Emergency response
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Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps
Life can change for millions of families in an instant: natural disasters can take loved ones and the outbreak of war drive families from their homes. When the unthinkable happens, Mercy Corps delivers rapid, lifesaving aid to hard-hit communities.
All stories about Emergency response
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Kenya: Quick thoughts from our emergency team leader in Kenya July 28, 2011
Our emergency response teams across the Horn of Africa — in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya — are working hard, long hours every day to assess needs and speed relief to hungry and struggling families. Often, our staff is traveling in remote areas, out of the range of any communications at all.
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Ethiopia: New assessments in drought-parched regions of Ethiopia July 27, 2011
As worsening drought and food shortages spread throughout the Horn of Africa, we've begun more assessments of hard-hit areas in eastern and southern Ethiopia.
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Indonesia: Retooling Mentawai and helping it grow again July 27, 2011
Indonesia's Mentawai Islands have a very hot and arid climate but, because of high rainfall and minimal pests, it is great for agriculture. When the tsunami hit last October, Mentawai residents ran from the waves with only the clothes on their backs. Most tools and crops were lost.
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Kenya: Lifesaving relief for families in northeastern Kenya July 26, 2011
“People here are falling down in masses ... it will be too late to do anything if we don't act now,” our emergency response leader in northeastern Kenya just told me on a phone call.
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Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya: Situation worsens in the Horn of Africa, our response increases July 20, 2011
Today, the United Nations officially declared a famine in parts of Somalia. What does this alarming news mean? Technically, it refers to conditions that include 30 percent acute malnutrition among the population of a specific place.
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Japan: Re-opening Ofunato's fish market July 17, 2011
The tsunami poured through the Ofunato fish market, leaving the open-plan structure mostly intact but washing away almost everything within it.
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Kenya: Chronicles of a "drought widow" July 16, 2011
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.
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Kenya: Ten-year-old Hindiya Roble outside of Hadado, Kenya July 15, 2011
Hindiya Roble, 10, and her family have been walking for 17 days in search of water.
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Kenya: Walking for 17 days July 15, 2011
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Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia: Not just hunger, but fear July 14, 2011
Nearly everyone in the world experiences hunger at some point during their day. That said, it's different for all of us.