The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted September 25, 2009, 11:46 pm by Cassandra Nelson

Standing up for their futures

I went to spend the afternoon with one of Mercy Corps’ partners for the Women’s Empowerment Program in a slum area on the outskirts of Bangui. The group is called Terrespoir, which translates to Land and Hope. It is a women’s cooperative that focuses on agricultural projects to generate incomes for the women. They also work with unwed mothers in their community, trying to assist them and help them become self-sufficient.

Elodie was just 17 when she had her daughter Dominique. Her parents threw her out of the house to fend for herself. Today, a Mercy Corps program is helping her support herself and her baby. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

In the Central African Republic there are many young, unwed mothers and they often have a very difficult life. In many cases, the family will disown their daughters and force them out of the house if they become pregnant and are not married. The girl is forced to stop school, if she is fortunate enough to be going in the first place, and she must find a way to fend for herself and her newborn child.

Mercy Corps is working with the Land and Hope group to help them start new projects and improve their overall functioning and effectiveness and better serve the women in the community.

When Denis Akino, Mercy Corps’ Program Facilitator, and I arrived at the community center, we were greeted by a group of women singing and clapping enthusiastically.

Women, let’s wake up
Women, stand up
Women, be strong

We are awake, we are awake
We struggle for peace
We, all together, have woken up!

And, as I soon found out, their lyrics were true!

While Denis was working with the group and conducting training, I met with Elodie Fetounon, a 19-year old unwed mother.

Elodie was just 17 and in school when she had her baby, Dominique. When her family learned she was pregnant, everything changed and many of her dreams she had been working hard to make reality came to a crashing halt. Her family threw her out of the house and wanted nothing to do with her. The father of her child denied he was the parent. Elodie was left all alone, penniless and pregnant.

The Terrespoir women's group sings a song at one of their meetings. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

The women of Land and Hope came to Elodie’s assistance. They helped her financially and spoke with her family about the situation and tried to help them resolve their differences. They also taught Elodie how to make jams and preserves so she could earn enough money to support herself and her baby.

Now, with the support of the group, Elodie and her family have reconciled. She was able to go back to school to get her diploma and her preserves business has given her financial independence. She plans to go onto college and so she can get a better job in the future.

And as for the women of Land and Hope, they are working with Mercy Corps to start a new project that will teach more young women, especially unwed mothers, vocational skills so they can support themselves and their children. These women have truly woken up and stood up for their futures!

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Blog Post Posted September 25, 2009, 7:46 am by Cassandra Nelson

Fighting for their homes

Mercy Corps Program Manager Allison Huggins (left) stands with the widow's association near Bangui, Central African Republic. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

In the Central African Republic (CAR), women’s rights here are few, and the enforcement of the laws is almost non-existent. Most women are not even aware they have many rights. In a country where almost 70 percent of women cannot read, this is not surprising.

Widows are a group that is particularly taken advantage of and discriminated against. It is common at the death of a woman’s husband that the in-laws will take all the property that is legally due to the wife and dependents. Even more common, is that the government will refuse to pay the pension payments the widow is entitled to upon her spouse’s death.

Mercy Corps is working with the Organization of Widows and Orphans of Central Africa, a group of more than 150 widows who have joined together to defend their property rights, as well as assist widows and orphans who need financial assistance. The Association of Women Lawyers — another partner of Mercy Corps’ Women’s Empowerment Project — provides free legal counseling to the women, who otherwise would not be able to afford legal fees to defend their rights and keep their property.

I went out with the Mercy Corps Women’s Empowerment Program Manager to meet several widows in the group and learn more about their challenges. Just outside of the capital, Bangui, we met at one of the widow’s association offices. I heard the painful and traumatic stories of several widows, but I also heard inspiring news from the association about how they have begun to have a real positive impact on defending the rights of the widows.

I spent the afternoon with Marcelinne Gbenou and her neighbor Angele Tikoro — both widows and members of the association. Marcelinne’s husband died last year and was survived by her and their six children, the youngest just four years old. They had a relatively good life prior to his death: two simple homes (one in the village and one in town), enough to eat and all the kids able to attend school. By average CAR standards, they were doing well.

After her brother-in-law sold her house, Marcelline had to negotiate to live in a one-room mud brick house with her six children. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

When Marcelinne’s husband died, her brother-in-law came, sold their houses and kept the money for himself. No one questioned the sale of the homes, because it is common for a male to handle the financial transactions in CAR.

Marcelinne was left homeless and without any skills to earn a living and support her six children. Illiterate and never having attended school, Marcelinne was not aware of her rights and unable to navigate the complex legal system to defend her property.

She managed to find a charitable landlord who agreed to rent her a one-room mud brick shack for a very minimal fee. She moved her family in with the few items they had after selling off most of her possessions to pay for rent and food. Her eldest daughter dropped out of school and took a job as a maid to help the family survive.

When she moved into the rental home her new neighbor, Angele stopped in to welcome her. Angele, also a widow who had experienced similar problems when her husband died, urged Marcelinne to join the widow’s association so the group could assist her in taking her case to court.

Angele (left) and her friend Marcelline are both members of the widow's association, supported by Mercy Corps. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Angele told her about her case, when her in-laws attempted to take all her family’s property after her husband's death. She joined the widow's association, which got Angele a lawyer who agreed to handle her case for free and they took her case to court. After the first court meeting, the in-laws dropped their action and Angele has not heard from them for the past several years.

Now the widows’ association is taking up Marcelinne’s case to try to get her some of the money from the illegal sale of her homes. It is often a long and complicated process, but with the help of educated and trained lawyers Marcelinne and widows like her are starting to have a fighting chance to protect their property and provide for their children.

Mercy Corps and the widow’s association are also looking at ways to help widows help themselves. On the slate for this year are literacy and basic math classes, so widows are better equipped to manage their homes and exercise their rights.

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Blog Post Posted September 21, 2009, 12:45 am by Cassandra Nelson

'I have never seen a place as poor as this'

Children playing in Bimbo, an especially poor area outside of Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic. Two-thirds of the country's population lives on less than $1 a day. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

I am writing from the Central African Republic (CAR). Not many people know much about this land-locked country slightly smaller than Texas. But the short and not-so-sweet brief on CAR is that it is the second poorest country on Earth after Sierra Leone.

It ranks 178 out of 179 countries on the UN Human Development Index. It’s been wracked by coups, violence and cross-border unrest for the past several decades. It’s in a bad neighborhood, so they say, with the Congo, Chad and Sudan on its borders.

The global economic crisis has hit CAR extremely hard, and devalued the country’s only sources of revenue — mining and timber — by 90 percent. Today, they export almost nothing. Go down to the shipping area and look at the containers — the incoming containers are full; the outgoing ones empty. The pockets of most Central Africans are empty too — that is, the people who are fortunate enough to have pockets. More than two-thirds of the population is living on less than $1 a day.

For the past seven years, I have worked for Mercy Corps in some of the poorest and most devastated places in the world, and I have never seen a place as poor as this.

Mercy Corps has been working here for more than two years to help develop and stabilize the country while meeting urgent needs for food security. A major focus of our work is women’s empowerment. Studies have proven that when women earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their children and households for food, school fees or health care. The amount women reinvest in their families is, on average, more than twice the amount men reinvest. Helping women help their families is a smart bet.

Here in CAR, working with women takes on an even greater significance. Mercy Corps is completing a baseline study here that has uncovered some grim details.

• 1 in every 4 women have experienced violence at the hands of their partner in the last year.
• Sexual violence is pervasive, with 1 in 7 women reporting they have experienced rape in the last year.

Mercy Corps' Allison Huggins (speaking at front of group) and Denis Akino (to left of Allison) lead a women's empowerment session in Bimbo. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

The study shows that women of all demographic groups are experiencing violence: all religions, all education levels and all household income levels. It also shows that a woman's personal income was the only indicator that had any effect on reducing rates of violence.

Allison Huggins is Mercy Corps’ Project Manager for the Women’s Empowerment Project — she oversaw the survey and is writing the report. She has spent many years working in Africa with women and is making a real difference here.

She has pointed out many of the problems women face in CAR — and identified some tangible and very doable solutions that Mercy Corps is putting into action. Some of the key actions Mercy Corps is focused on include:

• Promotion of women’s rights and educating people on how they can uphold their rights
• Promotion of positive examples of male behavior that denounce violence against women
• Increasing services (legal, law enforcement, medical, etc) available to women
• Providing women the opportunity to earn an income and have greater self-sufficiency

Allison took me out to meet some of the women she and her team are working with in the outskirts of Bangui, the capital. The area is called Bimbo, which despite the gravity of the situation made me smile. I had a fleeting thought of titling this blog “No Bimbos in Bimbo.”

Justine Wakara is a member of the local women's empowerment group here in Bimbo. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

We met with a local group that Mercy Corps is working to build-up and support so they can better support women in the community. The group has income generation projects for women and is working to give vocational and literacy training to women. They are also working with Mercy Corps to mobilize their community to protect women’s rights. Denis Akino, Mercy Corps’ facilitator for the Womens’ Empowerment Program led a session with more than 80 men in the community on women’s rights, and many important leaders attended, giving women’s issues real attention and credibility for the first time.

I met many women in the group and each one had a story about how the organization has helped them, and how they have come together to help themselves and support each other.

Justine Wakara, a grandmother and mother 9 children, summed it up best: “We are poor but together — if we pool our resources and focus our energy — we can do better. We don’t have to stay this way. Things can get better.”

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Blog Post Posted January 8, 2009, 7:23 am by Cassandra Nelson

Food for 2,000 gets into Gaza

Despite many obstacles and bureaucratic procedures presented by the Israeli authorities, Mercy Corps successfully delivered emergency relief food items to Gaza on Thursday.

The organization delivered a truckload of vegetable cooking oil, rice and canned tuna fish in sufficient quantities to feed 2,000 extremely vulnerable people for a week.

Mercy Corps spent the past 11 days working through Israeli red tape and protocols that seemed to change daily to secure the permission to deliver the truck today. The delivery was supposed to be made Wednesday, but at 2 a.m. the Mercy Corps team in Jerusalem received notice from the Israeli Defense Forces that the delivery was being postponed because it contained dates, which were not an essential food item. Today's delivery did not include dates.

The truck was repacked last night without the dates and with an extra three tons of rice. At dawn this morning, the truck and Mercy Corps monitors set out for the Kerem Shalom checkpoint.

The Mercy Corps vehicle joined a line of about 25 trucks waiting at the border. After about an hourlong wait, the Israeli customs officials inspected the delivery and paperwork and allowed the truck to proceed into the unloading area for all shipments.

The vehicle was admitted to the unloading compound with several other aid trucks — all from various UN branches. The pallets were unloaded by forklift.

After all the items were removed from the truck and placed on the pavement of the compound, the security check began. Sniffing dogs were released to check the material. Next, a border control worker probed and stabbed every package with a long metal rod to check if anything might be hidden inside.

After the checks were completed, all the Israeli workers and other observers and monitors were told to exit back to the Israel side of the border. Once the compound was empty of all people, the gates on the Israeli side were slammed shut.

Next, the gates on the Gaza side of the compound were opened, allowing the Palestinians to enter the compound and collect the delivery with their trucks. No trucks were allowed to drive from the Israeli side to the Gaza side. Everything was offloaded from the trucks on the Israel side and then reloaded onto different trucks on the Gaza side.

Israeli guards said that at no point in the process are Israelis and Palestinians from the Gaza side allowed to meet each other.

The number deliveries are still far short of what is needed to serve a population that increasingly relies on outside aid to survive. On Wednesday, only 36 humanitarian-aid trucks were allowed to make their deliveries. Compare that to 2007, when an average of 500 trucks entered daily.

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