Supporter: Joy Portella

Adam Stelle of Startup Weekend, former Googler Gisel Kordestani, and Andy Dwonch and Andrea Koppel of Mercy Corps discuss tech entrepreneurship in the West Bank and Gaza at an event in Seattle last week. Photo: Mercy Corps

Last week, Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood was abuzz with a rare combination of techies, social investors, Arab world watchers and humanitarians. This eclectic group was brought together to learn about a unique program called the Arab Developer Network Initiative (ADNI). Formed by Mercy Corps, Google.org and the Source of Hope Foundation, ADNI boosts the efforts of young people in the Palestinian Territories to become technology entrepreneurs. Find out how you can get involved through mentoring, workshops and other opportunities.

Unlike the typical Mercy Corps event, this panel of speakers from Mercy Corps, Google.org and Startup Weekend didn’t mention giving away food, water, shelter or other kinds of assistance. Instead, they talked about fostering a culture of entrepreneurship, and in some cases, doing what’s often considered taboo in the aid world: encouraging failure.

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Mohammed Amine Kaabachi, aka “Mak” or “the genius,” wants to start his own document archive business after university. Photo: Joy Portella/Mercy Corps

Amira Mokded, GCC project manager, stands in front of the mural that Gafsa youth created for the one-year anniversary of the revolution. Photo: Joy Portella/Mercy Corps

Global Citizen Corps members in Gafsa are smart, motivated and ready to take action. Photo: Joy Portella/Mercy Corps

If you want to know what the Arab Awakening is all about, hang out with teenagers in Tunisia for an afternoon.

I was recently in Gafsa, a town of 70,000 people in central Tunisia where Mercy Corps has worked for several months. We’ve established the Global Citizen Corps here, a program that mobilizes young people, links them up with other youth networks around the world, and helps them take action on issues ranging from environmental degradation to access to education.

Gafsa is widely considered to be ground zero of Tunisia’s revolution – a city where last year’s protests against President Ben Ali, government neglect and corruption were particularly fierce. The young people I met were on the frontlines; they would spend their days in school and then take to the streets immediately after – armed with milk and Coca-Cola to wash tear gas out of their eyes. In the days following the revolution, when fear of gangs and snipers dominated the streets, many of them participated in makeshift security groups or took refuge in the local university.

Today, young people in Gafsa are hopeful but not naïve. One 15-year old GCC member told me, “Life was complicated before the revolution. People wanted to make change but they couldn’t.” Her 21-year-old friend chimed in, “Now we need to change ourselves; we need to find out what we’re capable of.”

The GCC has taken root quickly in Gafsa, swelling to nearly 70 members between the ages of 15 and 25, and expanding to other nearby areas. There’s a strong appetite for the GCC’s focus on action, leadership skills and connections with other energized youth; again and again, I heard young people say that they are eager to make a positive difference for their country.

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Things are not getting better in the Horn of Africa. In the nearly three months since I visited the region, the landscape has gotten drier, and people and animals have become more desperate for water and food. The forecast for fall rains is mixed at best, and even if the rains come in full force, the drought is so severe that they won’t provide lasting relief.

The drought and famine have slipped from the news headlines. It’s difficult for the media to stay focused on an emergency that’s characterized by a predictable slow squeeze rather than a single, surprising jolt. As public attention has waned, donations have fallen far short of what’s needed.

This lack of attention and donations makes it all the more important for large donors with strategic vision to fill in the gaps. I was happy to recently learn that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded Mercy Corps a $2.5 million grant for our emergency and recovery work in northeast Kenya, where devastating drought has been largely overshadowed by famine and conflict in its neighbor Somalia.

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A traditional herder stands on the withered landscape outside the drought-stricken town of Hadado, Kenya. Photo: Joy Portella/Mercy Corps

I returned from the drought-stricken Horn of Africa just over two weeks ago, and am amazed by the progress our team has made in such a short period of time. But there is an enormous amount of work to be done in the coming months as millions of families struggle to survive the long, dry summer and early fall.

Today I had the opportunity to talk with our Africa Director Matthew Lovick, who’s traveling with our team in Wajir County, one of the areas I recently visited. He and our team spent yesterday traveling to seven of the eight villages where we’re working in western Wajir.

A seasoned aid worker, Lovick declared that he’d “never seen anything like it,” referring to the incredibly arid land and desperation of people and animals.

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Zeynab Hassan lives in the bone-dry town of Hadado with her five children. Her husband has been gone for one month and counting. Photo: Joy Portella/Mercy Corps

One of the saddest things about the current drought in the Horn of Africa is that it’s destroying families. Men go off with livestock to find water — often traveling hundreds of miles for months at a time — or they drop out of pastoral life and flow into towns to look for odd jobs. Either way, women and children are often left behind.

This week in the town of Hadado, I met one of the women I’ll call a “drought widow.” Zeynab Hassan is a middle-aged mother of five children who range in age from seven to 20 years old. Zeynab is relatively new to Hadado. She and her sister’s family moved here from what used to be nearby grasslands when both of their husbands left. The men are now wandering with their remaining animals to search for water and food.

That was one month ago. I asked Zeynab when her husband will return and she only shrugged, saying, “I have no idea.”

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