Contributor: Salma Bahramy

George Ngethe surveys the tea seedlings in the nursery he started with other young people in his village through Mercy Corps' Yes Youth Can program. Photo: Salma Bahramy/Mercy Corps

I’m crouched inside a tea nursery high up in the Central Rift Valley of Kenya, and George Ngethe is patiently explaining to me how tea is produced.

“What you see here will look like that in less than a year,” he points to the hills all around us. We’re surrounded by thousands of acres of tea bushes owned by small farmers throughout this Kenya’s largest province.

Just a few months ago, George and some other local young people started this nursery with the extra cuttings from the surrounding farms. Today, it holds over 8,000 seedlings that will sell for about 10 Kenyan shillings each, slightly above local market price.

So how did a few local kids enter Kenya’s booming tea market? George is part of Mercy Corps’ Yes Youth Can program in Kenya, which was created with funding from USAID to help empower young people to create businesses and promote positive change in their communities.

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I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard the word “democracy” today. I’m in Tunis on a day that will go down in history as Tunisia’s first free elections in over 23 years. The street is lined with hundreds of people, young and old, all waiting for their turn to get inside their local voting center.

As I walk past the line, a small group of young men see my camera, smile and hold up their left index finger. The blue ink on the tip of their finger tells me they just voted. It’s hot out, most have been standing in line for hours and someone is passing out bottled water. Another person is coordinating entries for those with physical disabilities.

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Nobody has ever explained participatory democracy to the people I met today in El Ktar in southern Tunisia. Until recently it was only a vague concept, irrelevant to their daily lives.

But today, in this makeshift classroom situated in a tiny village nestled in the mountains of southern Tunisia, a group of mostly males are listening eagerly to a lecture on the meaning of a Constitution. The room is packed. The audience range in age from adolescents to men well into their 80s.

Tunisia will hold its first free elections this Sunday, October 23. Tunisians will elect the 217 members of a constituent assembly that will write the country’s new Constitution — and play a decisive role in selecting Tunisia’s next leaders.

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Kids and adults at the orphanage in Misrata received trauma counseling, learned normal and abnormal responses and appropriate coping mechanisms. Photo: Salma Bahramy/Mercy Corps

When unrest began in Libya earlier this year, Misrata was at the very center of the conflict. Today, as I look around this city, signs of prolonged fighting are visible everywhere: destroyed buildings, abandoned shops, streets littered with garbage.

Amongst the rubble and the ruins, a local orphanage is slowly starting to recover as the city is rejoicing in its newfound freedom. One hundred and nine children, aged 1 month to 16 years, lived in the orphanage when their building was hit. For 6 days, these children hid in the basement of the building to avoid being caught in the crossfire. When the children resurfaced, they found ruined beds, clothing and school items.

Mercy Corps, who had set up an office in Misrata in June, responded by replacing clothes, shoes, beds, mattresses and paying teachers who had their salaries cut off during the conflict.

Mercy Corps also sent in Dr. Omar Reda, a psycho-social advisor, to assess the children’s emotional wellbeing and provide one-on-one psycho-therapy sessions to help ease the stress of their recent ordeal. Kids and adults at the orphanage received trauma counseling, learned normal and abnormal responses and appropriate coping mechanisms.

Mercy Corps supplemented their individual weekly psycho-therapy sessions with child-friendly group activities such as arts and crafts, sports and putting on concerts and plays.

“These kids have already suffered the loss of one or both of their parents and were now having to deal with being exposed to warfare. Though surprisingly resilient, they naturally expressed anxiety about what they’d just lived through and fear and uncertainty about their futures,” says Dr. Reda. “Working with the kids one-on-one and using social activities gave them a way to both externalize their experience and restore a sense of normalcy to their lives.”

Today, Mercy Corps is working to implement this type of psycho-social program to help children throughout the city of Misrata. Comfort for Kids and Moving Forward will initially launch in 12 pilot schools that see the highest number of conflict-affected children.

Comfort for Kids teaches trainers and teachers to work one-on-one with a child affected by trauma and Moving Forward uses group activities and play-based intervention to support youth in recovering from the trauma of a disaster by strengthening resilience and coping strategies. Both programs were first developed after 9/11 to facilitate the emotional recovery of children in New York City and have been adapted and used to help thousands of children in post-disaster environments including New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and following severe earthquakes in Peru (2007), the Sichuan province of China (2008), and Haiti (2010).

This week, Mercy Corps will lead a 4-day Comfort for Kids and Moving Forward training session in Misrata for teachers at the 12 pilot schools.

“Children all across Misrata have endured so much violence. These programs will provide them with the ongoing support they need to recover and allow them to be children again,” says Dr. Reda.

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Amal El Gehani (right), cofounder of a group that aided Libya's revolution, speaks with Salmeen Jawhary, who manages our new resource center for civic groups. "It’s so helpful to know a place like this exists," says Amal. Photo: Salma Bahramy/Mercy Corps

Amal El Gehani joined the revolution just one day after it began.

The 25-year-old was working as an electrical-engineering lecturer at a local university on Feb. 18 when police clashed with demonstrators, killing two dozen. The next day, Amal gathered with a group of women and provided assistance at dozens of hospitals, schools and other institutions in Benghazi.

Within weeks, the group that Amal cofounded -- which later took the name Attawassel -- swelled to 170 women, all of whom worked in secret to produce radio shows, disseminate newsletters and help families in need of food and medical assistance.

These days they're working to empower women and youth and rebuild their community. And Mercy Corps is giving them the space and resources to be effective.

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