

She'll have a chance to press her case next week in Washington, where our advocacy staff has lined up meetings with Members of Congress and State Department officials. She kept her Mercy Corps audience spellbound for an hour with a single Powerpoint slide (a map of Gaza). With luck, this 33-year-old mother of three will have the same effect on our nation's policymakers.

Because for all our missteps in the Middle East, Gazans still pin their hopes on us. Their initial burst of optimism about Obama may have faded, Isdud said, but they remain hopeful that this administration will broker a political solution. "There is still time," she says. "We will see."

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Blog Post Posted October 21, 2009, 8:23 am by Mr. Ogaro

Water flows again for a Somaliland community

Mohamed Jama Harale, a Beer community elder, is grateful that Mercy Corps helped restore water service to his village after flash floods washed away existing infrastructure. Photo: Mercy Corps Somalia

Beer (pronounced Bayer) village in Somaliland lost its water system in 2005 when flash floods hit the region, swept away water delivery pipes, and left a seasonal community well clogged with silt. Parents looked to their children for help and in turn students stayed home from school to help ferry water for livestock and household use.

Mercy Corps, with funding from USAID, recently replaced old water pipes and the pump dynamo, refurbished the community water standpipes and constructed a new reservoir at the school.

Today the community’s rehabilitated stand pipe bubbles with running water and Mohamed Jama Harale, a Beer community elder, exudes excitement as he explains, "I am happy that my animals can now get water and my three sons and one daughter who are school age can get time to go to school."

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Blog Post Posted October 20, 2009, 10:34 am by Nancy Lindborg

A Healthy Argument for Smart Power

This piece, "A Healthy Argument for Smart Power," first appeared on The Huffington Post. It was co-authored by my U.S. Global Leadership Coalition Co-President, Bill Lane, who is the Washington Director of Caterpillar.

As hyper-partisanship continues to dominate the health care debate in the nation's capital, it might be easy to overlook that a bipartisan consensus has quietly but unmistakably emerged for a smart power approach to foreign policy.

Lawmakers and foreign policy and national security experts across the political spectrum have come to agree that America needs to reinvigorate our civilian diplomatic and foreign assistance efforts. These important tools have been understaffed and underfunded for many years and must be used strategically to get better results and make us safer.

This is what's called 'smart power,' a phrase that has recently joined the national lexicon because of its timeliness and policy relevance. Smart power is based on the view that in this increasingly interconnected world, America's fortunes are inextricably linked to those of other nations and their peoples, and that our military cannot be expected or relied upon to resolve larger issues that are fueled by grinding poverty, poor health and lack of economic opportunity.

Smart power means strengthening our non-military tools of engagement -- enhancing diplomacy to strengthen weak and fragile states, and upgrading and improving our foreign assistance and development programs to help poorer nations address critical infrastructure needs, enlarge their economies, reduce poverty and thereby build a more hopeful future for their citizens. It means doing more to help struggling nations wipe out hunger and infectious diseases and expand educational opportunities.

Simply put, smart power is an idea whose time has come. Over the past few years, more than 400 businesses and non-governmental organizations have joined a "strange bedfellows" alliance, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, which believes America needs to employ a smart power approach to the world. And when organizations as diverse as Caterpillar and CARE, or Mercy Corps and Microsoft, are brought to the same table to argue for these things, politicians take notice. Which could be why, in an era known for political divisiveness, the smart power approach is attracting extraordinary bipartisan support in Washington and beyond.

Throughout this year, momentum has been growing at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and on both sides of the aisle in Congress, for putting smart power to work. The White House has launched a review of all U.S. foreign assistance efforts across 60 agencies, with reform recommendations due in January. For its part, the State Department is using its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) to create a blueprint for the future of diplomacy and development programs. And bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress to begin a comprehensive foreign assistance reform process.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, along with a growing military voice, has championed the smart power approach, calling for strengthening our civilian capacity. President Obama's commitment to double foreign assistance and to elevate and strengthen diplomatic and development programs is an important step in the right direction.

So while the health care debate might lead you to believe that right and left cannot agree on anything these days, take heart. The call for a smart power approach comes from many quarters and is broadly supported. This is something we can get done, to the benefit of both America and the wider world.

Read the original version on The Huffington Post.

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Blog Post Posted October 20, 2009, 9:07 am by Ali Abd-alkaree...

Celebrating peace in Khanaqin

Elementary schoolchildren helped celebrate the International Day of Peace in Khanaqin, Iraq. Photo: Ali Yassin for Mercy Corps

In Khanaqin, Iraq, Mercy Corps and the local branch of the National Olympic Committee organized a wonderful festival for the International Day of Peace. The day involved children reading a poem and releasing white doves before a football match in Azadi Stadium.

The English club — a group of college students and members of the Global Citizen Corps program — participated in the festival, some as organizers and others as football players.

The English club collected a group from children (boys and girls) from elementary schools, aged 7 to 13. Members of the English Club trained the children for more than one week on reading a famous poem called "A Child Calls for Peace" in Kurdish language by Koran – the great modern Kurdish poet — and how to release white doves and set off fireworks before the match.

Before the football game got started, the children of Khanaqin released white doves as a symbol of peace. Photo: Ali Yassin for Mercy Corps

The game pitted the old players of Khanaqin club (green and black t-shirts) against the youth players, with few members of the English Club (white t-shirts). When the first half of the match finished, the kids came once again to the yard and they read the poem, then the second half started and the players took their positions in the yard and enjoyed the match until the referee finished the match.

The Department of Education in Khanaqin had a great role in supervising the match, along with two sport supervisors. At the end of the match, the kids with support from the English Club released the fireworks into the sky. The two teams shook hands and took collective pictures to be good memory.

Two satellites TV channels carried the festival (Gali Kurdistan and Kurdistan TV). In addition, the English club invited all the official departments in Khanaqin to the festival. 

These footballers participated in the Peace Day match in Azadi Stadium in Khanaqin, Iraq. Photo: Ali Yassin for Mercy Corps

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Blog Post Posted October 20, 2009, 6:46 am by Katherine Hollis

Getting creative with nutrition for Kyrgyz kindergarteners

A kindergarten cook prepares healthy, nutritious school food as part of a training and contest sponsored by Mercy Corps Kyrgyzstan’s Food for Education (FFE) project. Photo: Katherine Hollis/Mercy Corps

The small kitchen bustles with activity as cooks crowd around the counter dicing and slicing meats and vegetables for soups and salads. The air is thick with the aroma from baking pastries and frying patties. On the counter, people are rolling dough and flour for hand-prepared laghman noodles. However, there is not the usual kitchen banter among these cooks as they make their delicious creations. Heard above the sound of ingredients sizzling as they hit the pan is a loud is an in-depth discussion about the nutritional value of the ingredients.

These cooks are from local kindergartens throughout Kyrgyzstan, and they have the important job of helping students reach their optimal growth and development by making satisfying, nourishing meals.

Currently 36 percent of households in Kyrgyzstan are considered to be food-insecure, and almost 30 percent of Kyrgyz children under the age of 5 suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition. Unfortunately, kindergarten cooks are faced with the challenge of preparing nutritious food on a limited budget of only $0.70 per child, and this past year food prices in Kyrgyzstan increased by 32 percent — the highest rate among all former Soviet States.

Mercy Corps Kyrgyzstan’s Food for Education (FFE) project, funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, recently held our first master-class training seminar on childhood nutrition for cooks and school directors of local kindergartens. These “training-of-trainers” workshops are conducted so that upon completion, the participants return and hold similar workshops for all those involved in kindergarten nutrition in their respective districts.

The goal for this day-long training was to provide participants with information on how to serve children healthier menu options from dishes made with inexpensive, easy-to-find local ingredients that are rich with vitamins and minerals. Participants were shown how to prepare dishes from carbohydrate and protein-rich foods like beans, peas, oats, rice, flour and nuts. Some of the cooks said that they had never before cooked with beans, an ingredient that is packed with fiber and protein.

Two kindergarten cooks square off in a "best chef" competition, using a limited array of fresh ingredients to create a school meal that's nutritious — and delicious — for young children. Photo: Mercy Corps Kyrgyzstan

Creativity with food preparation was also introduced, as aesthetic appeal is an important element to consider when preparing food for young children. By the end of the training session, the dining table was covered with tasty dishes including stuffed peppers with grated vegetables, meatball soup, pastries and tartlets bursting with fruit and jam.

A result of these trainings were new approaches to how to meet nutritional needs at their schools, and innovative ideas for recipes and food preparation were introduced to school kitchen employees. This exchange of ideas and techniques culminated in a regional ‘cook-off,’ where these kindergarten cooks competed to produce the best tasting and most nutritional meal. The energy and intensity expected on a TV show was felt by all at the cook-off: cooks had limited time and specific ingredients with which to prepare their meals, all-the-while being watched and photographed by many eager on-lookers.

While there could be only one “top chef,” the kindergarteners are the real winners here.

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Blog Post Posted October 19, 2009, 11:36 am by Andrea Burniske

Kids enjoy peace for one day in Santander

These girls, participants in Mercy Corps' Spaces to Grow Program in Santander, Colombia, participate in sports activities for the International Day of Peace. Photo: Andrea Burniske/Mercy Corps

The kids from our southern Santander, Colombia alternative classrooms are rural poor: their parents work their small plots of land, too often sacrificing their kids' education for help with crops and chores. Often in this area, as in so many rural zones in Colombia, picking coca for armed groups is a higher-paying alternative to other kinds of work and agriculture.

The kids in Mercy Corps' Spaces to Grow are at high risk for becoming involved in this kind of work. The Spaces to Grow are alternative classrooms that help kids who have fallen behind at school because of working to catch up with their studies. The farther behind the kids get, the lower their self-esteem in school, and the more likely they are to leave school altogether — to do whatever offers them a living wage.

The kids in the Spaces to Grow come from very vulnerable families — families in which there is often a lot of violence toward the kids and between the adults. We really noticed this from focus groups in other cities, and were told that this is a real problem also in Santander.

Vivo Jugando is a new Mercy Corps sports-for-change strategy that uses soccer and yoga to work through important issues such as domestic violence and sexual exploitation to give kids tools to deal with these issues in their lives. We started using Vivo Jugando in Santander a couple of months ago. The kids are wild about it, as you can see from this video:

Here they are playing with a 'globe' ball, a donation from Mercy Corps' Scotland office to celebrate the Intenational Day of Peace. These kinds of experiences are so important for kids — so they understand ideas of peace, cooperation for a better community and feel supported and cared for by people they respect. Without these things, the people they respect are going to be people who they see as having power — the armed groups and drug traffickers.

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Blog Post Posted October 19, 2009, 9:52 am by Sanjay Gurung

India's tea country hosts Peace Day football festival

As part of Mercy Corps' celebration of International Peace Day, as football festival was held at the Dhooteray Ground, Darjeeling on the 21st of September, involving people from ten communities. Eight teams were formed including two comprised of children aged 12 to 16. Participants ranged from 7 to 62 years of age.

The participants were welcomed by the Dhooteray community, and the significance of the One Day One Goal campaign was explained. Teams were formed at random, mixing members from different backgrounds and assigned six colours: white, blue, red, green, yellow and orange. Inaugural match was played between mixed teams of boys and girls (age 12-16). Four matches were played between the teams comprised of Community Action Group (CAG) Members. The final pitted the white against the yellow team with the white team emerging as the winners.

Prizes were distributed by the Dhooteray High School teachers, Shankar Foundation (a Mercy Corps partner NGO comprised of People Living HIV/AIDS) and Community Action Group members, and a thank you speech by CAG members of the host community.

The Shankar Foundation participated in this event by putting up a stall and by distributing Information, education and communication materials to the participants and the spectators/school children. They educated the people and students on the causes and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Mercy Corps’ Community Health Workers from Kalej Valley and Lepcha Gaon supported the program by putting up a First Aid Stall. Lunch for all 200 participants was prepared by CAG members of the host community.

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Blog Post Posted October 19, 2009, 8:50 am by Steve Haley

Promoting peace in northern Lebanon

As part of Mercy Corps' efforts to reach conflict-affected youth in Lebanon, Mercy Corps and Najdeh Association set up a five-day football tournament in September.

The tournament included 13 teams from Nahr el Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The winning team played a friendly game on the fifth day with Al Koucheh football team (Akkar). This finale took place on the day commemorating the International Day of Peace, just one day before the Ramadan holidays. Around 80 Lebanese and Palestinians ages 18 to 30 attended the final game.

This activity is a part of the "One Day One Goal" campaign that sets up Peace Day football matches in conflict areas around the world, and was developed by the camp's youth committee to address psychosocial issues related to the youth population within the camp and with the surrounding communities.

The game's significance is in line with one of the aims of the broader project, funded by the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office, or ECHO, of reconciliation and dialogue between camp residents and the surrounding Lebanese community.

The tournament had a very positive impact on the participating youth of the camp because it allowed for the restoration of a tradition that existed before the crisis in 2007, when the camp was completely destroyed. It gave a measure of hope and assurance although slight vis-a-vis the return to normalcy in the camp.

Another very salient positive effect was that it allowed camp youth and Lebanese youth from the surrounding area to participate together in a safe and constructive activity which acts to normalize relations between Lebanese and Palestinian communities. This could be gleaned from remarks of both players and supporters.

One supporter said, "The last game was the most striking because it reawakened hope through interaction of Palestinian and Lebanese youth and revealed a sense of camaraderie and healthy competition ... and this will lead to the return of positive relations between the two communities."

One of the players alluded to the positive effect of the tournament saying that the next step would be to host Lebanese teams at the camp. Another woman added, "These activities should be regular between youth and other members from both communities since we lived all our lives as one community."

Finally, it's worth mentioning that this tournament was a starting point to recreate positive perceptions between the Lebanese and Palestinian youth with sports as an entry point — an activity that should be focused on and encouraged on a larger scale.

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