The Mercy Corps Blog

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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Blog Post Posted October 17, 2009, 4:09 pm by Annalise Briggs

Three things we all hunger for

I work as a fundraiser for Mercy Corps. When I tell people I meet that I’m in fundraising, they usually respond with “ugh, I would hate to ask people for money.” The funny thing is that I love it.

People want to help. I believe it is in our nature. Often times they don’t know how to. My mother always complains of “donor fatigue.” It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by the millions of people in the world that desperately need help. Part of my job is to take those millions and highlight the individuals — to bring donors the personal connection through intimate stories and photographs. It’s a daunting task and I feel lucky to work with the colleagues that I do. Because, there’s simply no way to sugar coat it — there are millions who need our help.

Months ago I heard a news clip that changed my life. A nun said there are three things that we all hunger for:

1. To know that we are loved.
2. To make a difference.
3. To know that our lives have meaning.

I believe these three things to be true. And I feel it every day. We can each be of service in different ways; it is up to us to figure out what that way is. I love connecting people who want to help – with the people who need our help. I ask for their hard-earned money – even during a recession – and promise to make sure it gets to those in need.

Thank you for the opportunity to be of service.

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Blog Post Posted October 17, 2009, 8:14 am by Malka Older

Restoring the flow

Electricity is back up and the cell phones are mostly working again — at least as well as they ever did — but there is still no running water in Padang city.

The earthquake on September 30 damaged both water sources and piping infrastructure, to the extent that the city water company has requested metal detectors so that they can find their pipes. While most of the wells in rural areas are still functioning, though they were messy for a while after the quake, in the city there are few wells and most of those are badly contaminated. In our office, where I have been living for the past two weeks with many of our staff, we have water trucked in daily to fill up a plastic tank in the yard, and pump it into the bathroom water tank a few times a day (Indonesian bathrooms traditionally have a tiled tank from which water is scooped out to shower or wash with).

Running water is still off in Padang, so Mercy Corps is helping the water company facilitate portable water solutions for earthquake-affected families. Photo: Malka Older/Mercy Corps

For most inhabitants of the city, it’s been bottled water or the river. Which, as the only source of water that’s still running, is also where people go to bathe, wash clothes and (not speculation, I saw this) defecate.

To try to fill the gap, the Padang public water company, with the help of Aetra — a private water company based in Java — has been trucking water to tanks or bladders throughout the city. This water also comes from the river, but via a reverse-osmosis treatment plant operated by the Australian military as part of their relief effort (and, eventually, going back to Australia). The cost of the trucking is huge, and fast decimating the budget of the water company as they simultaneously dig ditches all over the city in hope of finding their pipes (they do seem to have SOME idea of where they are).

To support this effort, and the needs of urban Sumatrans with no recourse to safe water, Mercy Corps is helping the trucking through a voucher system for their fuel. Yesterday, I took a ride with one of the trucks to see how the system worked.

The truck was driven by an Aetra employee, Fahruddin, who was accompanied by an employee from the local water company, Risman, to help direct him through the Padang streets. Fahruddin told me he was happy to have come from his home in Java to help the relief effort for the earthquake.

“It’s normal, right?” he said. “Everyone wants to help.”

They pulled the truck up in a narrow residential street, and jumped out to attach the hoses to a water bladder sitting, mostly deflated, in someone’s front lawn. Risman pulled out a tap stand, a sawhorse made of pipes that distributed the flow to eight different taps, so that more people could collect the water at once. As soon as the truck had pulled up, a two women and a small child had walked over to sit waiting opposite the bladder, with five empty gallon containers. As the men fiddled with the pipes, more people came down the street, carrying buckets or barrels, one with a wheelbarrow to carry it back.

Once the water was flowing, every tap was in use, the water flowing into the containers. A man came on a motor bike and took away two of the filled gallon containers, and the woman switched in empty ones.

As the water ran, I looked around. It was not a very poor neighborhood, but not a rich one either. The houses looked a bit worn. But they were well constructed and none of them showed much earthquake damage. But all these people had been without running water for over two weeks, and might be for longer still.

Despite the appearance of solidity, their way of life along the fault line was still fragile.

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Blog Post Posted October 16, 2009, 11:00 pm by Liesbeth Zonneveld

Political speeches and friendly tug-o-war highlight Peace Day in Keyna

More than 1,000 people attended Mercy Corps-sponsored Peace Day events in Eldoret, Kenya. Photo: Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps celebrated the International Day of Peace in Eldoret, Kenya on September 24. This date was chosen to allow participation of the Muslim community who were celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan, (Id Ul Fitr) on September 21. This event was linked to LEAP sports programme organized by Mercy Corps and African Sports and Talents for Change (A-STEP).

The event was attended by Eldoret West District Commissioner Mr. Ngaluma as guest of honour, the Mayor of Eldoret town, Mr. Samwel Rono, District Officers, various heads of government departments in the district, civic councillors, church leaders, civil society representatives, chiefs, and the local business community. The key events were sports activities, a peace match, and theatre presentations. The games attracted crowds of close to 1,000 people. These games were graced by several media houses among them KBC, Royal Media, Fish FM, and Kass FM.

The games formed the major component of the celebration, with football proving particularly popular. Key happenings included:

• Sharing of the peace curriculum developed by Mercy Corps as part of the LEAP sports programme
• Football competition (female and male teams)
• Dissemination of peace messages through leaflets, brochures and posters
• Artistic performances (drama, song and music)
• Speeches by government officials, politicians, civil society representatives, community leaders, and members from the business community

The event provided the space for peace actors to meet with Mercy Corps’ sports teams and government officials, the local community, and with leaders on issues of conflict and peace. The youth noted that in every conflict in Kenya, young people suffer most and benefit least.

Here are the activities we held:

Peace March
The march was flagged off by the Soi Division District Officer Mr. Ahmed. All the LEAP SPORT teams were well represented in the march with over 138 coaches and team leaders present, including 460 youths from various teams. Other participants in the march included government officials, members from the local business community, notably the Asians, IOM, UN-OCHA, Red Cross and several local NGOs and CBOs. Many more members of the public joined the march along the way to the venue of the celebrations causing a huge traffic jam along the Eldoret-Uganda road. A-STEP theatre group took the opportunity to announce peace messages through their songs and chants. The 2km walk ended at the Huruma playgrounds, the venue of the celebration.

Demonstration of the LEAP Programme Curriculum
Immediately after the March for Peace, all the LEAP Sport participants assembled together for the discussion on how the peace curriculum is helping them rebuild relationship broken during the post election violence in the community. The discussion was led by A-STEP events officer Andrew Makhanu. Later, Huruma youth ladies and men teams gave a demonstration on the topic Managing Emotions — a key subject of the LEAP programme curriculum.

Under 25s Men and Women’s Football Tournament
Thirteen teams of under 25 year olds participated in the tournament (8 men’s and 5 ladies’ teams). With a running theme of “AMANI IDUMU KENYA-One Day One Goal” the games were played in the true spirit of building alliances across ethnicities in the sometimes turbulent district. The games began with Mr. Fetha, Eldoret District Officer kicking up the ball after addressing the players and spectators. The District Officer advised the youth to make good use of the LEAP SPORT Program, assuring them that the government was fully behind them and would give any support needed. The matches were played in two fields with over 1,000 spectators and fans watching and cheering. Iten FC (men) and Cheptiret FC (women) were the tournament winners.

Theatre Performances
Alongside the sports activities the A-STEP theatre group was given the chance to perform its peace drama. The drama was educative and entertaining with a focus on violence, youth and peacebuilding. The first part of the play, “Let it Not Happen Again,” was a representation of the 2007 post election violence, and the play presented a strong message for peace.

The Mayor of Eldoret Municipality Mr. Rono advised the community to live peacefully and focus on development. He also encouraged the youth to participate in peace activities giving the example of the LEAP SPORT Program. The DC, Mr. Ngaluma’s speech ended the event. In his closing remarks, he observed: “We need to stay as brothers and sisters, living together is the only solution for the development of our economy, we should not depend on political advice that have turned up dividing the communities. The society has the task to advocate for peace right from the family level. As I stand here today I want to say that Mercy Corps together with A-STEP are doing a great work of uniting youth together through sports and engaging them in profitable activities during the weekends. We should all emulate this.”

Tug of War
The tug of war game was between the youth and the elders with the elders looking determined to win right from the beginning. The activity created a lot of excitement, with applause and cheering from all over. With the DC as the mediator, the elders emerged winners, with a youth saying, that for them, “it was a tactical and strategic” loss out of their respect for the elders.

Handover of the Curriculum to the District Commissioner
Upon conclusion of all events, the peace curriculum that the coaches and captains are using in the LEAP SPORT for Change Program, was presented to the Eldoret West District Commissioner, and to other key local peace actors. “LEAP SPORT is not just about playing, but playing for change”, said the Mercy Corps program coordinator. After the handing over of the curriculum, all the senior team coaches and team leaders were given tracksuits to encourage them to work even harder with their teams.

The more than 1,000 persons who marched amidst placards with peace inscriptions, , handbills, and banners, with songs and drum beats, left no doubt about their determination to build a peaceful society. Led by youths affiliated to African Sports and Talents for Change (A-STEP) the various teams in the larger Uasin Gishu were mobilized for the event. Apart from great inspirational speeches given by the various stakeholders and the games and performances, the event provided the district residents with the opportunity to reflect and share ideas on how to uphold peace in their home district.

The DC was later interviewed by the Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation (KBC) and various FM stations. In his speech, after giving trophies and presents to the winning teams at the celebration, the DC captured the attention of the excited but attentive crowd by quoting the enduring words of Oscar Arias Sánchez, Costa Rican President and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, to define peace. He said of peace: “Even though today some of you have emerged winners in the games we played...peace is not a matter of prices or trophies...it has no finishing line...peace is a never-ending process, but the work of many decisions by many people in many countries...”

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Blog Post Posted October 15, 2009, 2:05 pm by Mark Chadwick

Mercy Corps honors Peace Day with seven-a-side soccer in Scotland

Thirty-five players took part in a Peace One Day soccer tournament at the Spartans Community Football Academy in Edinburgh. Photo: Mercy Corps

Following last year’s success, Mercy Corps again participated in the One Day One Goal campaign of the organisation Peace One Day, to mark the International Day of Peace through football games that bring people together. Mercy Corps country teams in Colombia, India, Iraq, Kenya and Lebanon organised five unique events bridging local divisions. In solidarity, Mercy Corps staff in Edinburgh also organised a series of games bringing the campaign to Scotland for the first time.

On the 21st of September, the International Day of Peace was celebrated by a round robin of seven-a-side games at the Spartans Community Football Academy involving 35 players and organisers from Mercy Corps, Edinburgh University, the United Nations Association, Engineers without Borders and Challenges Worldwide.

Players were informed about the campaign to raise awareness of the International Day of Peace, and of some of the games taking place around the world. Jamie Hitchens, a Mercy Corps Climate Change volunteer, scored an impressively opportunistic goal from a goal kick but while Graeme Farmer of the MCS Finance department maintained an admirable one-goal-per-game ratio, in general the best play came from the students from Ewing House, at Edinburgh University’s Pollock Halls of Residence.

Check the blog for more accounts from Peace Day events by Mercy Corps teams around the world.

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Blog Post Posted October 15, 2009, 1:47 pm by Malka Older

Landslides make isolated Indonesian villages resemble 'lost continent'

Two weeks after the earthquake, my colleagues and I got on motorcycles and headed north out of Padang and up into the mountains around Bukit Tinggi. We were going to check out an isolated area that we had heard was badly affected by landslides and had barely been reached.

Our team had approached the day before, but been unable to reach by car, so we were trying with the bikes. We drove along the main road north, past the pieces of houses, new tarpaulins stretched in front of them. We passed our distribution sites, other NGO distribution sites, trucks full of goods, small private cars full of donations, and towns where everyone was going about their business as though they still had houses instead of ruins. As we started to work our way up into the hills the air cooled and vast panoramas of paddy fields stretched out beside us, idyllic views reaching to shadowy mountains in the distance.

Clouds gathered in the heights as we turned off the main road towards our destination, and followed a winding mountain road. It started to drizzle, and then to pour, and we pulled off the muddy road at a small shack already crowded with people. They were not just stranded travelers, though; they were a family and a half that had fled from the landslides and had been living in the shack for two weeks. I shared the snacks we had brought with a six-year-old boy named Darman while we waited for the rain to stop (he didn’t want his photo taken). His father refused to accept the peanut candy until I had one too. “We came here after the landslides, and now our village has gotten help and we haven’t gotten anything,” he told me.

“Why don’t you go back?” I asked him.

“We have nothing left there,” he told me. “All we had is gone.”

The rain had slowed and we got back on the bikes, waving good-bye to the group in the shack. Although the rain was no longer heavy, the road had been badly damaged by the landslides, and we drove cautiously through the mud for another five kilometers. There was no sound but the quiet rumble of our motors, and the rain ticking against our helmets. At times we were actually inside clouds, and the air was chill through our damp clothes. The worst part, though, was the sight of the trees uprooted by landslides, the mounds of dirt strewn across the road, the crumbled edge of the road.

At last we wound our way down into a valley, the fog cleared, and we saw the village, clusters of houses surrounded by yellowing rice fields. We wound our way through narrow streets, past crumbled houses, stopping occasionally to ask questions. An old woman showed us her destroyed shell of a house, and told us that now she stayed in her parents house. In one sub-village 77 houses were damaged, in another 23. At last we found the main government building, and walked in, shaking the rain from our jackets. A few local officials emerged from the interior offices to greet us. I walked over to look at a board they had put up, with a list of names, genders, ages. Next to some of the names was written “found”.

A list of villages with numbers of damaged houses, buildings and infrastructure, as seen at a local government office. Photo: Mugur Dumitrache/Mercy Corps

“Is that the list of missing?” I asked the small man who had greeted us.

“That is the list of dead,” he told me. “The ones with the notes are the ones whose bodies have been found.”

Below was another list, this one of damaged houses. The total for the four main villages came to over 2,000.

“The irrigation channels have been broken in the landslides too,” the small man told us. “We are worried we will lose the harvest.”

I remembered the yellow tinge to the rice fields. “How many of the people here are farmers?” I asked.

“Eighty percent,” he told me.

After getting information from the officials about what sort of aid they had already received, most of it food donations from the government or from nearby villages, we got slowly back on the motorcycles and drove through the rest of the area. It was getting dark, and when it started to rain again, we stopped in a small shop for coffee. The man who served us, it turned out, was not the owner of the shop. It was his brother’s, and he was staying there since his house had been destroyed and eight members of his family killed in the landslides.

As we drove on I watched the houses slide by, some of them broken, some standing. We passed through a poor section of the village, tiny old houses made of wood, everything looking slightly rotted in the moist air, kerosene lamps shining from inside. It felt like a lost continent, so remote from the frenzy of aid and recovery on the main road half an hour away.

The next day we met with one of our partner agencies to plan a complementary distribution of their tools and our hygiene kits for the landslide and earthquake survivors in the village.

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Blog Post Posted October 14, 2009, 3:30 pm by Roger Burks

Possibility

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee bestowed the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on President Barack Obama last week, it seems the prevailing opinion across the United States was confusion. Then, predictably, that turned into a million other feelings, provoking sometimes-furious debates about prematurity and worthiness.

The Committee’s official statement said that Obama was honored because of his “"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." It acknowledged how he had captured the world’s attention and imagination to inspire hope.

I think there’s one word to sum up why Obama was chosen: possibility. And I believe that, in the results-oriented world we live in, possibility is often overlooked.

There is power in possibility. Every day on a less public stage, in some of the world’s most isolated and neglected places, that’s what my Mercy Corps colleagues are acknowledging. In many of those places – where earthquakes have toppled houses or war has forced families into exile, where everything has been lost or taken – possibility is the only thing left.

I don’t think you can have hope without possibility. There must be the possibility of a change for the better, a possibility to recover and rebuild. Give a book to a child, a loan to a struggling mother or a peaceful handshake to a former adversary and there is possibility. It is often passed on, transforming communities and changing the world a little at a time.

Hope keeps people going, but possibility gets them started.

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Blog Post Posted October 13, 2009, 10:23 am by Albana Dwonch

Gaza photo contest: And the winner is ...

Seventeen-year-old Mado Askri poses with his first-place certificate. On the right is his mother and on the left is Mira Bakry, Mercy Corps' youth program coordinator in Gaza. Photo: Mercy Corps

In my last post, I talked about how we managed to print photos in Jerusalem taken by Gaza youth for a special photo exhibit entitled "Recognizing Our Common Humanity."

We invited 100 students in the Gaza Strip, 15-21 years old, to help others see the world through their eyes through photographs. We posted the photos online and invited people to vote on them. And we also assembled a jury of four professional photographers in the U.S. to decide three winners.

On September 29, at an outdoor seaside restaurant in Gaza City, we held our award ceremony for this exhibition, which so many people were involved in and helped to make it a success.

As we announced the name of the first winner, a woman suddenly jumped from her chair while barely controlling a sort of a scream. We were all confused since the winner was a young boy, Mado Askari, 17 years old. And Mado himself, who could not believe that he had won the first prize, stood frozen at the end of the hall.

The woman ran quickly towards him and ignoring 100 people sitting all around, grabbed his hands and kissed them, then his face, then his hair. It was his mom! Everyone was cheering around, and everyone had teary eyes. There, for a moment, we all experienced live a true human moment. It is a moment that I will never forget.
 
Mado's winning photograph and the second- and third-place photos are below. (Both the professional jury and the online voters chose the same first-place winner.) To see all the photos, click here.

First prize: Mado Askri, "Hope for the future"

Second prize: Ikhlas Abu Roos, "Me and the sea"

Third prize: Nour Al Sosi, "Children teaching each other how to swim"

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